Orycon After-Action Report
Nov. 29th, 2009 10:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sinanjuI'm back from Orycon 31. I just put my lovely and talented wife snippy/![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
snippy to bed. I had a nap earlier in the day, but I will be hitting the hay earlier than usual because I'm also still tired. Which is the sign of a good con.
We arrived at Orycon Friday morning to get our membership badges at 11 a.m. so we'd have them for panels starting at noon. Alas, our memberships were not in the computer. This is a new crew running the con (most of the Orycon regulars are working on the 2011 Worldcon projects for Reno). Also, this was another new hotel. The Marriott hotel we'd used the last two or three years decided that business was too good to want to bother with a non-profit fan convention so Orycon had to look for (another) new home. Now we're back in the Red Lion chain again. More on that later.
We had to talk to the treasurer about our memberships. He remembered cashing them, so after giving the registration people our info again and waiting around for badges to be produced and laminated, we did eventually get them. The pocket programs, however, were not available yet. More frustration. But they turned up fairly shortly, so that was good too.
The hotel was very nice. Our room was very nice. A king size bed, as well as a sofa (convertible to a sleeper if we wanted to use it that way) in a sitting area. The hotel restaurant served decent food, no more overpriced than restaurant hotels usually area. Our one real complaint is that there is a bar in the lobby that would have made a perfect place to sit and eat, drink, talk and watch people wandering through the lobby--but the front half remained closed the whole weekend. The rear part was open, but it wasn't nearly as useful for the "bar panel" as the front would have been. Maybe next year that'll change.
The function space was all on the lobby level, which was an improvement on the Marriott, where it was scattered across four levels (lobby, lower lobby, mezzanine, and parking level (converted into function space for dealers and art show). Having everything (except hospitality, which was in a suite on the fifteenth--top--floor) on one level was very pleasant. The rooms at one end of the hotel are all named after presidents, the rooms at the other end of the hotel are named after bridges in Portland--that made it easy to know which section of the hotel a given event was in.
Orycon is usually the weekend before Thanksgiving, but some other computer-related business conference tied up all the convention space in town the last two weekends this year so we had to settle for Thanksgiving weekend. As a result the con was smaller than usual--though not as small as was expected, which is good. It did also mean, however, that the dealer's room was pretty thin pickings this year. I suspect a lot of the bigger dealers were at Loscon--which is a) a larger convention, and b) is always on Thanksgiving weekend, so was already planned for well in advance. Anyhow, next year we're back to our usual weekend and we're already signed up for it.
I attended a lot of panels, as usual. Panels on writing, editing, panels on the criminal mind, the realities of violence, and the like--those latter because Rory was participating in them. We saw a lot of Rory and Kami, as usual at Orycon. We also met a couple of new friends through them, Susan and Jonas. We hope (and expect) to see more of them, though they live in Seattle.
I also metcamillealexa, who I'd recently added to my friends list on Livejournal, but had not previously met in person. So she's now officially been moved from imaginary friend status to actual in-the-flesh acquaintance. I introduced myself to her after a panel (and incidentally to davidlevine/davidlevine, who was sitting next to her). I told Alexa my livejournal handle because my real name, on my badge, didn't mean anything to her. David said, "Oh, you're Sinanju.") I really should have said hello to him too, but as I've seen him around at a number of Orycons it just didn't occur to me. So, hello David--it was nice to meet you too. Officially.
I got to have an actual conversation with Alexa later at a party in Rory & Kami's room, as well as with a couple of other people. That was entertaining. She recommended the story "The Last Man's First Year On Earth" by David Goldman to me, which I read earlier this evening. It was a very interesting story. I liked it.
Someone needs to have words with the DJs for the dance, though. While they played "Time Warp" at midnight on Friday and Saturday night, as per Orcyon tradition, they utterly failed to follow it up with "Rasputin" (though my wife informs me they played it earlier on Saturday night). That will not do! I demand my midnight double feature, dammit!
I did a (very little) self-pimpage while I was there. I gave a couple of people a card promoting "Bound by Convention", and left a few on one of the tables available for promotional materials. Whether anything will come of it, I have no idea. (Well, that's not entirely true. Susan took one of the cards and said she was going to buy my story. So yay! But otherwise...I dunno if I made any difference.)
I'm an introvert. Promoting myself online is a lot easier for me than doing so in person. There are several reasons for that. First, I'm a introvert--did I mention that? Posting blurbs about and excerpts from my stories is easy. I've even done some guest blogs and have a couple of online interviews lined up. That's not so hard. Second, while my published works so far are technically SF or fantasy, as they deal with superheroes, they're mostly erotica. Third, the last thing I want to do is act like one of those annoying folks I sometimes see at cons who can't have a conversation without turning it into a commercial for themselves.
I think I can safely say I didn't do that...but I'm going to have to do better.
But anyhow, it was a fun convention. I'm tired now, both from spending all that time running around (working at home writing is even more sedentary than office work) and because as much fun as it was seeing old friends and making new ones, and enjoying the eye candy (lots of pretty fan girls), I'm an introvert and being around lots of people all the time is draining.
I didn't write a damn thing this weekend, and I didn't plan or expect to. I won't be writing anything tonight except this post. Tomorrow...maybe. Traditionally,snippy/snippy take the Monday after Orycon off from work to rest and get ready for the rest of the week. So we'll see. But come Tuesday...I'll be back in the saddle again. Time to start cranking out stories again, and decide what my next novel will be.
P.S. I came home to find an email from Cobblestone Press awaiting me. It had a proof of the cover art for "Queen Bee" (my latest sale) for me to look at. I liked it a lot. So I said as much, and the artist will now go ahead to create the art package (different size cover images, banner and half banner art, and so forth). As soon as I get that, I'll be adding the cover art to the usual places (my journals, my blog, etc.)
snippy/snippy to bed. I had a nap earlier in the day, but I will be hitting the hay earlier than usual because I'm also still tired. Which is the sign of a good con.We arrived at Orycon Friday morning to get our membership badges at 11 a.m. so we'd have them for panels starting at noon. Alas, our memberships were not in the computer. This is a new crew running the con (most of the Orycon regulars are working on the 2011 Worldcon projects for Reno). Also, this was another new hotel. The Marriott hotel we'd used the last two or three years decided that business was too good to want to bother with a non-profit fan convention so Orycon had to look for (another) new home. Now we're back in the Red Lion chain again. More on that later.
We had to talk to the treasurer about our memberships. He remembered cashing them, so after giving the registration people our info again and waiting around for badges to be produced and laminated, we did eventually get them. The pocket programs, however, were not available yet. More frustration. But they turned up fairly shortly, so that was good too.
The hotel was very nice. Our room was very nice. A king size bed, as well as a sofa (convertible to a sleeper if we wanted to use it that way) in a sitting area. The hotel restaurant served decent food, no more overpriced than restaurant hotels usually area. Our one real complaint is that there is a bar in the lobby that would have made a perfect place to sit and eat, drink, talk and watch people wandering through the lobby--but the front half remained closed the whole weekend. The rear part was open, but it wasn't nearly as useful for the "bar panel" as the front would have been. Maybe next year that'll change.
The function space was all on the lobby level, which was an improvement on the Marriott, where it was scattered across four levels (lobby, lower lobby, mezzanine, and parking level (converted into function space for dealers and art show). Having everything (except hospitality, which was in a suite on the fifteenth--top--floor) on one level was very pleasant. The rooms at one end of the hotel are all named after presidents, the rooms at the other end of the hotel are named after bridges in Portland--that made it easy to know which section of the hotel a given event was in.
Orycon is usually the weekend before Thanksgiving, but some other computer-related business conference tied up all the convention space in town the last two weekends this year so we had to settle for Thanksgiving weekend. As a result the con was smaller than usual--though not as small as was expected, which is good. It did also mean, however, that the dealer's room was pretty thin pickings this year. I suspect a lot of the bigger dealers were at Loscon--which is a) a larger convention, and b) is always on Thanksgiving weekend, so was already planned for well in advance. Anyhow, next year we're back to our usual weekend and we're already signed up for it.
I attended a lot of panels, as usual. Panels on writing, editing, panels on the criminal mind, the realities of violence, and the like--those latter because Rory was participating in them. We saw a lot of Rory and Kami, as usual at Orycon. We also met a couple of new friends through them, Susan and Jonas. We hope (and expect) to see more of them, though they live in Seattle.
I also met
camillealexa, who I'd recently added to my friends list on Livejournal, but had not previously met in person. So she's now officially been moved from imaginary friend status to actual in-the-flesh acquaintance. I introduced myself to her after a panel (and incidentally to davidlevine/davidlevine, who was sitting next to her). I told Alexa my livejournal handle because my real name, on my badge, didn't mean anything to her. David said, "Oh, you're Sinanju.") I really should have said hello to him too, but as I've seen him around at a number of Orycons it just didn't occur to me. So, hello David--it was nice to meet you too. Officially.I got to have an actual conversation with Alexa later at a party in Rory & Kami's room, as well as with a couple of other people. That was entertaining. She recommended the story "The Last Man's First Year On Earth" by David Goldman to me, which I read earlier this evening. It was a very interesting story. I liked it.
Someone needs to have words with the DJs for the dance, though. While they played "Time Warp" at midnight on Friday and Saturday night, as per Orcyon tradition, they utterly failed to follow it up with "Rasputin" (though my wife informs me they played it earlier on Saturday night). That will not do! I demand my midnight double feature, dammit!
I did a (very little) self-pimpage while I was there. I gave a couple of people a card promoting "Bound by Convention", and left a few on one of the tables available for promotional materials. Whether anything will come of it, I have no idea. (Well, that's not entirely true. Susan took one of the cards and said she was going to buy my story. So yay! But otherwise...I dunno if I made any difference.)
I'm an introvert. Promoting myself online is a lot easier for me than doing so in person. There are several reasons for that. First, I'm a introvert--did I mention that? Posting blurbs about and excerpts from my stories is easy. I've even done some guest blogs and have a couple of online interviews lined up. That's not so hard. Second, while my published works so far are technically SF or fantasy, as they deal with superheroes, they're mostly erotica. Third, the last thing I want to do is act like one of those annoying folks I sometimes see at cons who can't have a conversation without turning it into a commercial for themselves.
I think I can safely say I didn't do that...but I'm going to have to do better.
But anyhow, it was a fun convention. I'm tired now, both from spending all that time running around (working at home writing is even more sedentary than office work) and because as much fun as it was seeing old friends and making new ones, and enjoying the eye candy (lots of pretty fan girls), I'm an introvert and being around lots of people all the time is draining.
I didn't write a damn thing this weekend, and I didn't plan or expect to. I won't be writing anything tonight except this post. Tomorrow...maybe. Traditionally,
snippy/snippy take the Monday after Orycon off from work to rest and get ready for the rest of the week. So we'll see. But come Tuesday...I'll be back in the saddle again. Time to start cranking out stories again, and decide what my next novel will be.P.S. I came home to find an email from Cobblestone Press awaiting me. It had a proof of the cover art for "Queen Bee" (my latest sale) for me to look at. I liked it a lot. So I said as much, and the artist will now go ahead to create the art package (different size cover images, banner and half banner art, and so forth). As soon as I get that, I'll be adding the cover art to the usual places (my journals, my blog, etc.)