Thursday, March 24, 2011

Lunaconned

I've been back from LunaCon for several days now, although it feels a lot longer. Work will do that to you.

It was a great convention despite some interesting issues with double-booking and a programming team scrambling to keep from getting too behind (apparently they lost their programming database 2 months before the convention - OUCH!) as well as a lack of mobile bodies doing duty as convention minions. Some people were booked for 15 or more panels over the course of the weekend, and one or two tried valiantly to actually be at every last one of them.

Friday highlights:
- The lady running the SoHo Host Club has the right idea - surround yourself with polite, attractive, well-groomed young men. It makes quite the impression!
- Meet the Pros party chatting with Heidi Hooper (aka the dryer lint art lady), Michael Ventrella and assorted others. Somewhere the conversation got onto vegetarian vampires, the chocolate fountain ran out and desperate souls trailed the waiter out of the room grabbing as much of the rapidly solidifying chocolate as they could.

Saturday highlights:
- chatting with Esther Friesner between Cheeblemancy readings
- Dracula vs Undead Porn panel with KT Pinto which turned into a free-ranging discussion about the vampire mythos, the inadvisability of vampire sparkles, and when urban fantasy becomes undead porn. Naturally I wore my "Dracula Never Sparkled" badge.
- Catching up with Mike Kabongo and Leo Champion between panels and parties.

Sunday highlights:
- People hanging off the railings near the hotel pool for the World Building panel with Esther Friesner, Russ Handleman, Pauline Alama and Paul Calhoun. That one was actually scheduled for a good-sized room, but the room was the one that was showing movies all convention so we ended up down by the pool in a space meant for maybe 5 people. It was a fun panel, with some interesting insights into what shapes culture.

Monday I took things easy and drove home after a good night's sleep, and I've been in post-convention recovery ever since (aka exhausted and brain-dead). But I'm paid up for next year, and in about a month I'll ping the programming email to get myself on next year's programming.

(cross-posted to Kate's Corner)

This is Sarah -- Kate allowed me to post this link to my blog where I did a follow up on my post yesterday. I.e. I've come to a decision on what to do, at least for now: Welcome To The Treadmill

12 comments:

MataPam said...

Welcome back, Kate.

Sounds like a very good con was had by all.

Chris McMahon said...

Hi, Kate. Glad you enjoyed the convention:)

Kate Paulk said...

Matapam,

Thanks. Now I get to catch my breath, recover, and do it all again in a couple of weeks for RavenCon.

Kate Paulk said...

Chris M,

Thanks! It wasn't the same without you, Dave, Sarah and the Hoyt collective, and so on. We have to do that again some time.

Kate

Sarah A. Hoyt said...

Someday we have to meet at Luna again and scare people. Was Chris present when we ALMOST got ourselves thrown out of the restaurant?

Kate Paulk said...

Sarah,

Yes, he was. And yes, we do. We can scare people like no others - even people who scare people are scared of us!

Stephen Simmons said...

Luna ... too far from HERE, but not all that far from where I was whelped ... and I haven't been home in ten years ...

But we're committed to visiting my wife's family next, the next time we manage to accumulate the money for such a thing ... drat.

Glad to see that you had a good Con, Kate. Welcome back to the grind ... :-)

Chris McMahon said...

God! I'd love to. I got a Luncon postcard and I stuck it on the fridge for old time's sake.

We'll have to try and get to the same US convention some time.

Stephen Simmons said...

Great idea, Chris. I nominate Raven! (No self-serving here ... none at all ...)

Kate Paulk said...

Stephen,

Luna is close enough to me to count as "local circuit". It's about a 2.5 hour drive for me.

Raven is more like 3.5 to 4 depending (the shortest way there from here involves DC traffic), so I probably won't make it a regular event unless I end up having too much fun not to.

Kate Paulk said...

Chris M,

Yes, we've got to do that. Let's see... San Antonio has a bid in for the 2013 Worldcon. Regardless of the quality of the convention, there's the San Antonio Riverwalk, with loads of restaurants. Last I heard, they were the only bidder...

Kate Paulk said...

Stephen,

Pick a year, any year?

For me, the closest con is PhilCon, but... Well. It's not actually IN Philadelphia. Apparently the city taxes got so unfriendly the con moved over the river to New Jersey.