catherineldf | Entries tagged with 4th street fantasy

Some of it quite good, some less so, as is the norm. My hip pain seems to have calmed down for a bit and I'm going to see a bodyworker after Pride and see what is to be done longer term. I got extended on my work contract just in time for work to get wildly stressful. Sigh. I have successfully purchased and assembled a new and more stable coat rack, which is less likely to fall over and land on people when they hang up coats on it. I have organized 2 boxes of hazardous waste to be taken to the dropoff on Saturday. I have finished my editing pass on Fairs' Point (Astreiant #4) and sent it to Melissa for review. I completed and turned in an application for the Independent Book Publisher Association's Innovative Voices program (send good thoughts on this one, please!).

And I went to 4th Street Fantasy last weekend, where I got to hang out with delightful friends I haven't seen in far too long. Our panel went reasonably well and there was some interesting discussion. A friend and I swooped in and whisked Lois McMaster Bujold off to lunch after her interview, which was very pleasant. Making a sidebar note, however, to suggest that if 4th Street is going to have invited guests, a guest liaison would be a good idea. Lois was quite left alone after her interview, once she finished signing books, except for my friend and I, and someone a bit more official should have been keeping an eye on things, in my humble. But lovely to hear her and see her work celebrated, so there's that.

Apart from that, I'm trying to do one new to me thing a month and one thing that I haven't done since before lockdown. This month, that's Drag Brunch at LUSH, which was delightful, and a trip to the Walker for the Keith Haring show this weekend.

This weekend features multiple events!
I'm getting interviewed by the delightful Madame Askew for her "Sip the Tea" Show on Saturday at noon - it will be streamed on FB.
Death by Silver by Melissa Scott and Amy Griswold is a finalist for the Midwest Book Awards on Saturday night. I'll be there to cheer and hope!
Sunday, it's breakfast with friends and off to the Keith Haring show, then the wonderful Temporal Textural Virtual Book club discussion of Death by Silver on Sunday night. Melissa and I should both be there so we hope you'll join us.

There are also book sales!
Smashwords presale on Point of Hopes by Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett (Astreiant #1) is up! The book will be out from Queen of Swords Press on 6/27.
There are 4 Queen of Swords Press titles on sale at Amazon this weekend for the latest I Heart Sapphic Sale - look for Silver Moon, The Language of Roses by Heather Rose Jones, Murder on the Titania by Alex Acks and Desire by Emily Byrne for the "Beach Reading Sale."
The Pride StoryBundle is running until 7/1 - 13 great books and a chance to support Rainbow Rainroad! Also, not coincidentally, a big chunk of Queen of Swords Press's annual operating budget so please consider picking a bundle up.
And finally, Audiobooks.com is offering a great deal on the Silver Moon audiobook to celebrate it's one year anniversary!

And next weekend, please look for us at Pride in Loring Park in Minneapolis. Queen of Swords Press will be in the Queer Writes tent with a whole lot of books. :-)

And had a fine time. Met up with some friends, met some nice people, was on a good panel ("Monster Mash and Smash"). I also spent some time holed up in the Quiet Space and elsewhere working on a new story and reviewing submissions. I caught a few of the other panels as well and did our biannual Costco run so I ended the weekend feeling relatively full of accomplishment. I think the con has made definite improvements on bringing and and welcoming new people. There are still some issues, but they're not as pronounced as they have been at past iterations of the convention, so yay. I will likely be attending next year, assuming I make the registration deadline; they expect to closing reg early for next year so if you're thinking of going, it's a thing to keep in mind.

Last week's adventures included going to the MN Orchestra for a Pride concert featuring classical music by queer composers (quite good), going to see acclaimed Kenyan lesbian romance file Rafiki at the MPS Film Society (still there for a few more days), one 14 hour work day at the day job, seeing Captain Marvel a second time (it still rocks), going to the Midtown Farmer's Market and Rain Taxi's Print Matters mini book fest, and catching the visually striking The Vikings Begin show at the American Swedish Institute. Also, several migraines, one mangled knee, a completed short story submitted for American Monsters: Volume 2 (really hoping this one gets accepted!), work of various kinds on Queen of Swords Press and my new forthcoming collection, Unfinished Business: Tales of the Dark Fantastic and planting edible things in the yard. The latter include cherry tomatoes, chives, more raspberry bushes, a service berry bush and kale.

This week is the beginnings of furnace replacement, including asbestos abatement and the breaking up of the old furnace. Next week is removal of the old furnace and installation of the new one.

In between those is 4th Street Fantasy, which I'll be at this weekend. I'll be on the "Monster Mash and Smash" panel on Saturday at 2PM and otherwise hanging out a bit on Friday night and all day Saturday. Sunday will likely have to be a "catch up on other things" day, but we'll see how that goes. And now back to work.

4th Street doesn't have a full schedule up yet but it's coming up fast (June 20-22) so I expect that will change soon.
Posting my panels so I can find them without recourse to overstuffed email box searches. Hope to see some of you there!:

Friday, June 20, 2014

5:30 PM - Suspension of Disbelief

One of the challenges of writing fantasy is not pushing your readers' credulity too far. What kinds of things will audiences run with, what will they forgive for the sake of a good story/a charming voice, and what will send them screaming into the night? What are some ways in which you've seen different readers or groups react differently to the same material?

Maurice Broaddus, Catherine Lundoff, Paul Weimer (m), Tom Whitmore, Felicia Herman

Saturday, June 21, 2014

5:00P - In and out of frame

In fantasy, as with stage plays and magic tricks, a key skill is directing the reader's attention. What are some examples of successful (and less successful) attention direction and sleight of hand, and what motivated them? Are there certain topics it's easier or harder to guide readers toward (or away from)?

Marissa Lingen (m), Catherine Lundoff, Liz Vogel, Maurice Broaddus, Pamela Dean

Crossposts: http://catherineldf.livejournal.com/349732.html

4th Street Fantasy is coming up in a week and half now. As per the norm, I'm on a panel, noted below. I'll be in and out even more than usual this year, since we have an 80th bday party for a friend on Saturday night and my pal Rachel Gold is doing a Trans YA reading with author Kirstin Cronn-Mills at Addendum Books (the back part of Subtext Books in St. Paul) Sunday afternoon at 2PM. But lots of other folks will be around so don't that slow you down if the spirit moves you.

Saturday
9:30 – 10:30AM
Intertextuality and Originality

No book exists independent of the literary conversation, no matter how much its author may want it to. Elizabethan faeries are inevitably going to compared to each other, just like dark lords, destined heroes, and vampire-werewolf-mortal love triangles will. Given that very little authors can do will seem novel to experienced readers, how should they approach topics that many readers have been conditioned to read in a certain light? How can works that aim to deconstruct cliches avoid being read as "just X from Y's perspective"?

Lynne Thomas (M), Tappan King, Chris Modzelewski, Abra Staffin-Wiebe, Catherine Lundoff

Saturday, June 23rd

7:30 PM – 9:00 PM Families, Festivals, and Fireworks

Elizabeth Bear
(Moderating)

Catherine Lundoff

Elise Matthesen

John Singer

Michael D. Thomas

A different angle on the "Three Fs" panel we've had every year since 4th Street's return. What cool things do our panelists know about families, festivals, and fireworks (treating fireworks as a stand-in for imported and repurposed technology) that would be good to see in books or are just neat to talk about? How have work, family life, celebrations, and international trade interacted with each other historically and in fiction?

And the rest of the schedule. There's still time to register. I shall be flitting in and out, seeing as it is also Pride weekend and I would like to go to part of that. I think it will be interesting and when I am done packing my brain with all it will hold on lesbian shapeshifters and werecreatures for GCLS next weekend, I will load up on international trade in sf/f.

Crossposts: http://catherineldf.livejournal.com/260433.html

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Entries tagged with 4th street fantasy

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