In which I infodump the last week and a half

• My mother has graduated from hospital to rehab and is doing as well as can be expected after a week that has included a broken hip and partial hip replacement.
• Other things are still murky but I am finally feeling better after 10 days of something flulike
• Thursday's AWP Bi+ Story Slam (AWP 2015 Offsite Reading), went pretty well considering I wished I was in a medically induced coma by the time I got there. I opted to read a version of a personal essay about my coming out as bi and its aftermath, originally written for a book that the late great Cheryl B. was working on when she passed away. It was quite well-received, which was lovely, and the rest of the readings were quite good, so I was glad I crawled off my Death Couch for the event.
• I went to AWP (the national conference of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs) on Saturday and had a fine time. As expected, it was mostly MFA programs, poetry and academic writing, but there were some pockets of genre and some interesting readings and presentations. I appreciated the scathing honesty of one of the making a living as a writer panelists who broke it down as" "Marry well. Rich is nice, supportive is much better." True enough. The historical fiction panel I went to was a bit dull, but I had a nice lunch afterwards at Brit's Pub with writers Michael Merriam, Conrad Z-ro and  Abra Staffin Wiebe. After that, Mike, Conrad and I went off to do the BookFair, which was gigantic. I picked up some interesting books from Upper Rubber Boot Books and A Midsummer Night's Press and schmoozed the nice folks at Minor Arcana Press and chatted with David Schwartz and Kristin Livdahl at the Small Beer Press table. After that, I had tea with Mike and Rachel Gold, then went to a panel on voice which featured author Roxanne Gay, as well as several other authors who were reasonably interesting but a tad overshadowed (not only was she quite good, the moderator was fanboying her something fierce so the other panelists didn't get quite so much of the moderating headlight beam). I went on to catch part of a panel on small publishers producing limited edition works before catching the bus and meeting Jana for dinner. Good day all around and I'm glad I went.
  
• I'll be doing a MinnSpec Koffee Klatch on June 14th at noon at the Uptown Lund's meeting room. This will feature me talking about writing, my career, publishing, weird historical snippets about LGBT SFFH, Penny Dreadful and penny dreadfuls, vampires and whatever else comes to mind. Come on down! It'll be fun!

And now back to novel edits and sundries and catch up from last week.