Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Prepping for WorldCon

It's hard to believe that I'll be leaving for Denver in only 3 days. The plan is: we drive out of here Friday after lunchtime and see how far we get. Then we drive the rest of the way to Fort Collins, CO on Saturday, there to spend time with Curtis' wonderful brother, sister-in-law, and three nieces Sunday - Tuesday. We'll show up at WorldCon on Wednesday.

I'm not sure how much online stuff I'll be able to do while I'm on the road. My brother-in-law has plenty of 'Net access, but I imagine I'll have more important things to do. Once we check into the hotel at WorldCon, there's no telling how much Internet access will cost, so we'll play it by ear. I've got several things in draft form right now. I'm hoping to post one before I leave (a review of Geoff Ryman's Mundane issue of Interzone), and get one or two polished up to post automatically while I'm away (a review of Stephen Baxter's Flood, if nothing else).

I probably won't be able to contribute much to the WorldCon photo bonanza - while we're lucky that our digital camera weathered our trip to England, it died soon thereafter. (Much better to die in Houston than at Leeds Castle before we'd seen Cantebury Cathedral and St. Pauls.) We're on the fence as to whether to get one before we leave--right now I think we're leaning towards taking our time and getting my pro-photographer brother to find something for us instead of rushing to get something right now. Although there's the risk that Curtis might explode if forced to watch the Masquerade without taking pictures, so that will have to be weighed.

At WorldCon itself I'm currently slotted to be on two panels (my first EVER, wish me luck!) One is: "Book Reviewers: The Missing Link of the Publishing Industry," currently schedule for 11:30 on Friday. The other is: "Popularity vs. Critical Acclaim," scheduled for 4pm on Saturday. My co-panelists will include such luminaries as Graham Sleight, Jonathan Strahan, Farah Mendlesohn and James Morrow. Come see all the brilliant people that I will be sitting next to!

Anyway, we'll be shaking off our post-Hugo hangovers and starting the drive home lunchtime-ish on Sunday, and probably getting home Monday evening. I will have my cell phone with me, and I'm considering experimenting with Twitter (John De Nardo showed that it can be done when he went to the Nebula award banquet this year). If so, I'll post details here before I go.

4 comments:

John D. said...

Good luck on the panels!


And with Twitter...my experience was less than stellar. But then again WorldCon is a bigger deal, so...

Karen Burnham said...

Thanks John! I thought Twitter worked well the first time you tried it. Actually, I'm afraid that it will be worse at Worldcon because it's so big. How much downtime do you really get for texting there?

OTOH, I tend to show up to panels early, so I'll have some time while waiting for things to get started. Usually I fill that time by reading, but who wants to do that?

Cheryl said...

I'm either going to be workign the masquerade or using my video camera, so if Curtis wants to borrow my still camera for the evening let me know.

And we need to fix a date for dinner.

John D. said...

Karen, there was really never time "devoted" to Twitter...it was just me remembering that I was doing it and shooting off a quick "hanging out with Joe Lansdale" tweet.