Day: March 31, 2008

One of the biggest surprises at Ad Astra was that I had as many or more contacts as Howard did. This is because Julie Czerneda was launching her anthology Misspelled during the convention and I have a story coming out in and anthology next year that is co-editied by Julie and Rob St. Martin. By that one short story sale, I was instantly connected to nearly 20 people. Granted, it is a somewhat tenuous connection at best, but people instantly had a place to file the memory of me in their brains. It was a place to start conversations.

It was a joy to see Julie Czerneda again. I did not get to talk to her as much as I would have liked, because she was always busy and frequently surrounded by groups of authors whose stories she has published. Julie is truly amazing and wonderful to new authors. Half the Misspelled authors at the convention counted that as their first sale. Apparently once you’ve been published in one of Julie’s anthologies, you’re always one of “her” authors and she does her best to take care of you. I did get to talk quite a lot to Robert St. Martin who co-edited the Ages of Wonder anthology which accepted my story. Rob, Marc MacKay, and I had several fascinating conversations during the course of the convention. I’m very pleased that I’ll get to “belong” both to Julie and to Rob since they both helped me make my first professional publication. I’m sad that I won’t be able to come back to Ad Astra next year for the launch of the book which contains my story. But I’m very glad to meet so many of these people in person.

I also had connections at the convention through the online writer’s forum Codex. There were only a few Codexians there, but each of those people also knew people. That’s how networking goes. I meet one person who introduces me to 4 people. Then those people know even more people. It all adds up and the world starts to feel like a very small place. What was interesting was that Howard and I made contacts with different groups of people. He met people that I did not and vice versa. I think it worked well, but we are not practiced at doing conventions together yet. We’d kind of pictured me going along as Howard’s “handler”, instead I had an agenda of my own. This was not a problem. It was just different from what we expected.

I suspect we won’t be really practiced at attending conventions together for quite a few years because the opportunities are going to be rare. We’re going to both try to go to Worldcon this August, but that is a different experience entirely because we’ll be running a dealer’s table. For that convention, I will have no agenda other than making the dealer’s table work. Anything on top of that will be a bonus. After Worldcon, there will be nothing for all of 2009 because Howard intends to take a convention sabbatical to crank out the books as fast as he can.

I think in the end that our convention attendance together will have us doing some things together and some things apart, but still very much a team.

Today is my day to decompress from the convention. Howard’s post-convention decompression usually consists of him sleeping a lot. For me, the decompression is much more based in sorting through and making sense of everything I hauled home with me.

Naturally there is the physical baggage. We bought things in Canada and I need to find places for them to belong. I need to dump the clothes out where they can be washed. I need to count the inventory that we brought home and stack it back with the other books in the basement. I need to empty the suitcases completely, checking carefully in all the pockets for odd pieces of paper shoved hastily in “safe” places. Then I need to put the suitcases away.

Associated with the physical baggage, particularly the inventory, there is a need to assess the profitability of the convention. I need to double check the math on the sales to make sure that our wonderful dealer got paid enough. I need to figure out how many books we sold, how many we gave away, and how many we brought home. Ditto on posters and pins. I need to file this information where I can access it when deciding how much stuff to mail to the next convention.

Then there is all the contact information that I need to go through. We met lots of people at the convention. Some of them gave us business cards. Some of them just wrote contact info on various pieces of paper. I need to find all of that and sort through it before I forget why I need the contact info in the first place. There are half-bartered deals that I need to finish up. There are books that I’ve promised to send. There are people I promised to talk to further. There are blogs and websites to look at. I don’t want to be left staring at a business card and not remembering who gave it to me or why. Even more important to write down are the people with whom I want to communicate further, who did not give me a business card. Over the next week I need to close the loop on all of these contacts. I need to email people, or send books, or buy things from them.

Last, but definitely not least, is the mental sorting. I crammed my head full of new experiences and thoughts. I must sort through those and record them. I need to see how these new ideas bounce off of my old ideas. I need to blog. This will also take some time. I can’t get it all done in a single day, but I do need to take notes to make sure that my return to regular routine doesn’t cause me to forget the thoughts completely. I’ve had so many cool thoughts. I don’t want to lose them.

There is also sleeping. I need to do more of that.