The trip to Minneapolis went pretty smoothly. The rain stopped outside of College Station, started again in Conroe but didn't last long, and I got to the airport in plenty of time. The flight was fine and mezzibelle found me at the baggage claim immediately, found chrisjournal who had also just gotten in, and went to the hotel.

( the chemical plant fire )

The con was awesome, ran very smoothly and was very well organized and everybody I talked to was having a fantastic time. The con suite was very well stocked with real food (sandwiches! Fruit! Potatoes and sausage and eggs for breakfast! These things are important for people who have been talking about writing for hours and also may have hangovers.)

WriterCon is focused on fanfiction as literature and writing workshops, seminars, panels on writing, etc.

( Program: Writing as a Career Choice )

( Program: Inner Lives: Discovering Story Through Exploring Character )

( Panel: Cage Match: Science vs. Magic )

I really want to thank the whole con committee for having me there. It was a wonderful con and I had a fantastic time!

writercon (which is coming up July 31-August 2 in Minneapolis, Minnesota) posted a Q&A with me here.

For more info on the con, their web site is WriterCon.

The other cons I'll be at this year:

June 26-28, 2009. ApolloCon 2009, in Houston, Texas.

August 14-16, 2009. ArmadilloCon 31, in Austin, Texas.

I really wish I could afford to do World Fantasy this year, but that's not going to happen.

I got some good news the other day: I've been invited to be a guest at WriterCon. It's July 31-August 2, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Above all else, Writercon is a gathering of writers, poets, editors, and fans of writers, poets, and editors. Some will come to learn how to write better fan fiction, some will come to learn about how to make the leap from fan fiction to original fiction, some will come just to gab with fellow neuroticswriters for hours on end. Yay!


Cat update: I bought Harry one of those kitty drinking fountains on Tuesday and he's actually been using it. That's good, because we separated him from the other cats when we left for the weekend (his anger issues were getting a little out of control) and our friend who was petsitting didn't think he drank much while we were gone.


More new books out this week: Deader Still by Anton Strout and Spell Games by T.A. Pratt.

Oh, someone had asked me about this in email, so I wanted to point out that there is Ile-Rien fanfic: there's a fan-run LJ community ilerien and there's some in this archive here. (My policy on fanfic is that I can't say that I'll read it, but I'm totally cool with it and I think it's a fantastic compliment when people do it.)

shalanna had a couple of questions: Does the current downturn scare you?

It scares the absolute hell out of me.

Should it scare the unpublished? ... I suppose I'm just wondering whether it's a pipe dream to continue to send this stuff out to agents. Especially if there's going to be a larger downturn in which even FEWER books are actually sold. Maybe I'd be better off trying to find my real mission in life.

I think it's going to scare people, and whether it should or not is probably not something we're going to know until the next year or so, when it either gets better or gets worse. But I do think you should keep writing, and keep sending stuff out, if that's what you still want to do.

This is a tangent, but I also just don't believe people should stop writing just because they think the chances of being published aren't great. Lots of people write original stories or fanfic just for the hell of it with no thought of being published, or only publishing it on fan web sites or comms, and get a huge amount of enjoyment out of it. All through history, in every culture that has writing, people have written novels, stories, memoirs, plays, journals, solely for themselves. The idea that it is somehow a bad thing to write when you don't think it can be published is a very recent thing, and it is crazy wrong. Crazy, crazy wrong.

If you come to feel that you, personally, can't keep submitting your work because the rejection is hurting you too much, that's your call, and I, personally, would totally understand having to make that decision. But I don't think you should stop because of the crappy economy or the publishing downturn, or let any outside influence make that decision for you.


If anyone has a question about writing, my writing or just writing and/or publishing topics in general, comment with it here and I'll try to answer it.

For once, here's a real con report.

Like I said, we had a fabulous time. ( cake, swashbuckling, worldbuilding, writing, fanfic, and drinking )

ETA Links to other ArmadilloCon reports:

Jessica Reisman
Eric Marin
Patrice Sarath here and here
John Picacio has photos.
John Scalzi's write-up on Whatever.
atcampbell's report here.
Bill Crider

A few other things I meant to mention:


- Book rec: I saw Cassandra Chan's mysteries mentioned on arcaedia's LJ, and went and bought the first one, The Young Widow. I really enjoyed it. It's set in the contemporary UK, but does have a very Peter Wimsey/Dorothy Sayers feel, with a Scotland Yard detective and his rich dilettante friend, Phillip Bethancourt, solving mysteries. It was a very good read and didn't end at all like I expected it to. I've ordered the next two, since the local store didn't have them. Hopefully they'll get here by this weekend.


- Something else I did in court: helped older ladies turn off their cell phones. Apparently their families were big on insisting they have one but not so much with the follow-up of how to use it.


- a couple of links for Ile-Rien fans: ilerien a comm for Ile-Rien fanfic, fanart, discussion, etc. I don't read it, and it's completely fan-run. And Ile-Rien on Wikipedia. Again, this is completely a fan project.


- And Black Gate #12 should be out soon, with "Houses of the Dead," another Giliead and Ilias prequel story.

From naominovik's LJ: Our shiny new website, written and revised and designed and built by the work of a great many incredibly talented fans, says it all better and in more detail than I can, but here's the basics: the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) is a nonprofit organization established by fans to serve the interests of fans by providing access to and preserving the history of fanworks and fanculture in its myriad forms. I myself have been and am a fan long before I am a pro, and the community of fan creators in particular is really in many ways my home. I believe deeply that transformative work enriches both those who do it and those who inspire it, and I am so very excited about this project.

This is a fantastic project, and I'm very glad to see it underway. The information site is:

The Organization for Transformative Works

Mediawest is this weekend, and I hope everybody who's going has a fantastic time. I used to go, and still miss it, though I'm having good friends come to visit this next week and we're going to have a huge amount of fun.

In light of that, here's a link to Cory Doctorow's article in Locus: In Praise of Fanfic:

Our field is incredibly privileged to have such an active fanfic writing practice. Let's stop treating them like thieves and start treating them like honored guests at a table that we laid just for them.

Hey, dragonlady7 did a great review of the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy (The Wizard Hunters, The Ships of Air, and The Gate of Gods) here. I thought she did a really good job of discussing all three books while avoiding spoilers.

In the comments, she asked about fanfic, and my feeling is: I can't say that I'll read it, but I'm enormously flattered whenever anyone does it. Putting that much work into something, because you enjoyed what I did, I take as a wonderful compliment.

I'm on the second to last chapter of The Element of Fire revision, and it's really struck me how much off-camera sex is in that book. Yes, it's modeled loosely on Louis XIII's court, but wow. It's been funny doing the revision, because I literally haven't looked at it in years, since I wrote The Death of the Necromancer (set in the same city but a bit over 200 years later) and there are sections of it and subplots I didn't remember at all.

Oh, meant to mention, Element had twenty chapters total and I've posted up to fourteen.

jonquil has a great post here, on the most recent fanfiction plagiarism issue. She says it better than I would, and I'm really getting way too tired of people using this issue as an excuse to bash fanfiction to be at all rational on this point.

My policy on fanfiction for my novels has always been: I can't say that I'll read it, but I'm enormously flattered whenever anyone does it. Putting that much work into something, because you enjoyed what I did, I take as a wonderful compliment.


***


I'm really busy finishing up the SGA book this week (or trying to, cross your fingers) and getting ready to leave for WorldCon on Sunday, so I'm not going to be around LJ much if at all. I'll try to do some catch up once I get back. And again, I wasn't given any programming slots at WorldCon, so most people probably aren't going to be able to catch me there unless by pure luck. I will be signing stock in the dealer's room.

Also, wanted to remind people about BenBella Books' Smart POP series. I'm in two of them, Farscape Forever (my article is "Don't Make Me Tongue You") and Mapping the World of Harry Potter.

And I am still going to put The Element of Fire online, probably starting in October, hopefully. City of Bones and The Death of the Necromancer are also out of print, but I'm not sure what I'm going to do about them yet.

Oh, and good news for once, Eric Marin just let me know that there's a nice review up of Wolf Night at Tangent Online.

ETA: wow, I screwed up that HTML. Should be fixed now.