Monday.

Started off away from the con – had ‘coffee’ with the lovely Alison and Kate. We were meant to go to Brunetti’s in the city, but they were closed. So we wandered to Burke St, and sat in a cafe for 15 min or so having ordered coffee and not getting any love; then we left and went to Laurent (I want to go there a lot), and I had a delicious chocolate and almond croissant. And a hot chocolate.

Then, back to the con.

And then to lunch. Took the gang (it really felt a bit like a gang by that time) to Deli France, and it finally proved that Melbourne really is the Food Capital.

Then back to the con. And sitting in the lobby, to be in a convenient place to see people signing out of the hotel. Rachel was good and went to the closing ceremony, but I never did hear if it was worthwhile.

Lots of sitting, lots of talking… me gaining review copies of stuff to read, particularly for LastShortStory.

I left at about 4pm, because J was going to be home at about 4.30 or so and he was a bit sick. It was hard to leave. Good friends in three days? Crazy, but true.

Thus endeth my first convention.

Sunday.

I skipped on the earliest panel, feeling a bit guilty because surely that’s what the con is meant to be about? – but then I spent time with Alisa and Tansy et al, and it was ok. (At least, I think that’s what I did… maybe that was the morning I read? I dunno; I forget.) I did go to the panel “Science fiction and Fantasy in the School Curriculum” – which was sort of interesting, except that the main person on the panel was a bit of a twit. I got quite annoyed by him. Particularly when he was saying things like: “All due respect to my fellow educators…[insert insulting comment here].” Very annoying. Oh, and then there were the “only geeks who get beaten up at lunch read scifi/fantasy at school” comments.

Anyway, after listening to how people use/have used the genres in curriculum – and a few kids whinge about how creative writing never gets taught (a. some would say it can’t be taught; b. yes many of us don’t know how to teach it because it’s not a prereq to become an English teacher and that is not a bad thing about us; and c. … whatever) – I decided to have my say. I asked, basically, why we should include it. I understand the desire to get kids to enjoy your likes – heck, that’s why I teach history – but why were they getting so het up about it? Cath Ortlieb gave me a good answer… Ian got all huffy under the collar. Which was pretty funny. And then, because it was that time and because I had made my point, I left with Rachel to go to Cassiphone’s book launch. I won a book! And, in fact, I won Splashdance Silver, which I already own but got signed, so that’s very “ooooh.” Oh, and chocolate. Lovely. Lost Shimmaron looks like it will be a very entertaining series; I liked the mermaids in Seacastle.

Back to the con… and to an hour of movie trailers! Much fun! It’s great watching trailers with like-minded people. Yay Transformers.

For the rest of the afternoon, I stooged around. Went to a little bit of a “Create your own Space Opera” panel hosted by Paul Kidd (two space squid make a double decapod…). Missed the apocalypse panel. Went to dinner at a very dodgy cafe with Alisa, Ben and Rachel… and then went to the Orb #7 launch and the preliminary screening of The Liminal. A very funny (sometimes deliberate, sometimes not) film made on a shoe string. Most of the cast was there, which was nice. And then there was Renaldo, First Sheep in Space. Which was quite funny, although I imagine funnier if you know the fans involved. I particularly liked him starring in Violence of the Lambs, and Baa Wars.

The good vs evil panel was good (see how I’m picking up almost from where I left off?), and Tansy provided a good moderator – and even got a few words in edgewise, despite efforts to the contrary.

I stayed in the room afterwards, and listened to Gill Pollack talk about food and how it is important in world-building, and give some interestin foody anecdotes. She also threw chocolate at/to the crowd, but since I had already received a few of her choc beetles I declined. I did try the grains of paradise, which are/were supposed to be an aphrodisiac… no dice.

I was then thinking of staying on for a talk on new stuff in alternative history, but given who the speaker was I left. Rather quickly. Enough said about that… I then hung out with all my new-found pals, went and had dinner at a Japanese restaurant in China Town (go figure), and made it back for the free booze and nibbles at the launch of Dark Space (which I’m looking forward to; I think I managed to get named second reviewer for ASif!) and The Darkness Within (eh; not so much). And then – the Ditmars! which apparently recognise “excellence in science fiction, fantasy and horror by Australians” in the previous calendar year. GirlieJones won herself three!! Including Best New Talent! Ah, vote rigging, so much fun… but seriously, it was great; the look on her face was priceless (each time!), and they were of course well deserved.

Finally, it was off to my very first Room Party, hosted by Cat Sparks and Rob Hood, to launch Daikaju #2 – very exciting. As were the drinks: champagne with blue curacao and a lolly dinosaur. Excellent!

And then home, and to bed.

One thing I had to decide was how many panels to attend. I knew that at least Alisa and Tansy weren’t planning on going to many, but I figured that since I had paid the money to be there – and it was my first con – I should try and get as much out of it as possible. Plus, I was still feeling a bit nervous about all the new people I had met and whether we would manage to keep being friendly for the whole weekend, so I figured I need somewhere to go for refuge, should it come down to it!

I went to one of the first panels of the day… on Second Life, of all things. People who… go on? play on? use? utilise? Second Life fascinate and bewilder me. I found out that people really do make money from it, and was fascinated that they had an in-world funeral for someone because – and these are the dude’s words – the avatar’s player died in the real world. Eventually, though, I got bored, so I left and went to the end of a panel discussion on cliche in fantasy – and wished I had been there for the whole of it, because it sounded like they were actually having a fun and intelligent conversation.

Rachel and I then went along to Richard Harland’s “HIstory of imaginative fiction for YA/children,” which was really more a history of childhood/changing perceptions thereof, rather than the books that have been part of it (someone actually asked him whether Gulliver’s Travels was meant to be for kids… hello!! Are you kidding?!). It would have been more interesting if I didn’t already know pretty much everything he was saying.

Rachel then left because she didn’t want to hear Isobelle Carmody talking about the next book in the Obernewtyn series. I stayed, because I’m a bit of a sucker. She was interesting enough – and she confessed that The Stone Key will, in fact, be the penultimate book, not the ultimate, because she couldn’t fit it all in… it’s meant to be out in November, and then the last should be out next year.

I will now take some time out to whinge about the programme of Convergence2. It was Convention Lite. I understand there were some problems with the guests of honour, but… the panels were not what I expected. I wasn’t interested in the ‘how to be a writer’ panels, but I understand why they were there and was happy for writers to get that forum for dicussing ideas. But there weren’t that many of them, and there weren’t many others either. I was expecting more like the panel I went to in the afternoon – “IS fantasy really all about good vs evil?” – which I was interested in and had to attend because Tansy was on the panel…. But surely this is the very place where these sorts of genre questions can be discussed? Like what makes things fantasy (which I know has been discussed previously), how science-y should scifi be, etc…? Maybe all of these things have been discussed at previous cons and everyone else is just jaded.

This has turned into a long post, and I am tired. I shall leave it here and continue anon (where anon = tomorrow, or any time after that).

Yeh, so who did I think I was kidding? Me, start doing marking at 9.30 on a Tuesday night? When I’ve been out to dinner with a friend on a flying visit from Pasadena (UCLA, don’t you know… fluid mechanics, in fact), and J has managed to breathe enough to play trumpet (just) so I stayed and listened to Dry White Toast practise for a while (pacing around to get my steps up – that’s a whole other story – and reading), and then talking to cassiphone for ages.

Marking? Pft. They can wait.

So. NatCon. Convergence 2. My very first convention (and didn’t it show).

I was, to be honest, quite nervous. Meeting people in real life is a bit nerve-racking, when you’ve got on so well over email… and then there were the fears of the Real, Uber Geeks who might be there and who might either weird me out or make me feel inadequate.

Fortunately, I picked Alisa up from the airport on the Thursday night, and we talked pretty much the whole way back to the hotel, so at least I had a fairly good idea that we could, indeed, hold a real-time conversation as well as an email conversation.

On Friday, I rocked up to the hotel and met up again with Alisa, and met Ben, which was cool – and then off to meet Tansy, thus completing our quartet. Tansy’s partner Finchy and daughter Raeli were there too – she graciously allowed me to sit down, which was nice, and we played Giraffes Falling Off Chairs a bit. I also met Rachel then, and daughter Abby – starting something of a trend for the whole weekend, really, that group. Alisa, Rachel and I went off to look at buttons for a while (don’t get me either of them started! Abby was very funny – “I’ll have a handful of the red ones…”), then I ditched them when they also went to look at fabric. Went back to the hotel, got all officially rego’ed up, and had a look through my convention bag – always a good way to judge the quality of a conference, in my opinion. I got Aurealis #11, which doesn’t have a cover, which I thought was special until I heard someone had #1 (new idea of the weekend: round up back-issues of the major Aussie small press – I’m thinking ASIM, Aurealis, Borderlands… and read them, and then I can look like I’ve been in this scene for much, much longer than I actually have). Plus a bunch of other promo stuff that I still haven’t had a chance to look at.

Dinner was with a whole big bunch of people, because Cat just seems to gather people in her wake like a mini tornado. Have to admit, I was a bit scared by the horror writer group, until I discovered they are actually all lovely. Which was a relief. Fourteen of us went to the Shark Fin Inn, and it was all very jolly. I felt a bit out of it for a while, but eventually realised that was just me, not them, so I got over it.

So that was the first day.

Edit: I can’t believe I forgot the after-dinner entertainment! There was a Great Debate, about whether mass media is killing our beloved genre. Cat was on the against team, and her partner Rob Hood was on the affirmative. Jack Dann was the moderator, and as a Jack Dann newbie I thought he was pretty funny (I can imagine it would get old quickly). Apparently there was a deal of confusion between the teams about what the topic meant and who should be saying what, and the first speaker was way, way out in left field. I ended up agreeing with Cat’s team, because I already thought that anyway – mass media isn’t killing scifi and fantasy.

Then we went to the bar. People were getting drunk. Alisa managed to avoid people she wanted to avoid. It was good.

I have an enormous amount to say about Convergence 2, and I’m not going to say it now. It needs to sit in my head for a while, and ferment. And brew a little. And… digest… and other appropriate bodily verbs. Basically I need to get around it, my very first convention. It was a bit overwhelming. But the best bit was meeting people, of course – my lastshortstory buddies, and others whom I didn’t know from a bottle of disinfectant beforehand, and now will certainly be keeping in contact with. Incredible what three and a half intense days will do, plus a shared love of scifi and fantasy.

So stay tuned. Ruminations on the con, and the nature of good and evil, to come….