Books Mentioned in the Magic Realism vs Traditional Fantasy Panel from Worldcon 2012

I’d noticed that reserving a table at the Northwest Book Fest was around 100 bucks. So I asked some other people if they would be interested in sharing a table and enough of us clubbed in that it ended up being very reasonable. We had Brenda Cooper, Louise Marley, Vicki Saunders, Jeanine Southard, Django Wexler, and myself as well as books from Hydra House, including the new Clarion West anthology, Telling Tales, and KC Ball’s short story collection.

As far as selling goes, the first day was not particularly successful and on that day 50% of the book sold were to each other. The second day was more of the same, although we didn’t sell as many to each other. Overall, doing a group thing was definitely a good idea: it made for a table packed with attractive, professionally done books along with some table display stuff like a robot, a war-elephant, and some fantasy stuffed animals (including plushie Chtulhu). It also meant we had people to chat with and the livelier appearance of our table helped pull people in, I think. (Plus we had candy.) We might have done better on the first floor than the second, and there were some lighting issues.

I presented a workshop on podcasting, which was well attended, and I ran them through some whys and whats of recording your own podcast as well as ranting a bit about rights and not paying to publish. A number of them signed up to get advance notice of the Building an Online Presence for Writers book.

Overall, it was fun, and there was some decent networking, plus I passed out some postcards on my classes. On the other hand, did we sell many books? Not at all. However, the cost of the $100 table, split between all of us, was pretty darn reasonable, and it meant we could attend workshops. We didn’t have a formal name, so I’d put “Seattle Speculative Fiction Writers” down. So many people asked about our group the first day that Django ended up putting out a sign-up sheet for news of group activities and gathering two pages of e-mail addresses. I look forward to the first wine and chat party.

If I ran an effort like this again, I’d focus more on selling: perhaps do book bundles, make a sign letting people know the books were priced at special rates for the book festival, maybe have some lower-priced items or stocking-stuffer type trinkets, and would have a signup sheet for other mailing lists, like each author’s. However, the location was so difficult to get to that there was no foot traffic and some people had difficulty finding the place — if they do it in the same location next year, I’ll pass and spend that time writing instead, but as Brenda noted, if they move it back downtown, it might be worthwhile.

Lisa Mantchev described it best when she Tweeted: I’ve never actually been run over by a Zamboni full of glitter, but that’s what it feels like after a really great convention.

That’s how SteamCon was. I arrived Friday afternoon for the Steampunk Reimagines Fairy Tales. This was a writing-focused panel, and I’d like to see future SteamCons make a wider space for a writing track, since this was jam-packed with attendees. Lisa Mantchev was our excellent moderator, and J.R. Boyett, a fellow participant in the FairyPunk project, was another panelist. We talked about how to create stories that best take advantage of the steampunk setting, without making it seem as though you’re just gluing a gear on it.

Later that evening, I had the first of my three panels on Victorian explorers. This was the best of them, because it focused on women explorers, and that’s an area I am reasonably well-read in, because I love some of those stories so much. That session included moderator Carmen Beaudry, Lori Edwards and another exquisitely garbed woman whose name, unfortunately, I didn’t catch. It was AWESOME and we all had a lovely time. I’ll mention some of the names we touched on, and urge you to go look these ladies and their amazing stories up: Harriet Chalmers Adams, Gertrude Bell, Isabelle Eberhardt, Mary Kingsley, Annie Smith Peck, May French Sheldon, and Lady Hester Stanhope, among many others.

Saturday was two more panels on expeditions, first one with Joshua Merrill-Nach on Great Quests of the 19th Century and later one on cryptozooological expeditions with a last minute substitute panelist whose name I know only as “Sean,” unfortunately, but who was terrific. Both panels were pretty full, the second one standing room only.

Sunday morning, I read from “Her Windowed Eyes, Her Chambered Heart” to a small but select audience that included the fabulous Sandra M. Odell. And then I made one last pass through the wonders of the dealer’s room and retreated home. Adieu glitter and goggles!