BayCon Report

[Teresa Edgerton]

FRIDAY

I may not be the ideal person to report on this convention: between a fairly full schedule of panels and family obligations in between, I had little time and less energy for exploring the convention and attending other people's panels. But perhaps somebody else who was there can fill in a few of the gaps.

The convention was, in fact, very well attended. Although I, personally, noticed the absence of many familiar faces, by Monday the on-site newsletter reported more than 2000 paid registrations -- not bad for a regional convention with a fixed site!

The Madeline Howard name on my badge was good for a lot of puzzled glances and raised eyebrows from people who already knew me. When one acquaintance of many years, after greeting me effusively, looked at the name tag, her eyes suddenly got very big, and she asked me, "Have I mistaken you for somebody else?"

My first panel, "Adapting the Brothers Grimm," was fairly wide-ranging, as my fellow panelists kept drifting off into such subjects as the Oz books and Buffy the Vampire-Slayer (!?) despite our moderator's attempts to bring the discussion back on topic. The audience members seemed quite keen on the subject of adapted fairy tales, however, and asked many questions, which helped bring the conversation back into focus. (It's often the other way around, with chatty people in the audience introducing most of the tangents.)

After that panel, I was scheduled for a themed reading ("Best Fight Scene") with three other authors. We each read a short excerpt -- two of us had prepared scenes involving battles with dragons, which was a little bit embarrassing -- and then found we had more than half an hour left for question and answer.

Then came the Autograph session, which as I expected was pretty much a wash-out -- Friday afternoon (when most people had yet to arrive) and the autograph table is shoved into a dark corner near some of the smaller function rooms. Fortunately, one of the other authors involved was the charming Mark Kreighbaum, who I hadn't seen in many years, and we spent most of the session catching up. Adrienne Gormley stopped by to join the conversation, and the time went very quickly.

I had dinner with my good friend Jennifer and with my second-oldest daughter Daisy, who (being that I'm her mother) I don't see nearly as often as I would like. The food in the coffee shop was over-priced and not particularly good, but the company was excellent so I don't complain.

After dinner I went home, exhausted, and missed all of the evening events. I really am quite shy about public speaking, and when I do panels I get so keyed up before, during, and after, that I end up feeling like I've spent the afternoon getting acquainted with the rack, the thumb-screws, and the iron maiden. Day One of this convention was no exception.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

SATURDAY

Saturday I only had the one morning panel "The Bathroom: Necessities of World Building." Frankly, I don't remember much about it. As the moderator, I was so busy trying to keep everyone on topic and making sure everyone had a chance to speak, I had very little brain capacity left for responding to what the others panelists said or for forumulating my own brilliant contributions. I do remember that Dave Smeds told how the concept for an entire novel came to him because his heroine had no privacy to perform her natural functions in the desert. And there was some talk of maps, and tools (one of the panelists was an archeologist expert in flint-knapping) and urban settings. Also the differences between worldbuilding for a novel and for a gaming campaign. Otherwise, I'm drawing a blank on the whole experience.

After the panel, Jennifer and I finally had a chance to visit the dealers' room and the art show. My mission was to find a present for my daughter, Megan, whose birthday was that day, but in that respect the dealers were a disappointment. Before the end of the convention I had bought myself three old paperbacks from used-book sellers ( Volkhavaar by Tanith Lee, The Jewel of Seven Stars by Bram Stoker, and The World Invisible by Shulamith Oppenheim) and Jennifer bought several beautiful pieces of jewelery, so there were good things to be had. At the art show, we were particularly struck by some exquisitie pen and watercolor pieces by an artist named Stephanie Pui-Mun Law. There were also some gorgeous woodcarvings and some spectacular oil paintings -- remarkably reasonably priced considering the level of skill and artistry but so far out of my price range that I didn't make a note of the artists' names.

I had been invited to join members of my old writers group for dinner, but needed to leave early that day for the family birthday celebration -- you don't stand-up a daughter who is pregnant with your first grandchildren!

SUNDAY

Sunday was my busy day, since I was assigned to three panels. BayCon schedules panels in one-hour-and-thirty-minute time slots, with the expectation that most will adjourn about fifteen minutes early so that people can get in and out of the room and on to their next event. Even my rudimentary math skills yield a total, then, of three hours and forty-five minutes in which I was expected to be on public display and promote my book.

The first panel was "Moon: Mysticism, Magic, Fact, and Lore." My two co-panelists (one of whom was a strikingly flamboyant lady in a flowing green gown, green hair, and green face paint) were both practicing neo-pagans, so there was much discussion of ritual and symbolism. We had been talking for some time about how the moon (initially associated with various ancient gods) had come to be a feminine symbol, and is invariably treated as such in pagan rituals today, when I looked around the room and realized that the entire audience (about twenty people) was female! (Near the end of the panel, one man ventured into the room, but otherwise it was all women the whole time.)

My second panel was "Beyond Harry Potter," but even though I was moderating again I had made up my mind to enjoy myself and take a more active part than I had the day before. The other panelists and all the audience members (only two of whom were, chronologically speaking, children) were all quite keen on the subject of YA fantasy, so we had a lively discussion, exchanging the titles of many, many favorite books and series along the way. I had the pleasure of meeting author and illustrator Betsy James (with whom there should be an interview here on the site sometime later this summer). Things became a little tense near the end of the panel when someone in the audience asked what we thought about "hack work" and series books that come out at the rate of one every three months or so -- since one of our panelists had been writing for two such series, and was justifiably proud of her ability to turn out a revision in 72 hours.

The third panel was "Symbolism of Animals in Fantasy." We had an excellent moderator in Deborah Ross, and as I remember it stuck close to the topic the whole time. There was much discussion of dragons, horses, cats, and wolves. One thing I remember talking about was the way fantasy readers and writers admire creatures like dragons and wolves for their wildness, yet seem to particularly enjoy stories that domesticate them into friends and loyal companions for the hero or heroine. We also discussed pigs (yes, pigs) at one point. At the end, we all agreed that readers get more upset by the deaths of animals in stories than they do by the wholesale slaughter of human characters (even children).

 

[Brian G Turner]

Thanks for the report on how it went.

 

[Winters_Sorrow]

Sound like fun (in an exhausting way).

Have you been to BayCon before Teresa, or was this your first convention experience (at least from the professional side of the fence! )

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

It was my first time there as Madeline Howard, W_S -- my coming out party, as you might say.

But appearing as myself I used to be quite a fixture at BayCon. Which I suppose is the reason they had me moderating so many panels. Unfortunately, for health reasons and because of the whole secrecy thing, I hadn't been to a convention in two or three years, and so the whole speaking in public thing was a little nerve-wracking.

However, I haven't described the events of Monday, yet. I can sum them up pretty quickly.

MONDAY

That was the day of the "Language Building" panel. I had volunteered for that one because it seemed like a good opportunity to speak about the language I had invented for The Hidden Stars. But after they sent me the revised schedule and I saw that I was moderating, I had second thoughts, being afraid that all the other panelists would be experts in xeno-linguistics, and that I would be totally lost from the outset.

I looked up some online linguistic resources before the convention, and crammed as much information as I could into my brain, in the hopes that I would at least be able to follow the conversation, if not take an active part. It turned out that only one of the other people was particularly interested in xeno-linguistics, however, and the discussion mainly centered around language in general, particularly in fantasy writing: keeping the dialogue appropriate to the time and place, language as a key to culture, status, etc. We did talk a little bit about invented languages, but nothing terribly technical. So it turned out to be fun and easy to participate after all -- though I do regret missing the opportunity to put terms like "agglutinated affixes" and "reduplicated nouns" to use.

 

[j d worthington]

Teresa, it might be helpful if you could share some of the thoughts on language as an indicator of character and/or milieu. That could benefit anyone working on setting up their worlds, I would think. (May be a chance to use those phrases after all...)

And thanks for the report. Wish I could have gone....

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Teresa, it might be helpful if you could share some of the thoughts on language as an indicator of character and/or milieu. That could benefit anyone working on setting up their worlds, I would think.

Oh, you might not want to get me started on that particular topic, j. d. I could hold forth for a long, long time, it being a pet subject of mine. Although on the panel it was actually Madeleine Robins who brought the subject up (she stole my rant!).

 

[j d worthington]

Oh, you might not want to get me started on that particular topic, j. d. I could hold forth for a long, long time, it being a pet subject of mine. Although on the panel it was actually Madeleine Robins who brought the subject up (she stole my rant!).

Now, that's not good (especially when you have one all worked up; leaves you with that nasty deflated feeling....)

Well, as you think best; though I usually find such things fascinating (I find language itself fascinating, love tracing etymological roots as far back as possible, that sort of thing, seeing the different shades of meaning as we go -- the idea that language and history are inextricably intertwined). I'll keep an eye out, just in case.