kcball

The last few days, I’ve been processing the experience of participating at Rustycon as an attending professional. Here are some thoughts:

* I sat on six panels — one on Friday and five on Saturday — and had a scheduled reading Sunday morning at 10:00 a.m. Preparing for it all felt a bit like work, which I suppose it is.

* Four of the panels were a hoot — they were well attended, there was lots of questions and audience participation and the other panelists were fun and challenging to talk to. My favorite was the Friday night session on getting published. My fellow panelist — John Hedtke — writes technical non-fiction and has published 26 books. It was a spirited and funny sixty minutes.

* Two of the panels — I won’t say which two — were not so much fun. One in particular was painful. in the first minutes, a woman in the audience asked a question about research and then would not let anyone on the panel provide a complete answer. She kept talking, interrupting, wouldn’t let anyone else in the audience get in a coherent word, and there was no polite way we could shut her up. After a time, people began leaving. Some of the other panel members looked as if they wished they could leave. I know I wanted to.

* My tight schedule didn’t give me a lot of time to wander around and see what else was being offered. I did get a chance late Saturday to chat awhile with Michael Ehart, who was also there as an attending pro. The more I get a chance to talk with him, the more I like him. I think Michael is as serious as I am about making this writing thing work. I wish him much luck and hope I keep running into him.

* Since Rustycon was here in Seattle, I commuted from home — 12 miles each way. I suspect I missed out on a lot of the convention color by not staying at the hotel — the Airport Marriott. I’m planning on attending two more SF conventions in Seattle this spring — Potlatch in March and Norwescon in April. The folks at Norwescon have already invited me to participate as an attending professional. If I can afford it, I hope to stay the weekend at the host hotels.

* Sunday morning was a disappointment. I had decided to read Flotsam, my story that will appear in Analog sometime this year. I prepped hard for that thirty-minute session. Rehearsed reading the story, promoted it as much as I could during my panels and handed out business cards and flyers to people I bumped into between panel sessions. I was pumped for it. Nobody showed up. I understand that I have to build an audience, that people will come to appreciate my work if it’s supposed to be. Even so, it was difficult to sit there in that empty room and wait.

* I need to call upon my training and experience in marketing. I hadn’t really considered that before attending Orycon in November. The people who attend SF conventions, and show up for the panels on the writing track, are my target audience. I’m offering them a product — me and my stories. I can’t expect them to buy that product if I don’t promote it.

It's 60 degrees Fahrenheit in Miami, at this moment.

That's also the official temperature a bit further down the Overseas Highway, in Key West, where I used to flip-flop around outside. At this moment, here in Seattle, the temperature is 56.

And it's only January 19th.

It's been a particularly good winter here, at least as far as I'm concerned. Oh, it did get a bit cold for a week or two, and I saw a lot of Seattle folks bundled up, heard them complaining.

But for someone who grew up in northeast Ohio, right at the edge of something that is called the snow belt, I think this is glorious; makes me think about packing a picnic and heading for the beach (which is just around the corner and down Fauntleroy a ways at Lincoln Park).

But the thin-blooded whiners who were upset about the brief cold snap aren't the only ones complaining about the weather, here in the Pacific Northwest.

The people in Vancouver, British Columbia, who are organizing the 2010 Winter Olympics, are bitching, too, but for another reason.

They're wondering if they're going to have enough snow.

As my grandfather Warwick used to say, it's raining pitchforks and ponytails up there and not a flake of snow in sight on Cypress Mountain, thirty minutes north of downtown Vancouver, where three ski events and three snowboard events are scheduled.

And it seems the Olympics staff can't make artificial snow, either, because the water in their snow cannons won't freeze in the warm air.

Of course, they do have snow stockpiled for such an occasion, both artificial and nature versions of the stuff. And they're keeping the stockpiles covered, so all the rain won't melt it. But they're still worried.

I would be, too, if I were in the Olympics business. But I'm not, so I'm loving all the shirt-sleeves weather here in Washington State.

And I'm wondering if the folks running the Olympics have considered installing in-line wheels on the bottoms of the skis and snowboards. Just a thought, you know?

Next weekend, I’ll be at Rustycon — the science fiction convention held here in Seattle — and as more than one of the crowd.

The Rustycon folks were kind enough to invite me to participate as an attending professional. And so, I will be appearing in six panel discussions — moderating one of them — and reading some of my work.

I’m looking forward to it.

I have a new acquaintance to thank for the connection; two new acquaintances, actually. I’ve come to think of them as my Amtrak friends.

I met Fred and Johanna McLain on the train to Portland at the end of November, on the way to Orycon. They were across the aisle, we struck up a conversation when Fred asked me about a book I was reading, and it turned out that they were on their way to Orycon, too.

Fred’s been active in the Pacific Northwest science convention scene for years and he seems to know everybody. And he mentioned me to some of them. And that lead to an invitation to Rustycon.

Thank you, Fred. New friends are a joy of discovery.

Anyway, I’ve got one panel Friday night, five on Saturday, on everything from world-building to sex scenes in science fiction. They’re spread throughout the day so I’ll be hopping. And I will present a thirty-minute reading Sunday morning at 10:00 a.m.

If you’re going to be at Rustycon, come introduce yourself; I’d love to say hello and talk writing for a bit.

And stop by to hear me read, if you can. My voice echoes something awful in an empty room.

Hey! Today's a palindrome.

01/02/2010.

Last time that that happened was 03/31/1330, but it will happen again next year, too. 11/02/2011.

I've been sitting here for the past twenty minutes trying to figure out how the first decade of the twenty-first century has slipped away without my noticing. It sort of came and went while I was blinking, I suppose. Talk about time traveling.

I have always been fascinated by time travel stories and it has occurred to me, more and more in recent months, that I am riding a time machine right now. It's too bad that it only travels in one direction -- forward -- and that it's stuck at a 1:1 gear ratio.

I will be sixty-three in three weeks and I have begun to think that it might be nice to retire. For me that means quiting work, because there is no pension plan to support me in my senior years, other than Social Security.

Poor planning on my part, but forty years ago I honestly didn't expect to live this long. These days, I can't help but imagine that it would also be nice to stick around for another twenty or thirty years.

A lot of people my age are thinking the same thing.

I'm at the leading edge of the post-war Baby Boom (that's World War 2, for those of you under forty-five). There are a lot of us and we have been a national economic stressor from birth.

Not enough hospital beds for all the mothers. Not enough kindergartens, elementary schools, high schools and college dormitory rooms. Not enough apartments and houses. We even had our very own, expensive failure of a war.

Now that we are all turning into geezers, it's made the federal government nervous. Maybe there won't be enough retirement communities or -- God forbid -- enough money to shell out Social Security benefits.

Last year, on my birthday, I received a notice for the Social Security Administration that sounded desperate.

"You are now eligible to collect SSI benefits," it read. "However, if you choose to do so at this time, the amount you receive each month (it listed a figure) will be substantially less than if you wait until you reach authorized retirement age (it listed another, larger figure)."

It sounds to me like they are worried that if all of us Boomers pull the plug at the same time, the federal coffers will be drained.

I like to think I'm a team player, so I've waited. And I expect I'll go on waiting until age sixty-seven, which is the "authorized retirement age" now. It used to be sixty-five; who knows what it will be in four more years. And even if it doesn't change, I don't see any way I can survive on SSI benefits alone; even the "substantially"larger amount.

So I suppose I'll rely on my fall-back plan.

One day at work, I'll sit up straight at my desk, eyes wide and mouth open, clawing at my chest, and fall back into my ergonomic chair. Going once, going twice and dead.

Hey! I didn't say it was a good fall-back plan.

Rachael and I saw Avatar Sunday on the big IMAX screen at Pacific Science Center. I was blown away.

It's true what all the naysayers have said about the plot. It's pedestrian. But then what plot isn't? Two of the best science fiction movies of all time -- Alien and Aliens -- had pedestrian plots. Alien makes use of the oft-told haunted house plot. And what is Aliens but out-numbered troops making a last stand at the fort?

But never mind all that. The visuals in Avatar are incredible. Everything that those of us who read science fiction have waited for is there. Technology that makes sense and is a logical extension of what we know today. An alien world laid out for us to ooh and aah over. And aliens that Edgar Rice Burroughs would have loved.

I know its fun to bash James Cameron, but I have to say that I think he nailed this one. Avatar may not be the best damn science fiction movie ever to be made, but it will do until the better comes along.

There's an interesting meme making the rounds just now.

It calls for a list of every city in which you've spent at least one night (other than home) during 2009. You're supposed to mark each one with an asterisk in which you spent more than one non-consecutive night.

Here's mine:

Vancouver, BC
Lawrence, Ks
Kansas City, Mo
Atlanta, GA
Columbus, OH
Portland, OR

Too many nights away from home, and I hardly ever travel.

How about you?