For the past eight years I have been attending a couple of sci-fi/fantasy conventions each year to exhibit in their art shows, run printmaking workshops, do readings from my books, and participate on a wonderful variety of panels about art and writing and fantasy. Like everything else in the past year, business has not been as usual for conventions, and they’ve all had to move on-line. This is a steep learning curve for everyone, and on the whole I’ve been pretty impressed with how hard everyone has worked to come up with some semblance of all the usual activities. Sadly, there is no way that virtual can really capture the buzz and engagement of an in-person event, but I have tried to look for the silver lining: if everything’s on-line anyway, there’s nothing stopping me from attending conventions all over the country. So, what am I up to this winter?
November 20-22: Philcon (based outside of Philadelphia)
Art Show
Art Demo
Broad Universe group reading
January 15-18: Arisia (based in Boston)
Art Show
Reading
Broad Universe group reading
Panel: Mining History’s Neglected Corners
February 4-7: Capricon (based in Chicago)
Speculative Poetry Group Reading
Panel: The Economics of Art
Panel: Twists, Reveals, and Red Herrings in Fiction
Art Demo
Presentation: The Fantastic Bestiary
Reading from On the Virtues of Beasts of the Realms of Imagination
February 12-14: Boskone (based in Boston)
Art Show
Panel: Uncommon Creatures from Fairy Tales
Mythic Poetry Group Reading
Panel: Libraries and Archives in Speculative Fiction
Panel: The Illustrated Book
Panel: Creating Picture Books for Children
Broad Universe group reading - In a rare opportunity, everyone can attend this reading for free without attending Boskone! Details and pre-registration here!
As you can see, that’s two down and two to go for me (plus, there may be another in May, but that’s not confirmed yet). For the two that are coming up in the next two weeks, you might want to consider registering. Whether your interests are books or movies, art or writing, high fantasy, urban horror, Marvel superheroes, hard science, or anime, there’s likely to be something on the schedule that will interest you — and the barrier to attendance is extremely low this year. Conventions are lower cost than usual (or even the option of registering for free) and you don’t even have to leave the comfort of your home to hear amazing writers, artists, and experts in their various fields as they bounce ideas around and discuss a wide variety of topics. (Admittedly, not as wide a variety of topics as usual. All of these cons have had to offer streamlined schedules this year, due to the logistics of virtual time and space.)
As for me, I’ve had to learn Discord, create a custom backdrop and picture-easel-system for Zoom, devise methods of using the cameras on my husband’s old tablet and my daughter’s old laptop as well as my desktop computer, and I’ll be learning Grenadine for Boskone coming up. No doubt it’s good for me to gain some familiarity with all these systems (and I’ve certainly appreciated the tech support from my son!) It’s true that from a sales perspective this virtual stuff just doesn’t cut it, and I don’t expect my art business to rejoin the land of the living until we are once again able to hold in-person shows and sales. Nevertheless, it’s been a lot of fun participating in these opportunities to explore interesting stuff with interesting people and make some connections, and I’m very much looking forward to the upcoming panels, readings, and more. See you there!
2 comments:
For a second I was wondering what the neglected corners of the history of mining were - although come to think of it, you probably could work that into a story or 2...
Absolutely! Abandoned mines can turn out to be overlooked treasure, or supervillain lairs, or entrances to the hollow earth, or portals to fantasy worlds, or alchemist labs, or dragon nests, or... Lots of fantastic possibilities! =)
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