WorldCon for the Meerkat

[lagilman]

And lo, my schedule as it stands now. Make notes. Plan to be there.


Friday 4:00pm Crossing Over
Is cross-genre writing becoming more popular? (Why or why not?) What are the special challenges of it? The rewards?

Saturday 1pm The SFWA EMF Auction. If you're not there, you know I'll just drag you in out of the hallway... Bring your checkbook. You know you wanna. Cheap Books! Neat (and valuable!) prizes! The chance to make me run like a madwoman up and down the aisle!

Saturday 2:00pm What Do You Passionately Read? ....Besides Fantasy and SF?
Of course you want to finish that new trilogy (which has suddenly expanded to five books), but even the most devoted fans have other interests. Bibliophiles get together to discuss the non-SF/F books they love, from historical fiction to muder mysteries to biographies, and other stops in between.

Saturday 4:00pm SFWA Musketeers
Musketeers vs. the Cardinal's Henchthings. I am still awaiting word from the Cardinal what sort of dirty tricks we'll be up to. There may be none at all, leaving the Musketeers to wonder what we're REALLY up to...


Sunday 11:00am Personnel Problems of Extraterrestrials in Earth Industry
Proper hygiene for food workers with tentacles? ("Must wash hands, tentacles, pseudopods....")? Safety glasses fo the many-eyed? Salary compensation for hive beings? And then there's romance in the workplace.....oh, my! And how will the Americans with Disabilities laws apply?

Sunday 12:00 noon Promoting a First Novel
A continuation of the Magic & Mayhem Tour, with Keith and I telling our Stories from the Road. Also a good chance to catch us for an autograph, if you miss the formal signings...

Sunday 3:00pm The Senile Pen?
Is it true that older authors lose focus (or, merely that they lose their editors)? Great ideas - but cardboard characters? Might this be a function of age? Or fame? Or what? (we're sure to offend SOMEONE on this panel. Should be fun. She said with an evil laugh)

Monday 11:00am Autographing
Please, someone, come by and save me from fetching water and new pens for Kevin Anderson!

And a reading will be in there too, hopefully -- being rescheduled from Thursday-before-I-arrive, which is a terrible time.


Hrm. Not as many as some, but still a reasonable scattering of work. I should be able to keep my brain busy enough...

ETA: Forgot to add that I will also be serving at the SFWA table in the dealer's room, both as Information Huckster and, at some point, signing books there as well. Updates when they happen.

Comments

[vampry.livejournal.com]

The "Personnel Problems" panel sounds nifty. I'm sorry I won't be there.

And, of course, for the EMF auction. That's always fun. Not to mention death to my wallet.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I don't know if I'll be there Friday yet - my exact plans are still in flux - so I'm going to toss in my $.02 on "Is cross-genre writing becoming more popular?":

Hell-frickin'-YES! Isn't there a publisher who has just started a specifically supernatural romance line? (And I'm not just thinking of Laurell Hamilton's sexfests, but deliberately obvious attempts to cross fantasy with chick lit, like my yet-to-be-read copy of Single White Vampire.)

Heck, there's a subgenre within regency alone that deals with ghosts. Ghosts and magic (and angels, for the other side of the supernatural) have been comfortably part of the romance genre and regency in particular for years. See Jill Barnett, for example.

I'm seeing more and more mystery/F/SF crossovers too, a la Jim Butcher and Tanya Huff. (And on a more personal note, turns out that said books are considered fair game for Reviewing the Evidence, which has reviewed the Huff Keeper books but not Butcher's. If you know Jim, you might want to drop a word in his ear about offering a review copy or two to Barbara Franci, or directly approaching reviewer Jill Long, who has favorably reviewed the Keeper series. Since I didn't ultimately like the series, better to bounce 'em off Jill than ask me.)

I hopefully will be around Saturday at two, but in case I miss the panel - I discovered, as I rearranged my TBR shelves this weekend, that my reading patterns fall into these distinct categories:
F/SF, both YA and adult (this includes rewritten fairy tales)
Mystery, mostly cozy; some true crime and forensics
History (medieval, tudor, victorian, biography,a little bit on Lowell)
Regency-era romance

The "other" shelf is a short polyglot of how-to craft stuff, chick lit, and classic lit.

[hildy.livejournal.com]

Are we thinking of Tor's paranormal romance line? I spotted their guidelines on a tour through their website the other day.

[lagilman]

As someone who is being published crossover, I think I know how I'm going to answer that question.... ;-)

There are a lot of publishers taking advantage of the romance readers' willingness to read fantastical elements. We'll see how many of them survive the inevitable oncoming glut

I personally feel pretty confident about Harlequin's ability to tap into the market, between Mary-Theresa's knowledge of both fields and their established comittment to Luna, and Tor survives no matter what they do, but some of the other publishers are dipping their toe in because all the other kids are doing it, and, well, that worries me more than a bit. But more when the panel actually gets rolling.

[nick-kaufmann.livejournal.com]

I won't be there, unfortunately. In fact, I've never been to a WorldCon. Have fun!