Addenda
Reading Heather's and Tim's WisCon reports reminds me of a few items I neglected to mention:
- By the time I got to the hotel on Thursday night, I hadn't eaten in over 8 hours. I realize this was not a good idea. I had almost convinced myself to eat something at the Denver airport despite not being hungry, but just then ran into Cynthia Gonsalves (I think she's the only person I know (besides me) who attends both Consonance (Bay Area filk con) and WisCon) and a friend of hers whose name I'm blanking on, and got distracted and neglected to eat. So anyway, there I was, meal-less in Madison, trying to figure out where and when the reading was. Mary Anne called on my cell phone (have I mentioned how incredibly useful it is to have a cell phone? Despite the times when I don't have sufficient signal strength to make or receive calls, having the phone has improved my life in the same kinds of ways that having a Palm has done) and told me where to find her; I ended up walking up and down State Street for half an hour or so, getting increasingly desperate for food, 'til Mary Anne came out onto the street and guided me back to Angelic (a brewpub), where she was sitting with some Ratbastards and Shannon. Barth and Shannon earned my eternal gratitude for providing me with, respectively, two mozzarella sticks and a soft breadstick, to eat while waiting for dinner to arrive. Apparently we just missed Karen and Susan, who'd been at the reading across the street at A Room of One's Own but had headed back to Karen's place afterward. Luckily, they came back out to the hotel to hang out with us that night.
- Both Tim and Heather mentioned eating with me and Mary Anne and Candas Jane Dorsey, but failed to mention the other person at that dinner. This is understandable, as the world at large has yet to be exposed to the brilliance of my Clarion classmate PJ, who was the other diner in question, but I thought I should set the record straight. Hey, PJ, go write a best-selling novel so everyone will know who you are!
- I definitely agree with Tim that the high point of the opening ceremony was Nalo in a fabulous Midnight Robber outfit (including an utterly fabulous hat). I didn't get to see Nalo nearly enough over the course of the weekend. (In that skit, I also enjoyed seeing Ellen Klages in her Space Babe outfit.)
- I neglected to mention going to the late-night panel on literary sf, and getting over my jealousy about not being on the panel by sitting in the front row and raising my hand a lot. I suspect I was unintentionally rude to the moderator, though. : (
- There was a conversation somewhere in there about 'zines and chapbooks and small presses. It seems to me that they're proliferating; apparently Gavin did a panel last year in which he encouraged people to go forth and publish, and they're doing it. But it's possible that this stuff's been out there all along and I just wasn't clued in. Anyway, I think it's cool and remarkable that this stuff is not just being done but is getting attention. For example, Terri Windling looks at all sorts of tiny-press stuff for Year's Best Fantasy and Horror (I think Ellen D does too, but I pay less attention to the horror side). Lady Churchill's is the epitome of what I'm talking about, with things like Ellen K's story published there getting a Nebula nomination a couple years back, and Tim's story published there being reprinted in this year's YBF&H. Also the phenomenal success of Kelly Link's Stranger Things Happen, getting all sorts of mainstream literary attention despite being from a small press. I notice this in particular with Interzone reviews that treat small-press books just like big-publisher books, with no indication that a given book was published by two people out of their living room. (This may be egalitarianism, but I think more likely in most cases the reviewer just doesn't know the book's provenance if it looks professional enough, which is as it should be.)
Okay, I've reached the rambling portion of this entry, so I'll go edit now.