I had a great time at Capclave, a couple weekends ago.  (Except for the con-crud that delayed my postlude…)

Highlights included moderating a small press panel with Neil Clarke, Sean Wallace, and Mike Walsh of Old Earth Books. Meeting BCS authors Adam Corbin Fusco and David Milstein; hanging out with Jen and Melissa. Chatting again with BCS author and novelist Genevieve Valentine. Seeing co-GOH Cat Valente again (I met her last year at World Fantasy, when the BCS party woke her up at 2 AM :) ).

Speaking with James Morrow, who lectured my year at Odyssey. His novel about Darwin’s lady assistant flying a steampunk airship over the Amazon, which he read from at ReaderCon 2010, is in rewrites and hasn’t yet found a publisher. Which is sad because the excerpt was great. He really liked the cool BCS flyers I had.

Chatting in the bar for hours with co-GOH Carrie Vaughn, a fellow Odyssey grad and bestseller who I had never met in person.  She is mostly known for her urban fantasy, but she’s read tons of epic fantasy and published several dozen short stories, and knows a ton about the field.

The Terry Pratchett surprise visit. I’m not familiar with his work, but I know he’s a very clever and engaging guy. The excerpts that his assistant read from his new book were quite droll (although the assistant read for way too long and interjected his own opinions too often).

They only made enough time to take one question, and it wasn’t about his books but about a BBC documentary he had helped make on assisted suicide for terminally ill. He talked for twenty minutes about that, made even more profound because of his own health situation, and it was utterly fascinating. (I will be blogging about that specifically later.)  Someone in the crowd put it on youtube, and Capclave posted an mp3 of the audio.

The GOH interview. I didn’t know how they would do it with two GOHs. It turned out that Carrie and Cat know each other, so they interviewed each other and took pre-written audience questions.  It was the best GOH interview I’ve ever seen. They were engaging, witty, and profound. Topics included the sociological underpinnings of the mythoses of vampires and werewolves; writing for shared-world anthologies; writing goals and achieving them; where they live and the sense of place in their writing.

I was only at the con for a day and a half, but I had a great time seeing these cool people and having great conversations. That seems to be what I mostly get out of cons–talking to clever people about interesting things.  I’ll definitely be back next year.

This weekend I will be at Capclave, the local D.C.-area SF/F con.

The co-Guest of Honor this year is bestselling writer Carrie Vaughn, a fellow Odyssey grad.  I’ve heard her writing lectures in podcasts (they’re very insightful), but I’ve never met her in person.

The con again this year has lots of cool literary SF/F programming.  I will be on several panels, again this year:

Friday 8:00 pm:
Short Fiction: Where is the new good short fiction found now?

Saturday 11:00 am:
Small Press Publishing: Running a publishing company, publishing a magazine or semi-prozine.

Saturday 1:00 pm:
When Characters Threaten to Take Over

Alas, no reading this year, for some reason–I did ask for one.

I will probably swing by the hotel bar Friday after my panel, at 9PM.  I’m not sure how long I’ll be around Saturday, and I probably won’t be there Sunday.  If you see me, feel free to grab a snazzy BCS flyer and say hello.

A very cool mention of me and Michael J. DeLuca at ReaderCon, in a con-report blog post by Black Gate magazine’s Website Editor C.S.E. Cooney.

Cheers, Claire! It was great to meet you too. :)

I had a blast at ReaderCon last weekend.  Among the many, many highlights:

-the Naked City anthology reading Thursday night in Cambridge, with readings by John Crowley, Jeffrey Ford, my buddy Matt Kressel, and post-reading beers with Jed Berry and Mike DeLuca

-panels Friday, including on anthologies

-drinking Friday with many, including Claire H., Maggie R., Jenn B., Renee B., and Mike DeLuca

-my reading Saturday morning–I read “The Very Strange Weird of Endart Sscowth” in the current Space and Time and a bit of my Homeless Moon chapbook 4 story.  A nice crowd, who were treated to back-issue copies of Space and Time #108 and #114 and Weird Tales 347, all containing stories by me.

-the BCS reading Saturday afternoon, with Matt Kressel, Margaret Ronald, Marko Kloos, and Mike DeLuca

-dinner and more drinking with many, including Marko, Chang T., Abby, Dave B., Claire H., Maggie, Jenn, Renee, and Mike DeLuca (anyone detecting a theme? :) )

-chats with and meeting of cool people, like Leah Bobet, Ellen Datlow, and Ellen Kusher

-drinking Sunday and Monday with Mike DeLuca (that theme again…)

It was awesome, all of it–fascinating discussion and delightful fellowship.  Woo!

I will be at ReaderCon, the literary spec-fic con held in Boston, this weekend.

I’ll be giving a reading of my own fiction Sat. at 11:30 AM.  I haven’t dicided yet which of my recent publications  to read from–”Very Strange Weird” in the recent Space and Time, “The Halberdier, by Moonlight” forthcoming in On Spec, which I read at Balticon, and possibly “Of Casting Pits and Caustic Salts,” in the current Heroic Fantasy Quarterly.

There is also a Beneath Ceaseless Skies reading Sat. afternoon at 2:30 PM.  It will include writers such as Mike DeLuca, Margaret Ronald, Matt Kressel, and more.

And as always, there will be great stuff in the dealer’s room and lots of cool panels.  One I’m really looking forward to is Liz Hand’s lecture on Tolkien elements in black metal, the Viking-influenced very dark-themed metal which is mostly from Norway and Sweden.  My metal tastes run more toward the technical side (Meshuggah, coincidently also from Sweden), but I am familiar with the black metal bands and their heavy Tolkien influence.

And, also as always, I will be in the pub rather frequently. :)  If you see me there or in the halls, or at my reading or the BCS reading, feel free to say hello!

I will be at Balticon this weekend.  I’ve been to Baltimore many times but this will be my first Balticon.

I have a reading Saturday at 3 PM.  Not sure yet what I’ll read–perhaps my short satire piece forthcoming in Space and Time #114 this summer, or my “slipstream + armor” piece that’s forthcoming in On Spec.

I also might be on a panel Sunday evening (I don’t know yet). Otherwise I will be roaming the halls with a stack of shiny BCS flyers and, of course, in the bar. :)

This weekend I will be at Boskone, the Boston-area F/SF convention. I’ve been for the last several years and have enjoyed it (and returning to two of my favorite brewpubs and small breweries).  I will be on several panels, including one Saturday at noon on Sword & Sorcery Today–a very cool topic similar to the panel I moderated at Word Fantasy.

I will also be hosting a reading for my magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, on Sunday at noon (note the change from the earlier schedule).  Several authors from the magazine will read their stories that will be appearing in BCS this spring.

Drop by and give them a listen. And if you see me in the halls, feel free to say hello!

Weird Tales, the very long-running SF/F/H magazine where my first published fantasy story appeared, has made some major upgrades.

As detailed in this announcement, WT will now be paying 5 cents a word, up from 3 cents.  They’ve also adopted the very slick electronic submissions system that Clarkesworld Magazine pioneered and that Fantasy Magazine and Asimov’s use.  Ann VanderMeer, who as Fiction Editor bought my story “Excision” several years ago, is taking over as Editor-in-Chief.

I’m sure these changes will only improve this run of the magazine under Ann, which has already won the 2009 Hugo for Best SemiProZine.  I’ve been a fan and subscriber ever since “Excision” appeared in WT #347, her first issue, the one with the cool cover art of a severed head in a jar.  :)   I had the pleasure of dining with Ann and Jeff at Capclave, and they are tireless champions for short fiction.  I look forward to this new era for Weird Tales!

I had a great time at World Fantasy!

I saw a bunch of people I know from other cons: my drinking buddy Saladin Ahmed, who read from his novel coming out next hear from DAW. I had read parts of it in draft form, and the final version he read is even better. BCS author and Sybil’s Garage editor Matt Kressel read from his upcoming BCS story “The Suffering Gallery”; I think I had a beer with him three days in a row. :) Fellow Codexians Corry and Mary, my former instructor now BCS author Steve Rasnic Tem, my Oddfellows drinking buddies, the ever-rosy Mike Allen, and more.

I met a ton of people I know online but hadn’t met before: BCS authors Marie Brennan, Vylar Kaftan, Erin Cashier, Ferret Steinmetz, Renee Stern, Brad Beaulieu, J. Kathleen Cheney, and more. Fellow Codexians Lon Prater, T.L. Morganfield, Jeremy Tolbert, and more. Fellow editors who dig what I’m doing with BCS Janson Sanford (storySouth, The Million Writers Award), John O’Neill and Howard Andrew Jones (Black Gate), John Klima (Electric Velocipede).

The swords & sorcery panel I sat on was quite good. Howard Andrew Jones mentioned many of the classics and the biggest new author out of Black Gate, James Enge; I mentioned Clark Ashton Smith and my favorite current author, Chris Willrich; Patricia Bray and Martha Wells mentioned a number of insightful things, including Charles Saunders and Saladin.

Patricia said that a lake monster in some S&S she’d read years ago felt like “the coolest thing ever.” That I think is a great tagline for the coolness or awe in S&S that all of us love–stuff that’s the coolest thing ever. :)

I enjoyed the panel on epic fantasy–all the panelists had good ideas and were into the discussion. Here’s some online video of that panel. Also here are some quotes of wisdom that Jason Sanford compiled and blogged.

The BCS not-officially-a-party went well–attendees included Steve Tem, Blake Charlton, Walter Jon Williams, lots of BCS authors and fans, and apparently the whole class of Clarion 2010! We only had a little beer left over, and I didn’t mind showering Sunday morning standing in three inches of still-melting ice. :)

Thanks all! It was an awesome weekend.

I will be at World Fantasy Con this weekend.  I’m looking forward to it–a bunch of BCS authors will be there, including many from the West Coast who I’m really excited to meet.

At noon on Saturday I will be on the swords & sorcery panel, discussing whether S&S has changed or perhaps remained the same. That’s a topic near and dear to me–the type of fiction that I publish in Beneath Ceaseless Skies (and that I write myself) could be called “literary swords & sorcery,” so it is one way at least in which S&S has evolved or changed.

Other than that, I’ll either be cruising the halls with a stack of BCS flyers or I’ll be ensconced in the bar.  Or at the very cool-looking brewpub that’s down the street. :)  If you see me, feel free to say hi.