Yes, I had a great time at Eastercon: Dysprosium. Yes, it’s taken me a month to even begin to sift through the crazy-great things I did and learned about there.
Here’s what I did on Friday, day 1.
I got to the hotel of the con all aquiver with nerves, mostly because I had just the day before dropped and broken my beloved kindle, and also because I wasn’t emailed a confirmation number for my membership. I spent the morning in abject fear that I would be refused a badge, but when registration opened, I found all I had to do was hand them my name and that was it. I didn’t even have to show ID. Why didn’t I claim to be Jim Butcher?
Anyway, I eased my nerves during the wait by talking with some of the other con-goers, one of whom recommended.
DAUGHTER OF SMOKE AND BONE by Laini Tailor (which is apparently like THE SHARING KNIFE, which is one of my favorite books).
Then I met up with my fellow members of the Conclave of Eostre, Kim Moravec and Tex Thompson. Most of what happened next is unprintable, but Kim recommended some resources to help me with my Ship-states project, including THE FLOATING BROTHEL and “Banished.”
Kim also recommended TITAN by John Varley which is apparently Petrolea? We’ll just see about that!
Then there was some truly terrible scrumpy, more unprintable conversation, and a panel discussion with Tom Lloyd, Seanan McGuire, and Adrian Tchaikovski about cryptids, plastic-eating seashell fungus, WAR WITH THE NEWTS, Prehistoric Australian megafauna in aboriginal myth cycles, and the virgin birth of male komodo dragons.
I had signed up for a kaffeeklatch with , not because I knew anything at all about her or her work, but because I wanted to know more about this “romance” thing writers keep talking about. Whole books about human emotions? Preposterous.
That kaffeeklatch was easily the best one I attended at Dysprosium, stocked with fascinating people, not to mention C.E. Murphey, herself, whose hard-headed approach to her work I very much admire. We discussed some amazing and crazy things, such as:
PEOPLE OF THE TIGER by Wayne Edward Clark
Murphey’s books, including URBAN SHAMAN (with shamans), HEART OF STONE (with gargoyles), and QUEEN’S BASTARD (alt history and apparently pretty evil). You can bet those are on my kindle now.
PELQUIN’S COMET by Ian Whates
Judith Tarr, who according to C.E. Murphey is like Guy Gavriel Kay but better 🙂 Also she trains Lipizzan horses??
Janny Wurts (similar to George R. R. Martin)
“A female character who isn’t someone’s inspiration”
“The replacement killers” (a movie)
And that was just the first day!