IllogiCon 2, Day 3

 Click here for Day 1, or here for Day 2.

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Got there late, of course. The first panel I managed to attend was "Humanizing Villains," which started at 2. I came in at 2:15, and missed a lot of the discussion, but enjoyed what I was able to see. The panelists were Misty Massey, John Kessel, John Hartness, Natania Barron, Ada Milenkovic Brown, and Garth Graham.

Illogicon 2: Day 2

Before I begin, let me say that I think I was unfair in my last post. In my Friday writeup, I suggested that the all-male panels I'd seen had been the result of some negligence on the part of the con's organizers. Yesterday, Margaret McGraw told me that the panels were actually self-selected--that the guests had chosen whatever panels sounded interesting. There was still a gender imbalance among the guests themselves, but if this is one of those cons where you have to apply to be a guest, then the organizers really can't be blamed for that. Sorry I implied it was their fault!

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Day 2
(Click here for Day 1, or here for Day 3)

IllogiCon 2: Day 1

Click here for Day 2, or here for Day 3.

Friday, January 11, 2013

IllogiCon started today. I meant to go down early, and hang out as things were getting started, but of course that didn't happen. I ended up getting there around five.

The con's in a new facility this year: the RDU/Research Triangle Embassy Suites. I asked someone at the registration table why they'd changed facilities, and he said it was for financial reasons. I actually like the new place better, though: the DoubleTree, where it was last year, is a very nice hotel, but it was much further from where I live, and there are all those traffic circles. (I know they're safer than intersections. I still hate them.) This one had no traffic circles, and was right off 40. Very nice!

The space was better, too. Last year we were upstairs, and it kind of felt as if we'd been squished in as an afterthought, though I doubt that was actually true. At this hotel, we're on the main floor--though somehow the guy babysitting the desk had no idea what I was talking about when I asked where the convention was. Once again, there are two panel rooms, a game room, a dealers' room, a registration desk, a con suite, and probably a lot of other stuff that the guests never see.

I ran into friends right away: Jason Peters, his wife Megan, and Ada Milenkovic Brown, whose reading I missed by ten minutes. Oops. (Sorry, Ada. ;_;) I was just in time for the five o'clock panel. I was torn--"The Local Scene" looked pretty interesting--but all my friends were in "The State of Short Fiction," so I went there.

On the Subject of Reviews (or, Goodreads and Me)

Over the past couple of years, there's been a lot of online discussion about whether it's appropriate for writers to post negative reviews--or even positive ones!--of other writers' work. A lot of people seemed to feel that it was unprofessional for writers to criticize other writers--like an artist publishing a critique of somebody else's painting, or a musician panning someone else's song. Because I aspired to publication myself, I decided to play it safe, and posted all of my reviews under an anonymous nickname.

Now that the book is almost finished, I've been thinking a lot about building my platform, and have been trying to link up all my online content so that people who are interested can find me in a lot of places. I've regretted a number of times that I couldn't link to my "anonymous" Goodreads account, both because I put a lot of thought into my reviews, and because reading is basically my primary interest. A lot of my friends are on Goodreads, and I love talking about the books I read. I'd love to widen the discussion by engaging with other fellow readers.

A few days ago, I decided to set up a secondary, "public" Goodreads page, where I could link my name to Five Stories for the Dark Months and any other ebooks I happened to publish. In the process, I accidentally linked the two accounts, and convinced myself for a few horrifying seconds that I had deleted my original account forever. When I finally figured out how to separate them (it was just a matter of disconnecting Facebook from the new account), I really became aware of how important my book reviews are to me, and how much I would have missed the interaction here if I had lost it. For that reason--and because I've always felt it was a teeny bit cowardly to keep my reviews hidden--I've decided to get rid of the secondary account, make the first account more or less public, and continue posting under my own full name.

Honesty is really important to me. If I feel strongly about something, then of course I want to express those feelings, even if they're negative. Since of course no one likes every book they read, there will necessarily be some negative reviews here--as there always have been. My personal book review policy (not to be confused with my movie review policy, wherein anything goes) is to be as kind and considerate to authors I haven't met as I would be to writers I meet in my writing group every two weeks. This means that, while I will not sugarcoat critiques, I will always do my best to refrain from snark. I will also be sure to highlight the good points even of books I find seriously problematic.

If you find a negative review of your work here, I know you're not going to be happy, but please understand that it isn't a personal attack. I know how much work goes into writing and editing a book, and I know that I have my blind spots just as everyone else has theirs. If you'd like to respond with a scathing critique of one of my own stories, then by all means go ahead--I could certainly use the publicity. : ) But I hope that, in the end, there will be no hard feelings from anything I post here, and that if we ever meet in person we can do so as friends.

Under Glass (Halloween Story 2011)

I spent this past weekend in western North Carolina, in the home of my good friend Brittany. She had the lovely idea of celebrating fall with a creepy-story write-a-thon à la Mary Shelley and friends. Here is my entry, all polished up. I hope that you'll enjoy it.