Off to Eeriecon 10
Off to one of my favorite conventions -- Eeriecon, a small but high-energy con in Niagara Falls, New York. The fun begins this evening. Guests of Honor this year are Joe Haldeman and Sephera Giron. Details are here.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Posted by Rob on Friday, April 18, 2008
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I was at Eeriecon (came all the way up from Maryland, 450 miles away), and next to the Worldcon in 2006, it was the best SF con I've been to. (I've been to 18, starting in 2005.) Let's see:
*Saw Niagara Falls (first time).
*Went to lunch or dinner several times with Robert Sawyer, Nancy Kress, James Alan Gardner, Carl Frederick, and others. (Note – Robert was the Writer in Residence when I attended the Odyssey Writer's Workshop in 2006.)
*Literally monopolized one panel with questions on novel writing for Robert, Joe Haldeman and Nancy Kress. (There was nothing said that I hadn't "learned" before, but this was the time where it clicked, since I'd just gone through learning some of these lessons "the hard way.")
*Attended a two-hour writer's workshop by Nancy Kress and James Alan Gardner. If they'd gone over the basics, it would have been wasted on me, but instead they each focused on more "advanced" concepts: Nancy on thinking and plotting in scenes, James on POV. (Again, nothing really new, but they were said at the right time.)
*Talked writing for two hours on Saturday night with Carl Frederick, who's had 25 stories (!) in Analog. He and I are both short story writers planning to make the jump to novels.
*Attended Robert's 20-minute reading of the start of "Wake." I've never liked hearing stories read, much prefer reading them, so it was good practice for me, and Robert's an expert at voice fluctuations and using different voices for different characters, even if it means mimicking a computer voice that's been told to read very fast!
*Lots of other panels all weekend, including many for Robert, who had something like five a day, often several in a row, often chairing them.
Thanks especially to Robert, Nancy, James and Carl for making the weekend one to remember, and one I'll cite as a taurning point someday when/if I apply these and other lessons into my writing.
-Larry Hodges
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