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Balticon 44 Review – Glorious… ity… ness. Yeah

Normally I would record this, but work this week has been crazy and it’s already been almost a month since Balticon ended. So here’s the brain dump. I hope you enjoy it.

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Balticon 44 was simply… glorious.

Thursday:

Drove to Hunt Valley, MD, a little northwest of Baltimore. The trip up can be best summed up in two parts. Part 1 was the 6 hours it took me to drive from Charlotte to I-66 around 30 miles to the west of DC. Part 2 was the 3 hours it took me to drive the last 85 miles. These two parts were broken up nicely by a young bear, probably four or five months old, trying to cross the interstate. I avoided the bear and I believe he made it back to the woods. I could just imagine the other young bears saying “Do it. Do it. You wuss. What are you, a fawn?”

But arrive I did, and after relaxing for a bit in the hotel room, the greatest roomies in the world, Chooch and Viv, arrived. If you listened to the interview I did with them on Into the Blender, you know how much I love these guys. And our friendship only grew stronger through the weekend, even though I snored loud enough for Viv to yell at me to roll over (from the other bed, of course). And since Patrick McLean didn’t arrive until Saturday night, I had a bed to myself for the first two nights (always a bonus).

Friday:

Friday I spent my first hour at a dealer table, trying to sell Murder at Avedon Hill (and other wonderful Dragon Moon Press titles). I would have stayed longer, but I had my reading at 5 pm (I’ll be releasing the audio from the reading soon). I figured five people would be there at most, considering Mur Lafferty and Jonathan Maberry had readings at the same time.

But to my wondrous surprise, the room was pretty full–so everything after that was, again, bonus. I was a little worried because I only had my iPad, and all I had was my novel on it (available on the Kindle for $2.39 people! :-) ); I was afraid people might be a little tired of me reading from that, but Tee Morris was in the audience so I pulled him up to the front and read 40 minutes from a chapter that featured Father Jorrus (the vampire hunt). He voiced Father Jorrus and everyone seemed to enjoy the reading.

When I was done I went to the end of Mur’s reading, two rooms down from mine, and she had a full room as well! Podcast Novelists for the win!

Later that evening I was on two “live show” panels. The first was for Geek Radio Daily. Billy Flynn and The Flynstress were there of course, with me and Podcasting’s Rich Sigfrit. We talked about the convention, did segments on gaming, new media, and focused on Murder at Avedon Hill, which again, was a bonus. They played the NSFW promo I did for the book release with Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff, which got a lot of laughs. Hell, I was happy just sitting between the Flynstress and Rich, listening to his impressions… actually, I was just happy sitting beside the Flynstress. I just noticed that they haven’t released the audio from the Live Show. Hope it wasn’t lost like the live show at Dragon*Con last year…

The last event for Saturday was a Live Into the Blender, which is Chooch and Viv’s show. Christiana Ellis and Command Line (Thomas Gideon) were also on the panel. We talked about movies, the ongoing trend of remakes/reboots, and gaming as well. I got to share my story of Patrick McLean trying out Red Dead Redemption at my house, which included him shooting my horse multiple times just for fun.

Saturday:

…was a busy day. I was on an expanded panel that Paulette Jaxton and I did last year called “Herding Cats,” which was about producing a multi-voiced podcast novel/audio drama. As expected, I had the most voice actors of any podcast represented on the panel. :-)

Later that evening was Book Launch party for Murder at Avedon Hill. I was proud to share the evening with Nathan Lowell and Patrick McLean. The party room was full, and instead of simply schmoozing with everyone (which was our plan), someone suggested that we read from each other’s books. Nathan and I read from Patrick’s book, Patrick read from Quarter Share, and then Nathan Lowell read the prologue from Murder at Avedon Hill. Hearing one of the great voices of podcast fiction reading my prose was a highlight not only of Balticon but of my short history as a writer. It was a wonderful event, and more than one attendee came up to me on Sunday saying that they thought we should “take our act on the road.” Too bad Nate lives in Colorado, or I’d like to.

My only regret from the launch party? We had a room full of podcasters, and no one recorded the event.

After the launch party we had the New Media costume party, hosted by my roomies Chooch and Viv. It was a lot of fun, and for the first time I spent money and wore a killer costume.

Sunday:

Sunday turned out to be a great day as well. I had the pleasure of interviewing Artist Guest of Honor Howard Tayler, which I released earlier this month. Later that afternoon I was on a panel that turned out to be the most fun of any panel during the convention. It was a music panel called “From Story to Song.” It featured readings from five authors, and songs sung by various filk singers, songs about the author or inspired by fiction from those authors. I got to do a five minute reading in front of around sixty people that had never heard of MaAH:

[flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwhxCavPtWg w=480 h=385]

And then Kim Fortuner sang the “Damn You Holyfield” song:

[flash http://www.youtube.com/v/7-xdUS_RgBg w=480 h=385]

To say she rocked it doesn’t do her justice. And on top of that the last reader was Convention Guest of Honor Tanya Huff, which made the panel even more special.

Later Sunday night came what has become a yearly event, the live Evo at 11 podcast.

(more…)

Reading from Balticon 44

Here is the audio from my reading at Balticon 44. Tee Morris joined me for an impromptu audio drama reading of Chapter 13 from Murder at Avedon Hill. If you have not listened to the podcast novel, there aren’t really any big spoilers here. It was fun, we didn’t take it too seriously, and everyone seemed to have a good time.

Enjoy!

Promo for The Leviathan Chronicles finale follows the reading.

Dragon*Con 2010

Dragon*Con is next weekend. This will be my fifth straight year attending, and the fourth doing panels on the Podcasting track. Here are the panels I will be on, plus a couple of events I’ll be attending. I hope you can come out and join us crazy podcasters in Atlanta!

  • Thursday, Sept. 2nd, 7:30 pm – Star Party 2010 – This is a special event the day before Dragon*Con officially begins, a charity event for The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. The event will be hosted by renowned astronomers and hosts of AstronomyCast, Pamela Gay and Fraser Cain with special appearance by musician George Hrab. (I’m just attending. I’ll be the one looking for extra drink tickets :-) ).
  • Friday, Sept. 3rd, 1:00 pm – Podcasting Track Kick-off Panel – I’m honored to be part of the kick-off panel for the track; my primary goal is to remain calm while being at a table with Tom Merritt, Veronica Belmont, Bobby Blackwolf, Len Peralta, and Brian Ibbott. (Did I mention Veronica Belmont?)
  • Saturday, Sept. 4th, 10:00 am – Podcast Authors Roundtable – with Scott Sigler, Gail Z. Martin, Michael A. Stackpole, Christiana Ellis, and Gabrielle Harbowy
  • Saturday, Sept. 4th, 4:00 pm – 5th Annual Parsec Awards – I’ll be attending and presenting two awards. Gabrielle Harbowy’s Tales of the Children story “Swimming Lessons” is up for the Best Speculative Fiction Story (Short Form), and The Dead Robots’ Society is up for Best Podcast about Speculative Fiction Content Creation.
  • Sunday, Sept. 5th, 2:30 pm – Dead Robots’ Society Live!
  • Sunday, Sept. 5th, 7:00 pm – Geek Radio Weekly Live! – I’ll be in attendance, but have been known to crash the party…

As always, it is sure to be a blast. If you are attending, please stop me and say hi (and yes, I’ll have books for sale if you have been waiting to buy it at D*C!!).

TuacaCon

Saturday evening I am coordinating and co-hosting a virtual convention called TuacaCon. It is an excuse to get together with a lot of friends, both in person and virtually, and show off some of their great talents. There will be readings, interviews, music, and hopefully a surprise or two.

Here’s a quick promo for the event:

TuacaCon was a Blast

I’m going to be posting some videos here from the evening, and I’m already thinking about how to improve things for next year (Yes, there will be a next year). Here’s Part 1 of a skit that Jack Mangan originally created for his Deadpan podcast. I added some video elements and played it as part of the evening’s events.

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