Follow Up from OddCon: Writing Panels and Author George RR Martin
This weekend I attended and appeared on several writer’s panels at OddCon. This science fiction and fantasy convention usually is attended by a small, close-knit group of local writers and fans of the genre through groups like the Madison Dorks. In my opinion, this really isn’t a convention geared toward gamers at all, even though there was a presence from industry giant Fantasy Flight Games after a prompt by successful fantasy writer George RR Martin.
This year, the convention drew more attendees to see Mr. Martin, though I was surprised the press was absent from the panels I was on with him. That may not have been the case, but from what little I saw I felt that the organization and publicity for Mr. Martin could have been amplified a bit more. For example, our Saturday night panel was in a packed room with a meager, portable wall separating us and comedian Luke Ski. Needless to say, the noise was a bit annoying.
Also on hand was Kage Baker, another successful author that, unfortunately, I did not get the chance to meet. EE Knight, writer of both the Vampire Earth and Age of Fire series, was also in attendance, as well as a slew of local authors (and some poets) promoting their first books that ranged from David Talon who wrote an interesting novel I’ll be reviewing for Flames Rising horror webzine entitled, “The Last Guardian of Mosh Chaltun,” to upcoming author Michael D Thomas who is currently working on a collaborative non-fiction project for the Dr. Who universe.
Mr. Martin was extremely good-natured and a very savvy speaker, who obviously understood the craft. I was very impressed with him, because although he his personality (and opinions) shined through, he was never unkind or mean to anyone. Here is a veteran author with years in the biz, who has a right to his opinions, which is more than can be said for newbies who’ve only written about their problems on MySpace. While promoting his “Wild Cards” book series, he talked about how he protects the interests of the creators throughout the process through a Master Services Agreement where authors own “shares” to the property. This removes potential lawsuits and other legal stickiness; based on any number of factors, everyone always gets a piece of the pie. He also talked about “getting into the mind of a character” and how there’s really two, different types of writers: architects and gardeners. The funniest comment he made was about how the industry is inundated with submissions from writers who “write up their roleplaying adventure” and try to pass it off as a novel. With that statement, I think there’s definitely hope for writes who have unconventional fantasy settings to share.
Also in attendance was Madison writer Fred Shepartz whose review of Vampire Cabbie you can read. Wisconsin success Patrick Rothfuss added a touch of humor through his mad skillz as a moderator on my “How Magic Changes Things in Fantasy” panel.
There was some industry buzz around “genre tags” and a few other notions. For example, what bucket do you label your book? Is it slipstream, speculative fiction or straight up fantasy? Jack Byrne, an agent out of Milwaukee, had an interesting thing to say about how agents read books: They look for something to love and hate, it’s their job to find something wrong with the work to reject it.
The weakest part of the panels, in my opinion, was that the success of the panels varied depending upon who was moderating it. To me, having a good moderator is the key to audience participation (like in a roundtable format), being able to seed positive questions that will allow authors to a) appear intelligent and b) promote their books.
I would recommend OddCon more for people interested in writing, and for fans who enjoy interacting with the authors that attend. This isn’t a gaming-centric con, and most folk are pretty friendly. Like I mentioned earlier, there is a core group of attendees that go, so if you do show up: bring a friend. Personally, I can’t complain about the two days I spent there; I found people very receptive and friendly both to my work as well as some of my future projects.
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Tags: conventions, fantasy authors, local writers, oddcon
April 14th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Hey Monica!
Good wrap-up of Oddcon. I’m only now recovered enough to start blogging about it and catching up with some of the people I met. Sorry I didn’t catch you on Sunday, it was a busy one.
I agree with the comments on the quality of the moderators, and I do find this at any con or seminar I go to. If the moderator isn’t prepared, or at the very least, good at winging it, the panel will suffer no matter how interesting the topic and/or panelists. Unfortunatly one or two of the Oddcon sessions I went to had moderator issues.
I really enjoyed Patrick’s panels as well, even when he wasn’t moderator he really added good things to every talk he was involved in.
It’s funny, I really only went to one panel each that involved the GOHs. I was so engrossed in all the other authors and what they had to say, that I really missed out on Baker and Martin. The good thing was that they drew many participants to their sessions, which left a small group at anything going on opposite them. This made for good discussions and lots of audience participation. I still feel like I learned a ton and met plenty of other interesting people. I would recommend it as well.
I’ll drop you an email and catch up on everything else soon. Great meeting you!