Al Bogdan

Jim Hines (jimhines ), Merrie Haskell (fairmer ), and I were hanging out at ConClave 34 last weekend talking. Jim had a reading in an hour and then had to leave. I suggested we do a quick interview! Appropriate jokes were made as I escorted them back to my room to be videoed. Light shades off hotel room lamps, one high atop a table I placed on the bed, the camera precariously balanced since I didn't have a proper tripod with me, and "Action!" Merrie and Jim interviewed each other.

Cryptic ConFusion was a blast! It was the busiest I've been at a convention in a long time. Was always rushing from one event to the next, especially since I was appearing on three.

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As I mentioned, I've been signed up to do panels at ConFusion. The first panel, the one about "Writers Of The Future" at 9pm Friday, is taking place at the same time as Grogg Tasting and the Dessert Reception! Our room is going to be totally empty! Who's going to give up grogg and chocolate?! So, I highly suggest some of you prepare ways to sneak out with food and drink and cross over to our room to enjoy them! The second panel, about Clarion and Other Writing Workshops at 10pm, is up against the Sex In SF panel! I don't think you should  bring anything back with you from that one.

I've also been asked to attend the autograph session. I'm going to be sitting there looking really silly by myself, since I don't think any books will even be available even if someone wanted a sig. Luckily, Phil Kaldon will be there to keep me company, but if you're bored around 5pm on Saturday do come hang out while we watch the big-time pros do their thing.

Probably off to Priya for dinner after.

I'll be attending Cryptic ConFusion this weekend (January 23-25 2009) at the Detroit-Troy Marriot.

Guests of Honor:

* Cat Rambo — Pro Guest of Honor
* Cory Doctorow — Cryptic Guest of Honor
* Diana Harlan Stein — Artist Guest of Honor
* Elizabeth Turtle — Scientist Guest of Honor
* Ralph D. Lorenz — Scientist Guest of Honor
* Davroz (David Rozian) — Raconteur of Honor
* Freon (Michael Andaluz) — Fan Guest of Honor

There will be plenty of writers there: Cory Doctorow, Cat Rambo, Tobias Buckell, Karl Schroeder, Kelly Armstrong, Jim Hines, Paul Melko, Ann Harris, Philip Edward Kaldon (my Clarion and WOTF compatriot!), Marrie Haskell, Doselle Young, William Jones, Steve Buchheit, Violette Malan, Catherine Shaffer, Steven Harper Piziks, and more... plus editor Jim Frenkel.

I was signed up for two panels on Friday night. At 9pm we discuss "The Writers Of The Future" experience, which will also have Jim Hines and Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon with me. At 10pm we discuss the Clarion Writers Workshop with Cory Doctorow, Cat Rambo, Tobias Buckell and Melody Barker.

You'll find Larc and Coral in the KidFusion events, which are, as you might guess, things for kids to do at the con. Larc is working Kidfusion, as she has for the past few years, so this week Larc and I will be creating and printing up games, puzzles, and other things for the kids to do.

ConFusion will have a number of scientists who will be giving presentations. There will be lots of gaming, art demonstrations, filk, two dances, costuming, a masquerade, media discussions, room partist, etc.. so plenty to keep people with all kinds of interests (as long as they also love SF and fantasy) busy.

Hope to see some of you there!

Here's a quick report on last weeks activities, especially the people I ran into in Denver.

We arrived at Denvention (WORLDCON!) through a Stargate. Coral kept jumping from world to world until she came upon the giant robots. She'd seen enough Dr. Who to know to always hold mom and dad's hand when there are giant robots about. Smart kid.

Actually, we knew it was going to be a good con when we ran into Connie Willis, Nancy Kress and Charles N. Brown the moment we stepped out of the hotel. It was nice to say "Hi" to Connie and Nancy. Nancy was one of my Clarion Writer's Workshop instructors back in 2004.

While waiting in line to get our memberships I discovered Scott Edelman was right behind us. We had a great time joking about the length of the line, which they continuously kept splitting even though it never seemed to get shorter. Made the wait quite fun. I've seen Scott at convention in the past, but this was the first time we had the pleasure of conversing.

I also spotted Clarion classmate Amelia Beamer and ran over to say hello.

Chris Kastensmidt and I are friends from back when I was on the Online Writer's Workshop. Great guy. Came all the way in from Brazil where he does computer game development and ports. He's also sold a number of fantasy stories. We hung out a bunch, and enjoyed a great party full of writers at his suite. Hey, post a list of where people can read your stuff, Chris!

Tracy Morganfield (right) is also from on-line. She writes these wonderful Aztec stories and has had a few stories in Paradox. Chris, Tracy and I did a lot of party hopping.

Jeremy Tolbert was there with his wife, Sarah. Jeremy is always great to hang out with. We also did the party hopping. We decided one of the main reasons for a SFWA membership was easy access to their parties as well.If you haven't hit his Roundbottom website do yourself the favor of dropping by. Also, note that he's thinking of bringing back The Fortean Bureau!

Daniel Ausema attending his first Worldcon.

Coral the Adorable the super hero pricncess! Ignore the floppy sword...

Havn't seen John Joseph Adams since Readercon last year, so it was cool to catch up John in both the dealers room and the Seeds Of Change party.

I also had a chance to meet some of my "Writers Of The Future" contestants and judges. This is the lovely and talented Erin Cashier. I also saw Ian McHugh from Australia (1st place for my quarter) and Rob Sawyer who was one of my judges.

Jo Walton alerted me to the fact that Karl Schroeder wasn't in attendance because of surgery. Hope you're doing well, Karl and we can get our families together at the next con!

Enjoyed a reading by Sean Willaims who was a judge for some of the other quarters.

Talked a bit with Samantha Henderson at the Weird Tales party.

And caught up with our friend Kim once she was done actually working at the con. Kims a really good writer as well.

Here I am with Rebecca Rowe, another of my Clarion 2004 classmates.

This is how Coral spent much of her time. Running with Shamus and the other kids.

I had fun with Lucy Schmeidler because her badge said she was from Flushing NY, but I knew better! She definitely had a Bronx accent. She sounded just like my grandma Schachinger from the Bronx, not grandma Bogdan who lived in Flushing.

Erin Evans did a great panel on working with placsticine and resins. I got some good tips, which I'll use next time I do a sculpted puppet.

Wil McCarthy did a great job hosting both the costume contest and the Hugo awards. I'm sure if you're interested you know the scores.

I also attended some panels, but they're a blur now, like the entire event. It was a ton of fun and I stayed up way too late each night.

Our vacation budget is spent for this year, otherwise we'd be in the car driving out East to Readercon. If you're going, have a blast!

For those of you attending Wordcon, Larc alerted me to this rather useful map of the area: http://www.communitywalk.com/Denvention3

We had a blast at ConFusion 2008 this year. One of the things I love about this convention is the balance between just-for-fun fannish activities and the writer/reader intellectual (and often hilarious) discussions. Everyone enjoys it: pros, gamers, costumers, pirates, etc. It's a good energy.



Scott Westerfeld and Justine Larbalestier were the writer guests of honor this year. Good people. Caught them on numerous panels. You didn't have to be a YA reader to want to hang out and listen to these two.



John Scalzi was the Toastmaster. John's a lot of fun and did a masterful job at keeping things entertaining. (He left the blog, cat, and bacon at home, but brought plenty of wit and smarts.)



Of course, during the constant Pirate attacks, John did spend a lot of time quivering in the corner and crying.



Luckily we know Ann Harris (ABOVE, and yes, she's just happy to see you), and renniekins, so I wasn't flogged too badly, though a few other people did rather enjoy the experience and came back for more. Unluckily, one of my buddies enjoyed the rum one sip too many. {he he... it's not funny... he he...} Hope you're feeling better, Drew!



Hung out with my Clarion 2004 buddy, Dr Phil Kaldon (dr_phil_physics), quite a bit. Did I mention we'll both be in the next "Writer's Of The Future" anthology together? I did? Oh, I am so forgetful... hope I don't accidentally mention it again.

Had a great time talking with writer Carl Schroeder and his wife and daughter at breakfast Saturday. I hope you've experienced some of Carl's amazing worlds. We both have three in the family and paired off for conversation and a really fun start to the morning.

Coral and Larc spent much of their time in the kids activities, then crashed when Coral became overstimulated, but I had a great time hanging out with many people and stayed up way too late Saturday night hitting parties with my buds Drew, Pippa, Eric, Giles, and Rick Lieder. There were a ton of parties!

Saw Tobias Buckell and his lovely writerswife. This guy was busy! Saw him on panels more than off. Talked briefly (meaning not enough) with other busy writers like jimhines,  paulmelko Mike Resnick, Kathe Koja, among others. A number of editors were in attendance as well, which I really like to see.

Oh, and a special moment seeing one of my writing mentors from my very first writing group. It was good to see Ted Reynolds again. Hang in there my friend. See you again.

Talked to too many people to mention everyone, (HI again tshaile,  kgkofmel, jeffreyab) and realized I sort-of missed actually chatting with a few people (Like drzarron), but a shout-out to all of you who were there!!!

All in all, a great time.

Gordon Van Gelder won the Hugo, and his daughter Zoe will be extra happy with the design this year!

Congratulations to all the nominees, along with the final winners.

Over the weekend we drove down to Ohio for Marcon. This is a good SF convention for our family because it includes both literature and TV/Film content, so everyone is entertained in various ways. There was also children's programming for Coral. Plus, Sandra and crew in the consuite are always wonderfully supportive to people with special diets, so there was plenty of gluten-free food upon request. There were some film making and fiberglass forming panels that were tempting, but I avoided them because I was afraid I would get inspired to play around, which could distract me from my current project deadlines. So, I stuck to the writing panels.

I'm never sure if attending writing panels will be of use to me these days. Sometime I walk out having gained nothing new, as I've allowed myself to be quite the hard working student over the years and have heard all the "rules" that get bantered around many times over. Yet, there were actually some interesting points made by some of the pros at this con.

Here are two examples of things I found interesting:

Tobias Buckell had an interesting observation. He noticed that over the same period of time he and a friend both sold the same number of stories. He did it by writing 120 stories and selling 30 of them, abandoning 80 to the trunk (he's still submitting 10 around if you're doing the math.) His friend sold his 30 by meticulously reworking each story he wrote in many passes until they sold. Both methods turned out the same number of sales over the same period of time.

Wen Spencer noted that she couldn't make herself write short stories, so she wrote and sold only novels (until she was eventually talked into writing something for an anthology). She also mentioned using giant sheets of paper to draw plot diagrams to look for logic flaws in a story idea. This is something I like to do as well when the plot is complex.

We also saw a number of old friends and acquaintances at the con. Coral was constantly engaged by costumes, kids, and attention. It turned out to be an enjoyable weekend.

We spent the weekend having a wonderful time in Troy, Michigan.

Howard Waldrop, Karl Schroeder, John Scalzi, Tobias Buckell, Jim Frenkel, Ann Harris, Sarah Zettel, Jim Hines, Elizabeth Moon -- talk about some great writing panels! Plus plenty of shop talk with my old Clarion classmate, Dr. Phil Kaldon.

We feasted well, doing Middle Eastern and Indian with our buds from Toronto: Ian, Drew, Pippa and their friend Erik (who was attending his first convention and seemed to have a great time as well.) I actually had some good conversations with many people I'd never met before, along with catching up with dozens of friends. The attendance was very good, with both old-timers and new blood.

Everything about the convention was well run. The consuite was well stocked, including hard cider on tap so Mr. Gluten-Free could join the beer drinkers late in the evening. There was so much good programming I couldn't go to everything worth attending. The room parties were fun and the pirates plentiful.

To top it off, the kids programming was nicely done, keeping little Coral busy and offering her many young-ones to play with. Larc also saw many of her friends from both meat-space and on-line and she had fun helping with the children's programming. So, we all had a great time.