swancon

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Swancon 2019

Swancon 2019 was small and cosy, the Fremantle Hotel a good choice of venue & Charlie Jane Anders a super fabulous overseas Guest of Honour. High fives all round!

Aurealis Awards and Swancon

I attended Swancon in Perth last weekend and co-chaired the Aurealis Awards with Glenda Larke. Managed to slip in another launch for Lotus Blue, despite the fact that Stefen managed to sell all copies before guest launcher Sean Williams had a chance to utter a word. It’s always such a treat to catch up with my Perth buddies.

Swancon

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.…

yes, I am asking for $$ again…

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…

Swancon photos

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 KateInternational guest of honour Richard Morgan is a dudeJonathan 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…

ps

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…

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