World Fantasy Convention Report, in which Canada confiscates my pepper spray

It's taken me a month, but here it is: my blog report on WFC 2012.

Travel:

First things first. I drove to Toronto.

Detroit to Toronto isn't a bad drive even though it's international.  You go over a big bridge. You talk to a handsome, young Canadian customs official -- and no matter how good looking he is, you don't flirt because he's about to tell you that you're entering a country where pepper spray is regulated like a handgun and you don't have the necessary paperwork for that death ray dangling from your key chain.

Who knew?

So I had to pull over to the side and sign a form stating that I was "abandoning my weapon" before I could traverse the dull, bleak stretch of land that lies between the the Blue Water Bridge and suburban north Toronto. (November is a bitch; I'm sure it's charming in late August.)

WFC 2012 was billed as "in Toronto." It was in the suburbs north of Toronto. The convention center was nice. All the overflow hotels were within easy walking distance. This was good. The sad part? I actually really like Toronto-Toronto. Downtown Toronto. And in spite of my sojourn into "Toronto" I did not get to see Toronto. Alas.

All the Authors You Love and Love to Fangirl Over:

Tanya Huff is a hoot. Her Keeper novels and Blood Ties books are hilarious, but you never know if that translates to being funny in person -- with Tanya Huff, it does. She even talked about being on the set when Blood Ties the TV show was being filmed.

Anne Bishop is coming out with a new urban fantasy series starting this spring -- which she read from! -- and it sounds like an interesting new twist. Previously I've only read and reread and reread and gotten all my friends hooked on her Black Jewels Trilogy.

Patricia Briggs is putting out another Mercy Thompson novel this spring -- which she read from! -- and then there's either going to be another Mercy book or possibly a Sam book (I can't remember now) and an Alpha Omega book coming out in short order. Yesss. Patricia Briggs is also absolutely charming in person. Very sweet. And once she meets you, she'll smile at you every time she sees you. Or maybe I'm just being self-centered and she smiles at everyone. Either way, she's very nice.

Charles de Lint can play guitar. And sing. And did both. Rock on, man. Rock on.

Panels Talks:

Whither the vampire after Twilight? Conclusion: the vampire can and will whither wherever it wants. If you want to be Chicken Little, then go ahead and claim that Twilight has ruined vampires. If you want to think that Twilight is creating readers in general, and readers of vampire fiction specifically, out of people who were not previously readers, then go ahead and think that it's done some good. In sum: freak what ya feel. But the most interesting concept to come out of this panel is the idea that vampires aren't on a trajectory of getting fluffier and fluffier, but that they're on a cyclical path. And that it won't be long until the next big vampire trend is super scary vamps. Then they'll get fluffier again. Then scary. Then ... yeah.

What is Urban Fantasy? Hoo boy. You've got (what I'm calling) the "Industry Standard" which has to do more with the voice than the setting, the "Urban Fantasy Lover's Definition" which includes just about anything the lover loves, the "Reader's Not-So-Standard" which is just as precise as the industry standard but uses different language and criteria, and the "Dreamer's Warm-Fuzzy Declaration" which makes the Reader frown thoughtfully, the Lover smile and nod, and the Industry person snort. Conclusion: inconclusive, but tasty nonetheless.

The brave new world of ebooks: Choice nugget: "A PDF is not an ebook." It's worth repeating. Everything else discussed can be found with enough diligent research. Oh, and if you can't make good, attractive, well formatted ebooks on your own, you might really want to choose a small press over self-publishing.

Are revenants still relevant? Yep. For totes. ... Which is good because not only did I edit a ghost anthology this year, I'm doing it again in 2013.

Humor in fantasy: Rock on. I don't recall if there was any particular points made at this panel. I remember that I laughed a lot. And that the panelists all agreed that humor definitely has a place in fantasy -- high fantasy as well as urban fantasy. And that even humor in horror can help a story's pacing.

Do today's writers need to read the classics of their genre/tradition to be successful? No... but they should.

The Patty and Mike Show. Okay, so technically not a panel. Patricia Briggs and her husband did their stand up and talk bit. They took questions. They revealed that the literary creation of Zee, aka Siebold Adelbertsmiter, and his type of fae has roots in the fairy tales of the Isle of Man. And I plucked from the air some awesome Mercedes Thompson swag. Okay, I didn't catch it when it was thrown into the crowd, but I did rescue it from where it landed. Now to decide what to sew this awesome rose-flame-wrench patch onto...

Assorted Convention Detritus:

I did not get sick! Holla! Every conference I've ever been to I returned home to a musty apartment, angry cats, a pile of life-stuff-that-I've-ignored, and a post-conference cold. This time I managed to avoid it. It's either luck, or the fact that I downed four days' worth of Airborne lemonade stuff. I'm kind of hoping it was the Airborne, because downing it wasn't exactly pleasant.

I really thought customs was going to give me grief about the giant bag o books I was hauling back, but they just waived me through. Apparently declaring "clothes and books" doesn't make you worthy of investigation. Score one for the bookworms of the world.

So far I've read Wicked As They Come from the giant book bag o awesomeness, which is a portal romance -- you know the type, Diana Galbaldon and Karen Marie Moning have made their careers on them -- except this heroine falls through into a steampunk world populated with vampirish critters. I liked it, and I'm excited to delve into the rest of the books I acquired. Up next I'd like to dive into Carrie Vaughn's After the Golden Age.

And a brief shout out to all of the Odyssey people whom I caught up with or met for the first time. You're lovely, as always.

Haunted Housewives Goodreads Giveaway

Susan Abel Sullivan and World Weaver Press are giving away a SIGNED paperback copy of The Haunted Housewives of Allister, Alabama -- enter this week for your chance to win!

“Grab a peanut butter and banana sandwich and settle in for a cozy mystery full of zany characters, haunted paintings, and a big dose of Southern humor.” — Heidi Ruby Miller

Who knew one gaudy Velvet Elvis could lead to such a heap of haunted trouble?

When Cleo Tidwell said, “I do,” for the third time, she had no idea her marriage vows would be tested by a tacky piece of art. But Cleo’s not the kind of woman to let a velvet-offense-against-good-taste just hang — oh no, she’s on a mission to oust the King. Trouble is, Elvis won’t leave the building. And he’s attractin’ all manner of kooks, fanatics, and lookie loos to Cleo’s doorstep, including the entire congregation of the Church of the Blue Suede Shoes.

Everyone wants a piece of the painting, but Cleo’s starting to suspect that whatever’s haunting the Velvet Elvis wants a piece of her husband. Why else would her hubby trade in his car for a ’56 pink Caddy, moonlight as an Elvis impersonator, and develop a sudden hankering for fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches? Certainly it can’t be anything as simple as a mid-life crisis, because Cleo is not getting divorced again — her mother would never let her hear the end of it.

Cleo’s life is all shook up by crazies with death threats, psychic warnings “from beyond,” kidnapping attempts, invitations to join the Blue Shoe Loonies, and even murder! Cleo’s in a fight for her life, her marriage, and the perseverance of good taste everywhere.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The Haunted Housewives of Allister, Alabama

by Susan Abel Sullivan

Giveaway ends November 29, 2012.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

“Prepare for the read of your life! ... Sullivan is the new mistress of humor in horror.” — Perpetual Motion Machine

Ad of the Week

I love coffee. Whether he's called Joe or Johann, I don't normally care. Although they make a compelling case to upgrade to Johann.



On an honest to goodness, there-was-no-hot-man-with-an-accent involved scenario. I have tried Gevalia (the chocolate version was on sale and I was like I wonder what this stuff in the yellow package is?). It's freakin awesome. I take a little of the chocolate Gevalia and mix it with the regular (cheap) coffee grounds in the filter and wow. That's a nice upgrade.

Specter Spectacular takes on a special sale price

I recently edited a slim and spooky anthology of ghost stories, Specter Spectacular: 13 Ghostly Tales. And for the month of November only, you (or anyone) can grab the ebook version for the never-will-it-be-this-low-again price of $2.99. (You can also order a print version from Amazon -- sadly, not available in stores.)

Ad of the Week

Whimsy, child-like innocence, supercool toys (hello, dino-crane!), a nod to Toy Story, and a brief delivery of the very adult key word "economy."

 

Revolution: The Newest TV Show Worth Watching

Revolution is slowly becoming The Show of the season, in my opinion. It's certainly the best new sci-fi on television in a long time, but as a near future, dystopian, what-would-we-do-if-the-power-went-out? series, it's got appeal for the fans of westerns/historical dramas about power and fighting, fans of the Hunger Games, sci-fi enthusiasts, survivalist types who want to double check the likely methods and outcomes of the characters actions and remedies. It also has a trek-across-the-country-on-a-mission element that fantasy fans often enjoy. Sort of J.J. Abram's take on Firefly without the spaceship.

The premise is simple, yet complicated. It's fifteen years in the future -- fifteen years after the power went out completely. No electricity, no internet, no phone service, no internal combustion engines. There's a certain stability yet instability which starting the fifteen years post tragedy allows for. Those who've survived the transition to a non-powered culture, have learned how to survive in it which means a shift in how we go about doing the necessary and how we structure our society. Flashbacks to the days after the blackout feed us breadcrumbs about what happened to the world and how the characters went from mild mannered insurance adjusters to maniacal killers, etc.

Yet it's not just about the characters, there's a fabulous techno thriller mystery that underlies it all -- why did the power go out? And go out so fully and totally so that no one could start it again? That surely isn't the sort of big "oops" that caused the giant blackout that stretched from NYC to Detroit the summer of 2003. And slowly over the first six episodes of the season, we're being dropped hints which suggest that if humans turned off the power, then there has to be a way for humans to turn it back on. And there is perhaps a bigger and badder villain out there who'll make Monroe look like nothing more than an opportunist ... but now I'm getting ahead of myself.

While I love the layers upon layers, onion-feeling to the show, I also love that the it's primarily Midwestern.

Let me tell you, this is the most airtime rural Indiana's gotten on scripted prime time television since half the cast of The West Wing got stranded in a soy field courtesy of the state's former county-by-county time zone laws. (Note: Indiana stopped that strangeness not long after said episode of The West Wing aired. Coincidence?) Then again, the location makes sense. I'm not the first one to point to Gary, Indiana, as the perfect example of what happens to modern infrastructure when it's not kept up for several decades -- those Life After People shows did just that when they explored how proximity to Lake Michigan would affect a major city.

So here we are, wandering around Indiana, and Chicago, and Wisconsin, without power, without jack shit except what we can make, grow, and scavenge. In fifteen years we've gone from looters and random violence, to militias and communes. Guns still exist and work, but bullets -- the fancy, reliable kind -- are scarce. But musket balls? Those ones you can cast over a camp fire and have to be loaded with powder and a ramrod? Those are back in vogue. Of course, they're illegal for non-militia citizens to own. There's no second amendment when there's no more US Government.

The set dressing becomes its own character and proves endlessly fascinating. The pilot shows us a little village living in what was obviously once a suburb cul-de-sac. They have five sturdy, cookie cutter houses with brightly painted doors that scream, "I was bought at the Home Depot!," with backyards full of corn, and out front a Prius full of dirt for growing herbs. The interiors of homes, hotels, even the shells of amusement parks are part modern, part 19th century, part medieval. Candles and flame-filled sconces abound. The military camps in tents that look straight out of a Civil War reenactment. People carry cloudy glass flasks and plastic juice jugs. They wear cloth that looks not-quite-homespun and carry rucksacks which are distinctly modern with their zippers and seaming. The show has yet to bore me with their depiction of modified-modern convenience.

It's those rucksacks, and the fact that they're carting them, along with bedrolls and weapons, on foot, from Chicago to Philadelphia (and farther) that puts me in mind of Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried." Of O'Brien's characters, the Vietnam soldiers who knew precisely what they carried and how much each piece of it weighed because wherever they went, they humped every piece of their gear there with them.

There's also a disturbing and dramatic mortality element to Revolution, and not just in the kill-or-be-killed situations so often facing survivors of the blackout. Unlike shows like Grey's Anatomy, where the characters live through all manner of should-be-deadly injuries and usually go back to being completely freakin normal within the course of a year if not merely a few episodes, injury in Revolution is almost always fatal. There are no fancypants hospitals. There's the occasional doctor, but that doesn't mean you won't die of tetanus. Or asthma  Or infection. We've yet to hear anything of pandemic or viral or microbial illness, but it's bound to enter the plot line sooner or later. While they've not alluded to it, I'd bet that after the power went out, illness swept the country. But for now, most of the medical/mortality troubles come from characters bodily defending themselves, usually with swords -- the kind of swords with hilts that double as brass knuckles -- and that sort of thing is almost always fatal in a world without Emergency Rooms. Stomach wounds. Nasty buggers.

But there is a touch of humor and a good deal of poking at what we consider to be oh-so-important today. One of the characters tells how, before the blackout, he owned a plane -- one of the perks of getting rich while working for a place called Google.

"Google, that was a computer thing, right?" says the girl who was only seven when the blackout happened.

"It was an internet thing," he replies. Then, "Eighty million in the bank and I'd trade it all, right now, for a roll of Charmin."

Then there's the woman who, after fifteen years without power, still carries around her iPhone, because that phone was the only place where she had pictures of her kids.

The iPhone, and later the same woman's printed copy of The Wizard of Oz -- poignant for several reasons, not only was this the book she read to her children, but the character is the ultimate Dorothy, trapped a continent away from her family but no amount of wishing and heel clicking can get her home -- these are the only item we've been privileged to see in "The Things They Carried" style, but it's already proven damn powerful. I look forward to the writers further use of this narrative tool to color and define the characters.

Makes you really stop and question what we keep squirreled away on bits and bytes.

At the same time that it makes me stop and praise certain analog tendencies, it devastates me to look around my home and think about what I might have to leave if I were in the same situation -- namely all the books I'd have to leave. The thought of abandoning my books in order to carry with me necessary things like food and water is almost as disturbing as the medical regression that has made our lives so cushy. (What can I say? We all have our priorities and our soft spots.) And that doesn't even touch on my love of Charmin.