World Fantasy Convention Thursday

It’s been a couple of years since I’ve been to the World Fantasy Convention. This year it’s in San Jose, at the Fairmont. I have stayed in this hotel once before, a long time ago. (That’s a story that bears telling another time.) The hotel looks the same, which means elegant and grand; almost like something you’d see in a movie about the 1920s. I like the feel—and their selection of scotch is pretty good. I’ll have a lot of different ones to try this weekend.

One of the best things about WFC is running into all sorts of folks I’ve not seen for years, and new folks. A brand new writer, David Arnold, split a cab with me (and paid more than his fair share so I owe him a drink). Then at the hotel the first person I saw was Kate Elliot. She had her daughter with her, whom I had last met at the WFC in Madison when, apparently, I had her in the bar with me (she was only 17 at the time) as her mom was off at some panel. I’d forgotten that, so I’ll be ordering my “contributing to the delinquency of a minor” merit badge soon.

And then right around the corner from them I saw Tad Williams, who I’d first met at a WFC. I think it was the one in CT, if I recall right. He’s great and I’m looking forward to talking with him more this weekend.

One weird thing about the hotel is that the magcard keys are kind of funky. They work, sort of, but not well. Usually takes four tries to get into the room.

Once I got my badge I ended up wandering through the dealer room and ran into Bill Wu. That’s William F. Wu, the fantastic short story author. He and I co-wrote one of the Chaos novels together (An Enemy Reborn). While I was chatting with him, Joan Saberhagen came by, and we ended up talking about digital books and where publishing is going.

In fact, it looks like this whole weekend will be about that subject for me, which is cool. Robert Vardeman and I had dinner together and did some plotting, then I had a long talk with Russell Davis, the SFWA president, about digital publishing. We all attended a panel which Russell was on about the Google settlement. Jay Lake made some excellent points which gave me a lot of food for thought on the subject.

World Fantasy is always a whirlwind. Authors are everywhere, and the conversations are a lot of fun. It’s one of the places where you can talk with others who understand fully what you’re doing and going through. You get perspectives on the business, learn who is in, who is out, who’s having a hard time and who’s having success. A bunch of folks have declared that I’m the leading guy when it comes to new media, and several have thanked me for the analysis of the Cory Doctorow experiment.

Ultimately the best part of WFC is the ability to talk to other writers, share ideas and come up with new things, new partnerships, so we can all keep doing this thing we love.

And as you can tell by my disjointed prose, the convention is also exhausting, so I’m crashing. More, tomorrow!