Oof, sorry, squiders. This week has been crazy pants. Did I tell you we’re replacing our ancient, poorly constructed deck (they put the boards too close together so water just pooled and rotted the boards over time)? Well, we are, and it’s taking more bandwidth than I would have thought.
Also, I started this entry LAST Thursday. Oof. Oof oof oof.
MileHiCon (now two weekends ago) was…mostly good. I saw some people I haven’t seen in forever and got to reconnect, made new friends, and networked in general. That’s always the best part of the con for me, so I’m satisfied in that regard.
In other regards, attendance was way down and so the whole thing felt kind of empty, but I’m not sure that was a bad thing. The con has also moved to a new venue, so it took a bit of getting used to, but I got it figured out.
(Also the elevators are much faster. The elevators at the old con took FOREVER and so if you needed to go anywhere off the main two floors, or if you had heavy books or needed mobility aids, it could take 15 minutes just to catch the dang elevator. A greatly needed improvement.)
I didn’t get as much done as I typically did around panels, partially because of the re-connecting/networking (probably more important in the long run), but I did read about 100 pages of a writing book and do some starting work on my outlining for my novella/SkillShare class (I now have most of the outline done, and about an hour of the class filmed), so it’s not all bad.
Also, I bought an awesome hat.
My panels were okay. The realistic fantasy travel/horse one on Friday I interpreted as being, you know, focused on the “realistic travel” part of the idea, but everyone else focused on the “horse” part of the idea, so it ended up being about horses in fiction in general. I mean, okay, I actually have decent horse knowledge due to being a trick rider in my youth, but I don’t actually like them very much and now I have a bunch of info about horses and other types of travel that didn’t get used. Hmm. Maybe I’ll do a post over here.
Saturday I moderated a panel on self-editing where it felt like I, again, had interpreted the panel content different than everyone else. Self-editing being where you edit your own work, either before you send it out to agents or before you indie publish. All the questions I’d prepared were about the physical nitty-gritty of the process–what steps where, process, checklists, tools, etc.–but my panelists wanted to talk about other aspects. Hopefully it went okay.
I did take the larger, mobile one on Sunday for the Critter Crunch. The 2-lb category was as fun as ever (and larger, mobile one is planning out his critter for next year) but there were only two bots in the 20-lb category, and one was malfunctioning (it kept driving off the side and not stopping, so people had to dodge for their life). At one point they brought out a 20-lb box of rocks that they used for testing their bot against so that they could draw the event out a bit. I mean, they made the best of a bad situation, and we still had fun, but it was a bit disappointing.
I tried to upload a video here for you guys, but apparently video is now a premium feature? Anyway, I found the whole 2-lb battle on YouTube for you (also you can see my feet).
All in all, it was a good weekend, and I’m glad I went. And I’m looking forward to next year! If all goes well I’ll have a new book out, and maybe I’ll get some stuff done for the Art Show.
How have you been, squiders?
