Travel

LONCON 3 – Friday

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Second day of the convention. It’s not going to be the cake walk that was Thursday. People tend to get one day passes for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. These next three days the que for book signings and all other relevant panels will be hell.

After my morning tea, complimentary my gracious hotel, I stroll down to the convention center. The sun was shining bright this fine Friday. Strange. All my life I’ve been told of how gloomy London was. The weather was nothing short of perfect the week and a half I spent there. I decide to do my loop around the information desk, noting any activities that seem appealing. I signed up for chocolate tasting on Saturday. Time will tell if I remember to attend it or not.

First up on my “to-do” list was a book signing. Where Pat Rothfuss had his own personal signing, the next one consisted of about eight authors next to each other. I wanted to get my Half A King signed by Peter V. Brett. I hadn’t read any of his work, but I knew him and Abercrombie were friends. It would be a nice addition to the non Abercrombie signings in his book. The two people behind me both brought copies of Unfettered, the short story collection made to financially support Shawn Speakman after his cancer treatment. Neither of them knew each other. I assured them I do indeed have the book, but in Kindle format. Not much I can do there in regards to a signing. When it’s finally my turn I try to inform Mr. Brett why I’m having him sign a book that is not his. Unfortunately I talk too fast and too low, and frankly, sound like I’m mentally unstable. He’s still nice enough to do it, while laughing of course. He takes a picture to show Joe since their hotel rooms are right next to each other. Success!

I shimmy over to the George R.R. Martin book reading. Easily a seat is obtained. I can barely contain my excitement for an hour long reading of The Winds of Winter! Clearly I was not thinking straight. He instead read passages from his upcoming “The Sons of the Dragon”. I’m pretty sure that’s what it was called. It’s back story into the House Targaryen. As entertaining as it was, my enthusiasm had been shot. I must admit that George is a great story teller. Obviously in writing, but also vocally. The audience had a good chuckle over him stating that this book was due out four years prior, “like all of my other books”.

It was time. The coffee roundtable with the big dog himself. Joe Abercrombie. Got there as fast as I could. Joe and I walk in at the same exact time, both forgot to pick up coffee or tea. As we are all waiting for the other lucky fans to arrive he comments on how awkward this is. He had no idea he was to bring his own refreshment. Before I even had the chance to, this girl, for the life of me I cannot remember her name, perks up and offers to run and get him a cup of tea. I cannot express the hatred I have for her, but dammit do I respect the woman. After the rest of his fans arrive—nine of us total—we begin our chat. The first few minutes are him going on about what we should talk about. After a bit of nervous giggles from the fans (okay, mostly me), there was plenty of talk. The majority of the questions I’d heard him answer before in different interviews. How different was it writing Young Adult? When will we see more Logan? Do you plan to write in the world of the First Law again? I asked him some dumb questions about his current movie/television watching habits. Talked a bit about Arrow, and how damn good looking everyone in that town is. Mr. Abercombie was everything you want in a hero. Stayed long to chat with us. Didn’t mock anyone. Just a generally nice person. Very, very witty. You can tell that the humor from his books is all him. It’s just flowing out of the guy. Extremely nice and even got a picture with him.

Joe Abercrombie, Jack Black, and I

Joe Abercrombie, Jack Black and I

Two breakfast burritos later I go to a panel about book covers. I’m always curious on how much say authors have on this issue. Some covers are just atrocious. And no surprise here, it’s all about what sells. The panel was called “The Politics and Economics of Cover Art”. The standouts here were Irene Gallo and Justin Landon. Irene is the art director for Tor books and Justin is the guy behind Staffer’s Book Review, and also did the Tor re-read of all the Joe Abercrombie books. Justin looks like an all American jock who in no way would read fantasy. As it turns out he’s one of the coolest guys in the world. If you ever have a chance to meet him at a con, or any type of event, I strongly suggest it. The guy is super knowledgeable about fantasy, too. There was some ribbing about hooded figures on covers. It’s whatever sells. That’s literally their only motivation. Justin says there is an attempt to try to get less sexist covers out there, but it’s a slow process. According to Irene the authors get SOME say as to the covers. It varies on author. Typically they are to write up a short summary of the book, and characters in the book to the artist. Just so they have something to work with. And I found out Bane has terrible cover art.

Next was the “Imagining Fantasy Lands: The Status Quoe Does Not Need Worldbuilding”. This panel was, interesting. The majority of the time was spent talking about Tobias Buckell and how he deals with being a white Caribbean. Don’t get me wrong, the whole panel was interesting, but didn’t really deal with the topic. By the way, Tobias wrote up a classy explanation for the talk, seeing as how it got a bit controversial. I didn’t notice but I’m an idiot so, there you go.

My last event was the “The Problem with Making a Living Writing SF&F: Have We Become Too Niche?” panel. There were oodles of aspiring writers at this one. This was my first chance at seeing Scott Lynch. I was pretty depressed about missing his signing earlier. It was worth missing because I got more Abercrombie time, but damn did I want his signature. In line I met Susan from Germany and Kim from Australia. My goodness was Kim the talker. Extremely friendly but talked my ear off. Wanted to know about my whole life practically. Seeing as how my life is awful, this bored her quickly. Still she’s one of those people that can brighten a person’s mood instantly and I’m glad to have met her. Scott Lynch talks about how he accidentally posted his novel online and that’s how he got a book deal. He bashed the state of fantasy with other bloggers online so much, that finally someone said, “Why don’t you guys just write your own then?”. Scott took up that challenge and wrote the first chapter of his first book. The rest was pretty much history. Someone saw it, sent it to a publisher, and they asked for more. Lynch hadn’t written more but he said, give me two days and wrote his ass off. The author of the book HEX looked fifteen. And he was about to become a pretty rich man, thanks to American book and movie deals. They all agreed to increase your presence on social media, but not in a way that’s always promoting something. One of my favorite panels so far. Good authors, good discussion, good friends, good times.

Chatted with Robert from Cardiff afterwards for about fifteen minutes. Felt that eight o’clock tiredness coming and decided to call it a night. Once Upon A Time In Mexico was on when I got back to the hotel. It was the perfect finisher to a wonderful Friday. So thank you everyone at Loncon 3 on Friday, and thank you Johnny Depp. 

LONCON 3 – Thursday

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This year was my first time attending the World Science Fiction Convention. Hell, it was the only time I’ve been to a convention. From August 14th to August 18th I was at the Excel Convention Centre in London, England. After all, this was my opportunity to meet all of my favorite authors. Joe Abercrombie? Check. George R.R. Martin? Check. Rothfuss? Hobb? Haldeman? Lynch? Check, check, check, check. I just so happened to be backpacking around Europe at that time anyways. Having already wandered aimlessly through Paris, Brussels, and Amsterdam, the United Kingdom was my next stop.

The day before I was due to fly from Amsterdam to London I happened to come across Brandon Sanderson tweeting about books he was signing in Schiphol Airport. Joe Abercrombie also saw his tweet and asked him to sign his new book, Half a King. You can find Brandon talking about it on his blog. The next day I was sweating bullets, hoping those books would still be there. I NEEDED something for my authors to sign at the convention, plus how cool would it be to already have them signed by Brandon Sanderson?! The stars happened to align. I was by Gate F and there were two Words of Radiance books left. And one Half a King! I tweeted them a picture of the signed books, which lead to a well deserved retweet from the god that is Joe Abercrombie. As you can tell, I’m a bit obsessed.

I get to the hotel on Wednesday night. It’s a quaint place that is literally right next to Excel. Rise early the next morning, chug a cup of tea, throw on my Resident Evil Umbrella Corporation shirt and make my way over. All of the events and panels start at ten in the morning. I get in line to grab my registration around quarter past nine. It took no longer than twenty minutes, but man, later in the day that thing was HUGE. Also, found out that in Europe they call “lines”, “ques”. I’m a fan of their way. Because I signed up so late—literally the night before—they had to write in marker on my VIP Pass. All the other attendees had such professional looking ones, and here I am with “Mattyo” hand written on mine. Great start.

It was still early so I moseyed on over to the information desk. This is where you sign up for all the events for the next few days. You get in line and do a circle around the table, signing up for the event you want. You can only put your name on paper for one thing and then you have to circle (or square) around again. In all honestly, the line was never too crazy, which made it pretty tempting to just go around and around. I didn’t want to be too greedy so I signed up for “Tea with Joe Abercrombie” (Rothfuss and Lynch ones were already fully signed…). That was for the next day and consisted of you plus eight other people sitting around a table with the author talking “bollocks” for an hour. That’s the word Abercrombie used to describe it.

While in line I met a friendly fellow named Robert from Cardiff, which he was proud to inform me was the capital of Wales. Robert himself is an aspiring writer who shares a mutual love for Abercrombie, Lynch, and most of all Patrick Rothfuss. Together we decided to check out the panel, “Does the Future Need to Be Plausible?”. The panelists were no authors I’ve ever read, but the topic did interest me.

Robert and I settled for standing room only as all the chairs were taken. The moderator did a wonderful job of keeping the flow and getting all the authors involved. There was a point where they all started bashing one of my all time favorite “So Bad It’s Good” movies, The Core.  Also under fire were Die Hard 2 and Falling Skies. As they should be. I thought the best point was brought up by Mr. McDonald. He stressed that it depended on how you wrote your characters. It doesn’t matter how strange your devices of the future are, or if they hold up twenty years from now. If your characters are as comfortable with “insert strange new technology” as we are, say when using a toaster, then it won’t matter. The readers will be more accepting of it and it won’t even be an issue.

The last fifteen minutes were devoted to questions, but these things hardly ever do much good. Most of the time one person rambles on for what seems like an eternity and doesn’t even ask a question at the end. It’s more of a comment, or their perspective on something. I was starving so off to the food court I went. As I sat eating my bacon and cheese croissant (and their bacon is not the bacon us Americans are used to), I decided to attend the opening ceremony at noon. It’s in the auditorium so I wouldn’t have to bum rush a room to get a seat. Side note, it was at this point I was able to take out money from an ATM! Let’s just say prior to this I was having some trouble getting money out. A topic for another day.

The opening ceremony was cute. They did a skit that involved the crowd being students at Hogwarts. I wasn’t expecting the amount of props that were used on stage. It was reminiscent of a “Whose Line Is It Anyways” game. They introduced all of the Guests of Honor, none of which I cared much for other than Robin Hobb. One of my favorite segments involved them showing the design of the Hugo award for this year, and how it has changed throughout the years. Really cool stuff. Still I decided to leave early. Didn’t want to get a bad spot in line for the Pat Rothfuss book signing.

Leaving early paid off, as I reserved a spot in the front of the line. Had the chance of meeting a very nice girl by the name of Eleanor. She is from the glorious lands of northern England (I have no idea what that looks like) and had the most beat up copy of The Name of the Wind that I have ever seen. She told a cool story of when she went to a Phillip Pullman book signing. Apparently Neiil Gaiman was there as a moderator or something of the sort. Unfortunately Pullman had to cancel, turning the event into a Neil Gaiman signing. Most of the books though were by Pullman. So it was a bunch of people getting those books signed by Neil Gaiman. This is relevant because I was getting Rothfuss to sign my copy of Half a King—that was already signed by Brandon Sanderson.

Right as I’m next in line, none other than Joe Abercrombie walks up next to Rothfuss at his signing table. As they are chatting I scoot up and slowly slide them my copy of Half a King. They both look at me with looks I’ll never forget and Rothfuss suddenly bursts into uncontrollable laughter. Even more so when he finds out that Sanderson has already signed it. Abercrombie admits he’s happy that I at least bought the book, no matter who I get it signed by. Really cool moment. Afterwards, Eleanor gets Patrick and Joe to sign her notepad that she looks at when she’s going through tough times. Patrick writes “love what you do”, while Joe puts down “The price of success is enemies”. I think that’s a good summary of both their writings. Definitely a highlight of the trip.

Off to grub again. I know, I know. Standing in the que really does make you hungry though. Two sausage rolls and a bacon cheese bite later, I head down to the George R.R. Martin and Connie Willis panel, “A Conversation with George R.R. Martin, Connie Willis, and Paul Cornell”. You could tell that the both of them were really good friends. Connie is a vibrant speaker and had so many good barbs at Martin. There really is nothing like two great writers talking shop, and reminiscing in general. Actually scratch that. There’s nothing better than two old friends shooting the shit. That’s what it came down to. Willis started talking about how she hates when you know the main characters won’t die. She talked about a popular television show from back in the day that I’m totally blanking on. The shows two protagonists were always untouchable, although anyone who was associated with them were as good as dead. She remarked how in one episode, the new bride of one of the characters was killed, right when they walked out of the church! To which Martin dryly replied, “I usually kill my characters in the church”. Safe to say that got laughter and a round of applause. Martin was asked what questions he hates. While he said he doesn’t hate any question, he is tired of the same questions over and over again. Especially from interviewers that think their question is one he’s never heard before (cough Who is your favorite character cough). He gave a shout out to Stephen Donaldson, whom he is good friends with. If you didn’t know, I’m a pretty big fan of the guy. Back when Donaldson put out The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant they were a huge success. Probably the best selling fantasy books up to date. And Donaldson thought, “Okay, I have a lot of Donaldson fans out there”. Then later he wrote the Mordants Need duology and it didn’t sell nearly as well. It was then he found out that there weren’t as many Donaldson fans as he thought as there were Thomas Covenant fans. Martin wonders if this will happen to him once he’s finished with ASOIAF. It was a great conversation between the two and it’ll stick with me forever.

The last panel I attended was “Ideology versus Politics in Science Fiction”. It included authors:

Probably one of the worst panels I attended. Only because the moderator didn’t show. It really does make a difference having a competent moderator, or one at all. The conversation lagged a ton and there were too many awkward silences for my taste. Probably should have checked out another panel. I’d never seen Kim Stanley Robinson so I wanted to at least hear him. Fortunately they kicked out all of us that didn’t get a seat as to us being a fire hazard. I was more than happy to leave, but at this point I was exhausted. Felt like it was a good first day and that I’d go home and read some The Way of Kings. That was Day One of Loncon 3. Next I’ll write about my eventful Friday, including tea with Joe Abercrombie!