cornerofmadness

So let me tell you about my steamy weekend. I was so overwhelmed by finals week, camp nano and A to Z blogging, I didn’t know how I could possibly do this, yet I managed. If I hadn’t pre-bought the ticket I wouldn’t have gone so I guess I’m glad I did it.

I got up early (because even though I paid for Friday I didn’t go simply because of Kanda and the hotel costs) and somehow my usual 40 minute get-ready time turned into 1 and a half hours. WTF!?! Seriously did I fall into a temporal rift. It never takes me this long to get ready so I already knew I’d miss the ten thirty writing panel because Cincinnati is @ 130 miles away, a 2 hour drive.

Putting that out of mind, I hop in the car and go. I’m about an hour and fifteen minutes into the drive when it happens near Washington Courthouse: an inversion. The sky goes green, a good warning sign that there could be tornadoes. Then the sky goes black as sackcloth as the saying goes. The wind and rain were outrageous. Hail too. Lightning to make me think Zeus and Thor were trying to one up each other. My radio kept going off with tornado and flood warnings (keep in mind I wouldn’t know till the next day that this storm killed people across Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas). I thought about pulling over but the cars that were pulled to the berm were so hard to see I figured I stood a better chance of being nailed there so I kept inching along. Luckily by the time I hit I-71S the storm had eased to a more normal rainfall.

Once I survived the harrowing drive (which after talking to my airship, it was just as terrible on Friday night), it was an all around great weekend. I had told mom before I left that I wasn’t going to go next year because of the timing. Screw that I’ll make it work just like I did this time. My airship decided NOT to compete in the weekend long steampunk Olympics (good in a way because a) I didn’t want to. They had SO many writing panels I didn’t want to miss and b) they deserve to have a break and not be ‘on’ because if you compete that’s about all you can do. Bad in a way because the registration cost would have gone to the charity, NAMI (National alliance of Mental Illness)).

My first panel was the Cherie Priest Feature Hour. If you don’t know her, Ms Priest is the author of Boneshaker, one of the few steampunk novels I’ve actually liked. (I need to read the rest). She was funny and kind and obviously considerate of her fans. Her latest is not steampunk but leaning more toward well honestly it’s like my Soldiers of the Sun a historical urban fantasy. She called it Art Deco punk and of all places set in Cassadaga, Florida giving a paranormal cause to the fires there in the 1920s. Many of you know I lived with evil_little_dog in Cassadaga. I loved how protective she was of the spiritualists there and had some absolutely hysterical stories about her tour of the place. My favorite was from inside the Colby Temple where some guy looked up at the ceiling and saw several large black orbs and freaked out. He ran out of the temple saying he couldn’t sit under the devil’s balls. The guide pointed up and asked someone else in the tour what the balls said. They were Bose speakers (and now some of the spiritualists call them the devil’s balls jokingly). And oddly in fulfillment of a prophecy, now that the hotel has been sold to someone more in line with the spiritualist movement Spirit Lake is refilling. I got to talk to her briefly about living there.

Sadly however I wasn’t as bright as my shipmates. I didn’t buy the books early in anticipation of the book signings because I am an idiot (and a tired one). Brimstone was sold out. In fact literally everything Ms Priest had was sold out. I snagged the last copy of her Lizzie Borden series book #1 (which wasn’t a series I had thought much about but I wanted SOMETHING signed). Also sadly this left me with about 20 minutes or less to eat lunch before the K.W. Jeter hour so, thinking I didn’t actually like his book Infernal Devices (even though this IS the man who coined the term steampunk) I went off to find lunch (sadly that meant Bob Evans).

I went to the Mark Twain against Humanity panel which was about the only disappointing one of the day. It was basically a man cosplaying Twain and reading some of his more misanthropic writings. He did do a good job of it but as tired as I was (and after a lunch of sugary crepes) I was too sleepy. I did go to the self pub/Indie pub panel as I had talked briefly about missing the writing panel and they had overheard me saying almost no one had come to the writing workshop and please come to the last one! I looked at their names and thought, oh god, one of them is a Dreamspinner author. They didn’t talk too much about that until afterward with me privately. She is also on the outs with DSP over the poor promotion of SF/Fantasy works (so seriously it isn’t just me being uber-sensitive and I’ll leave her name out of this just in case).

After that I found a great Korean place right next door with some delicious beef bibimbab that came out in a sizzling stone bowl and was way too much to eat. I had only about 15 minutes to chill in my hotel (and stow my leftovers in the fridge) before going back to the con. I attended the steampunk genre panel with Cherie Priest, Leanne Renee Hieber (who I had met at the Ohioana book fest), K.W. Jeter, Maurice Broaddus (who I think was a late replacement for another author as that author wasn’t around and his name wasn’t in the guest list) and Diana Pho (editor for Tor.com). It was a fantastic panel and one of the things that came out of it was that anyone who thinks steampunk is there to reenforced white male supremacy is missing the point. The point is to subvert history and give voice to those who didn’t have one (really backed by Ms Pho who is Asian and Mr. Broaddus who is of Jamaican/African descent). I think I’ll talk more about this on Jana’s blog. I’m sorry I didn’t know about Mr. Broaddus’s stuff earlier because he entered the genre after a joking tweet he should write one called Pimp My Airship and everyone wanted it (I believe you can read it on line). I bought his Buffalo Soldier (African steampunk set in Jamaica which sounded too cool) the next day but he wasn’t around that I could see to sign it.

I stuck around to hear the LGBTQ panel with Ms Pho and Ashley Rogers, a trans woman playwright and comedienne. It was very good. We talked all sorts of things including bigendered/gender fluid (as one of my shipmates is) One thing that came out of it. Tor.com thinks it’s more bad marketing on DSP and other small presses fault vs a lack of interest in queer SF so I need to keep them in mind in the future.

After that came well, Victorian Erotica, an hour of looking at dirty pictures and literature from the 1800s to 1920. It was packed (so I’m not the only pervert). Humans love their porn. They related a tale of a raid on one studio in the 1890s revealed 130,000 dirty photos. Go Victorians. After that came my airship’s party with airship Ashanti. One of my mates is a brewer with a really cool set up. He had a growler of wheat which was tasty but the big brew was chocolate peanut butter stout I could have drank ALL night. And someone else gave me a saisson rye from his growler (and I learned nothing in my long years about accepting drinks from strange men it appears). I danced a little then headed down to hear the act that in part made me want to go in the first place. (I learned later I should have stayed up at that party a little longer because all the authors showed up!!).

I went, instead to the Voltaire concert. I haven’t been to one in YEARS, not since I-Con (and later when I mentioned that to him, his eyebrows shot up, yeah I’m an old fan). It was crowded. I stood on the sidelines for a while then realized why am I doing this? Get your butt down in the dance pit and I spent the rest of the night there shuffling around (okay so I don’t dance well any more) and singing and having a great time. I will share a couple songs (but not tonight). Voltaire is funny, bawdy, foul-mouthed aging Goth (so I have things in common). He spent the night fantasizing about Johnny Depp and being a geek (and did make one young kid’s night when he kissed him. I think he’s bi (though some of the songs on the Star Trek/Star Wars geeky cd I bought were shockingly a bit misogynistic/bad gay stereotype so that was a disappointment). I did get two cds including the aforementioned Bi-Trekual which is a bunch of filk songs, some of which are great and some deeply disappointed me (or maybe I’m being oversensitive).

I stumbled back to the hotel to watch Class then back to the party which wrapped up at around 230. Got up at 7 the next day to start it all again (though when I got back to my hotel my spot was taken and I had to park in Timbuktu but what bugged me was someone was sleeping in front of my place in a van. Yeah called the front desk out on that).

Sometimes being alone works out. I got to sit at the counter in Bob’s for breakfast instead of waiting forever. I did go to the writing work shop and read Zvon’s story that I shared with you. Other than it ‘escalated fast’ they liked it until Zvon turned up with a septic arm. They felt it was too outside his head but gave me great ideas about adding in the sense of smell to his illness (and they’re right, there’s no real reaction to Zvon’s dad’s betrayal).

From there it was Cherie Priest’s reading hour which was fantastic. It was followed by K.W. Jeter’s reading hour. I was glad I went but honestly I didn’t like the story. I did end up getting something signed by him, one of his Star Wars novels because that’s all that was left. I did behave myself pretty well. I got a pair of lens for my costume and nothing else. Well I could make most of the jewelry and really do they not realize half the steampunkers are plus sized (almost everything was small). There were some large corsets but I went back to the place five times and not once did they wait on me so…. After Jeter’s talk I headed home.

It was a good weekend. Glad I went. Pictures tomorrow maybe because my internet is being ridiculous. .53 mbps down and .33 mbps up, no way I could upload anything.