Although we arrived in Madison Friday evening, I didn't do much at WisCon that day. I picked up my badge and talked with a few people we knew, but then I went out for dinner and dessert with my family.
Saturday morning, my family and I went to the Farmer's Market before the first panel. I chose to attend Being Female While Aging, which looked at portrayals, both good and bad, of older women in literature. There were three panels after lunch. I went to Editing for Writers, which probably wasn't my best fit. It was stuff I already knew and geared toward traditional publishing. (Several people asked about self-publishing at the end; not surprisingly, the panelists weren't encouraging.) Next, I went to Is Every Kickass Female Character a Mary Sue? The premise there is that Mary Sue is used as a pejorative (though the panelists thought Mary Sues aren't necessarily bad) and that it's come out of fandom to be used as a way to insult all female characters and women authors. This was an interesting panel, especially since one of the panelists was interested in the Beatles.
The final panel before dinner was Food In Spaaace! I was one of the panelists. We had a crowd of about 20-30 people, and we had a lot of interaction with the audience. I think it went well.
After dinner and a soak in the whirlpool, I was part of the Broad Universe Rapid-Fire Reading. The original moderator couldn't make it to WisCon, and since I volunteered to be the next Reading and Event Co-ordinator for Broad Universe, I was asked to take over. (The original moderator is named Sandra, so I introduced myself as the Emergency Backup Sandra. We're not easy to find!) It was my job to introduce and time the readers; so I had to do it with my laptop and cell phone. The reading went well, and we managed to fit everyone in. Then I went to a couple of parties and talked to a few people before calling it a night.
Tune in tomorrow for more details about Sunday and Monday.
3 comments:
Did you have to play the bad guy and cut anyone off?
Who were the panelists that were discouraging about self-publishing? I'd like to introduce them to my buddy RaShelle who has sold over 300,000 copies of her self-published books and see what they say.
Most of them stopped shortly after I gave them the two minute warning.
One of the panelists is a major editor at a major SF/F publisher, so yeah, he's strongly entrenched in the old system.
Is RaShelle going to stay indie? I'm sure with those numbers she could get a deal with a traditional publisher if she wanted.
Re: Emergency Backup Sandra
LOL! I love it.
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