I had a great time at Capclave this past weekend! Some highlights:

-the panel on Short Fiction in 2010, with Neil Clarke and Guests of Honor Jeff and Ann VanderMeer.  Neil asked me to recommend some new writers.  I mentioned Yoon Ha Lee, one of whose stories from BCS was up for an award at the con.  Also Margaret Ronald, one of whose steampunk stories from BCS, “A Serpent in the Gears,” is in the VanderMeer’s new steampunk anthology Steampunk Reloaded, and Genevieve Valentine, who has a story forthcoming in BCS in November.

-the panel on e-publishing, with Neil Clarke and Odyssey alum novelist James Maxey.  James has recently begun selling his back-list novels on Amazon Kindle US and UK, with good sales and generating good buzz for his current and upcoming novels.

-a quick chat with Guest of Honor Connie Willis, who was one of my instructors at Taos Toolbox.  She was witty and delightful, as always.

-taping a radio interview with Jim Freund, host of the New York City SF/F radio show Hour of the Wolf.  Jim and I have talked often about audio podcasting and audio in general–I was a college radio DJ many years ago. :)  The interview, which will probably air early next year, touched on my own fiction but mostly talked about BCS, including my editorial vision for the magazine and things I do in the BCS podcasts.

-my reading.  I read from a new unpublished story, “Letters on an Enlightened Discovery,” an epistolary set in colonial India about an archeologist who finds an ancient design for a metal elephant.  Attendees included Larry Hodges and Oz Drummond.

-dinner with the VanderMeers, Neil Clarke, and Genevieve Valentine.  Lots of great chat about steampunk stuff and editor things.  Ann remembered my story “Excision” that she published in her first issue of Weird Tales, and I learned that Jeff enjoys micro-brews almost as much as I do. :)

-Genevieve Valentine’s reading, from her forthcoming novel Mechanique, which is set in the same world as her forthcoming BCS story.

-the awards ceremony.  Capclave hosts the WSFA Small Press Award, and Yoon Ha Lee’s BCS story “The Pirate Captain’s Daughter” was a Finalist.  The winner was an author from Australia, Tansy Rayner Roberts, whose Australian editor, Alisa Krasnostein, was on-hand to accept.  It was an honor to be nominated, and I’m grateful to WSFA for having an award to acknowledge small presses and their authors.

Capclave 2011 Guests of Honor will include Carrie Vaughn, a bestselling Odyssey alum who I haven’t yet met in person, and they will have the WSFA Small Press Award again.  I’m there!

Got back from ReaderCon yesterday. It was awesome.

I saw and drank with lots of people I knew (Tom Crosshill, Maggie Ronald, Anne Cross, Mike Allen, Jay and Erin, my eternal partner in barley Mike DeLuca, and many others), met and drank with lots of new people I now know (Matt Kressel, Corry and Mary, Rajan, Amy, Mishell Baker, and many, many others), and had great interesting conversations with all of them.

Photographic evidence of the former, courtesy of Matt Kressel:

The BCS reading had eight authors, including one right off the airplane! :) And the room was packed with readers and fans. Thanks to everyone who read and everyone who came to listen.

And especially to everyone who came up to me in the Dealer’s Room or at parties and said they really like the magazine. That is always awesome to hear, each and every time, and I’m delighted you’re enjoying our fiction.

I will be at ReaderCon this weekend, the small and very cool literary F/SF con in Boston.

I’ll be promoting Beneath Ceaseless Skies, with some snazzy flyers featuring our new gorgeous cover art and some postcards with the cover of the Best of BCS anthology.

There will be a reading of BCS authors, including Margaret Ronald, Matthew Kressel, Mishell Baker, Erin Hoffman, Tom Crosshill, and more. It’s Friday at 6pm in the VT room. Drop by and hear some great literary adventure fantasy.

So if you see me in the halls (or in the bar! :) ), feel free to say hello!

I had a great time at Boskone last weekend! Many people spoke to me about Beneath Ceaseless Skies, which was great–it’s more and more people at each con I go to. A good small crowd attended the BCS reading, and several nice-sized audiences attended the two panels about online topics that I was on.

Special thanks to a few folks: JoAnn and Boskone for inviting me, Maggie and KJ and Mike for reading, Neil Clarke and James Patrick Kelly for great interaction on two different panels, Teresa Nielsen Hayden for remembering me :) , Ian and NewGuyDave for a cool chat, Anne for her great brewpub recommendation, the good folks at Harpoon Brewery and Cambridge Brewing Co. for their fine skill, and my compatriot Mike for bringing a church key!

This weekend I will be at Boskone, one of the Boston-area SF conventions.

I will be participating on several panels. One at 8pm Friday and another at 11am on Sunday will focus on online reading habits and resources. Another at noon on Sunday will be about recent developments in biological sciences (rather apropos to my story “Picking Up the Spin” coming out in M-Brane SF next month).

And at 5pm Saturday, I will be hosting a reading of authors from Beneath Ceaseless Skies magazine, including Margaret Ronald, whose recent story “A Serpent in the Gears” got a great review today in IROSF.

So if you’re at the con, drop by the reading.

Okay here’s the con report.

After work on Friday I met up with Andrea Kail and her husband and rode to Rye with the two of them. Conversation revolved around political scandal and impending financial ruin for others.

The con was fun, even if I didn’t go to many panels.

First was the Odyssey panel, which was in a shitty, hard to find room and more of a place for Odyssey grads to meet up with each other and hang with Jeanne Cavelos than anything else. Then I scooted up to an urban fantasy panel moderated by ellen_kushner, where I made the mistake of speaking during the Q&A and wound up rambling. Finally I went to a panel on “Mistakes Not to Make Early in your Career”. It should have been titled “How Not to be a Shit”. It was more about social etiquette than about how to avoid getting screwed over in contracts and stuff like that. Not that I'm complaining. Somedays all I have to do is open my mouth for my foot to wind up in it. Laura Anne Gilman (suricattus) moderated this one. She talked about working with editors and dealing with rewrite requests. Her advice was “Have an open mind, negotiate, and learn to make changes, but pick the hill you’re going to die on”.

Karl Kofoed was on this one too. He does this incredibly fun sci-fi “comic” for Heavy Metal that I've been meaning to pick up the collection of for years now. It’s basically National Geographic in the 30th century: Galactic Geographic. A book like this in a kid's hands would be a life changing event.

The rest of the time I roamed about with friends or explored the Dealers’ Room. In the end I only spent $20 when I could have EASILY spent over $60 - so I feel no guilt in my atheistic lapsed Catholic soul. No special dispensations are needed from the Pope despite my book ban, nor do I have to pound myself in the chest with a rock, Saint Jerome-style.

I hung around with most of the folks I see regularly at city readings and had a blast. I also met some folks who were astoundingly cool: Claudia Carlson and David J. Williams. Also, I have to thank my host, Barbara Campbell, who put me up for two nights. She (and her husband, Dave) were a blast to hang out with. Hopefully, I get to repay their kindness one day.

Overall, a fun con, full of that real con weirdness -- I’ll do it again next year.

Since it's official, just posting a note here that I'll be teaching a game workshop at this year's Context, a very cool convention in Columbus, OH.

Via the workshop website:

Erin Hoffman: Interactive Narrative and Game Design
(Sunday, September 28th, 11am-2pm)
This workshop explores the fundamentals of video game design through the use of interactive fiction, exploring the places where interactivity and storytelling overlap. No technology or game training is necessary, though a laptop computer is highly recommended. Attendees will be provided with advance reading and will create a small interactive fiction game using the Inform7 Engine.

Erin Hoffman has been working in video games since 1999 on an assortment of genres from massively multiplayer online games to Nintendo DS titles for young audiences to action-RPGs for PC, XBox, and PlayStation2. $20.

I am excited. I've been scattershot working on a design document for an Inform7 game for next year's IFC, and this will be a good opportunity to actually execute on it to have something to show during the workshop as a process example.

thehollowbox and I are also in Gary Braunbeck's masterclass workshop (uberwoot). You should all come and hang out with us! It's a very nice con, excellent staff and programming with a pleasantly small and very friendly population. I had a great time last year and hope to make this a habitual trip along with ReaderCon. Giant cons are not my thing, but these small, well-run ones with great guests are a lot of fun.

In other appearance-type news... I will of course be at GDC next month (Feb 17-24), then in San Diego for the weekend, then back to NY on the 24th for brennye's arrival on the 25th (yay!!). I will be at IMGDC in Minneapolis giving a roundtable on BetterEULA in the end of March, very shortly thereafter in NYC to be on a panel at the Virtual Law Conference April 3-4, likely moving within a few days after getting home from that, and then things should quiet down until skkyechan's wedding in September, closely followed by Context. Said quieting down is of course contingent on thehollowbox and me not moving out to Long Beach during that time, which is possible (and likely even more complicated if we wait until after Context -- hmm).

Whew.