Caught the red eye flight back from Perth, a thoroughly uncomfortable experience for some reason — usually I don’t mind flying but this time everything seemed ridiculously cramped. I drifted in and out of sleep — or at least I think I did. Rob did much the same at the wheel while driving us back down the ‘Gong. Not so good but luckily we made it.
The weather sunnied up just long enough to convince me to slam on a couple of loads of washing. The sky is now cloud grey and the dryer’s convulsive death rattle is scaring the crap out of the cats. Ah well, you win some you lose some, as they say.
Swancon 36 was an utter blast. Best con in ages. Possibly even the best con I’ve ever been to. A mellow vibe, so many of my favourite people in the same place at the same time. Here I am pictured with fellow members of the gentlemen’s Entymology club discussing, amongst other things, the perils of lady Sparrowhawke’s water feature and poor old Walmsley Walmsly Walmsly’s inextricable gout:
That creature I’m holding is the extremely rare feather arsed stag beetle, procured on a recent expedition somewhere up the side of Alan Quartermain’s lost plateau.
Sean Williams and Glenda Larke
Managed a long walk around the lake with Rob one morning, Tai Chi lessons from Alan Baxter on another, which gives you an idea of how mercifully hangover free I managed to remain across the bulk of the five days. Met some cool new people including the smart and charming GOH Justina Robson pictured below:
and went home with a shiny bright blue Ditmar, tying with Kirstyn McDermott for best short story.
Jason Nahrung & Kirstyn McDermott
Hope y’all had a passable weekend too. More photos
here.
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This post is aimed squarely at folks who like going to conventions as much as I do. Such get-togethers are facilitated by people who work behind the scenes doing all the tedious admin and organizational stuff. Me? I just rock up, hang out and spend hours mouthing off, both in the bar and on panels. I take my hat off to the good folks who donate their own precious time to enrich the community as a whole.
Grant Watson, aka , screenwriter, playwright, SF fan, and tireless convention organiser, is one of those people. He moved to Melbourne a while ago. Now he can’t afford to get back to Perth in 2011 for Swancon 36, the 50th Natcon. One of the reasons he can’t is because he worked so hard on Worldcon programming this year, instead of making money. A karmic imbalance has occurred, one that we think should be put right with The Grant Grant fundraiser to send Grant to Perth for Swancon 36. Gifts (not donations, there’s no tax deduction or anything here) can be made via PayPal to thegrantgrant [at] gmail.com
Thanks very much to the people who have tossed some cash into the pot already. You rock!
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Just got off the bus after getting off the train after getting off the red eye flight back home from Perth. I feel like a train wreck so there won’t be much in the way of a con report. But here are some photos:
Tehani, myself and Alisa from the New Ceres Nights book launch. More photos here. Note their fabby wigs and costumes whereas I look like a ten dollar hooker in an $8 Marilyn Monroe wig which, as it turns out, is exactly what kind of wig I was wearing…
Me, Alisa, Tehani, Liz and Kate
International guest of honour Richard Morgan is a dude
Jonathan Strahan, Theresa Anns & Robin Pen, all looking mighty chipper and wholesome in Mozart’s cafe across the road.
Richard Morgan & Trudi Canavan discussing the finer points of autograph technique (I won a copy of one of Morgan’s books by being so irritating as to know the name of the font used on the front cover – Bleeding Cowboys for anyone else who cares)
Good to see young Choofer here is moving to Sydney. Now all I need is everyone else to follow suit so I won’t have to spend so much time on aeroplanes flying interstate!
Flickr photoset here. Now I’m off to veg on the couch and watch my Tomorrow people boxed set. because, yes, I am a sad fangirl.
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At Swancon I got to meet Ken Macleod and his wife Carol. I’d chatted to them both a bit over beers early on at the con. At my invitation, both attended the double barrel small press launch in the hotel car park (12th Planet’s 2012 anthology and Ticonderoga’s The Workers Paradise). While everyone was standing around boozing, Ken bought copies of both books and then actually asked me to autograph my story in TWP. Carol asked me what my story was about. The next day she read it & caught up to tell me what she’d thought of it. By the end of the con Rob Shearman had bought practically every title on the combined small press table. Which meant he ended up with about 5 stories by me. The point I’m getting to here is this: what a class act all round. Interactive guests taking an interest in the folks they were guesting for. I was very impressed with them all.
and on a more negative note… I didn’t get in to the Orbit Manuscript Development Program. Bummer.
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I’m not much of one for con reports these days, partly because the pictures tell the thousand words, etc etc, but mostly because all the really entertaining stuff that went down over the Easter long weekend is far too rude, crude and generally offensive to repeat without hurting feelings, naming names and pointing fingers. So I’m not gonna. The con itself had a few comedy of errors aspects to it. The absolute highlight of it all for me was GOH Rob Shearman. About 10 of us fell completely in love with him. I believe
actually kidnapped him this afternoon. She and I would have had a scragfight over him for sure if my dragon and I didn’t have to fly back home to the classy side of the continent at 1am this morning. Full set of photos here. And oh yeah, I won a Ditmar for my novella ‘A Lady of Adestan’ which was originally published in Orb magazine. My acceptance speech was classy (I grinned and shouted out I beat Garth Nix!). Physically, the award itself is rather dowdy. Come on guys, normally you get the winner’s names engraved on statues. You don’t print them out on itty bits of cardboard, cut them out & make the winners glue them on to the plaques themselves fer fuck’s sake…
Tehani Wessely, Rob Shearman, Kathryn Linge & Alisa Krasnostein.
Andy Macrae
Karl Schraeder, Robin Pen, Ken Macleod, Sean Williams & Jonathan Strahan
The Ditmars are now unofficially known as the Krazzies. Seeing as Alisa wins most of them.
yeah, I really do have a dragon!
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