And post Gaylaxicon...

What a splendid expotition!
We arrived in Bethesda fairly painlessly on Thursday night, just in time to meet up with the always delightful Lee Martindale (lee_martindale), author, editor, activist and all around swell gal. Dinner was in the hotel grill and wasn't half bad, if a tad overwhelming.
Friday morning was spent museuming - Jana and I went to the National Museum of Women in the Arts (http://www.nmwa.org/) where we got to see to some lovely pottery as well as paintings and sculptures. The book art exhibit wasn't open, alas. After a very fine Caribbean lunch at a nearby restaurant, we went off to the Folger Shakespeare Library (http://www.folger.edu/) which was just marvelous. We didn't get into the collection (scholars only) but did get to see their replica of the Globe Theater and a fascinating exhibit on the growth of newspapers. The staff was very knowledgeable and very eager to chat. After that, we headed over to the Library of Congress to oooh and aaah. I headed back to hotel and my beloved went on exploring.

Back at the con, I chatted with friends old and new as well as checking in with international publishing impressario Steve Berman (mroctober at the Lethe Press table. The first panel went well, if a bit light on attendance. Lots of interesting discussion on what makes fantasy in particular speculative and how it does or does not cross over into mainstream, slip stream and magical realism. A bit after that was the author/artist Meet N' Greet. I pounced on Alicia Austin, squeeing like the fangirl I am and got her to sign the cover she illustrated from my very first published story. She was quite gracious about it all. :-) So gracious in fact, we had breakfast with her the next morning, which was a definite con high point. I also managed to acquire one of her pieces in the art auction. Squeee!

More on the rest later - I am summoned. :-)

Gaylaxicon part 2

The rest of Saturday was a whirlwind of reading with the talented and fascinating Joselle (upstart_crow), several interesting panels and hanging out with new friends poet Dan Vera and Ginn Hale, author of The Wicked Gentlemen, among others. I shall refrain from listing them all since I am bound to forget someone; sufficith to say, I enjoyed talking to everyone. :-)
Skipping ahead to the Spectrum Awards Banquet on Saturday - yummy food, good conversation and oh yes, a snippet of early news - my cyberpunk story from Crave, "Medusa's Touch," made the shortlist for short fiction. Catherine grins huge Cheshire Catlike grin. :-D
This one was quite unexpected (by me, at least) and I'm quite psyched about it; it's my first stab at a cyberpunk story. And hey, 2nd time on the shortlist, third time's the charm? We'll see...

I don't remember everyone who got shortlisted (they'll update the site soon) but Ginn Hale won for her terrific novel and Joshua Lewis won for his great story "Ever So Much More Than Twenty" from So Fey: Queer Fairy Fictions, edited by none other than Mr. Steve Berman. So Fey was a winner in the "Other" category, and two other stories from the collection also made the short fiction shortlist - huge congrats to Craig Gidney and Holly Black! Joselle made the short fiction shortlist for one of her stories in a different antho and Steve made the novel shortlist for Vintage. Ginn gave the best stunned author acceptance I've ever seen and a jolly time was had by all.

And then we did an erotica panel. Cecilia Tan, Victoria Jansen and I batted around the question of "Is Sex a Viable Plot?" for the amusement of the folks who attended and each other, then it was off to try and sleep. The morning was spent having brunch with Melissa Scott and bidding our adieus before flying home without incident.
Excellent convention. I'm getting quite enthused about next year when it's here in the Minneapple. :-)