The Weekend of Dragoning – A Dragon Con Recap

On Labor Day weekend every year, more than 80,000 people descend on Atlanta, Georgia to celebrate dozens and dozens of fandoms, from Star Trek to Vampire Hunter D to X-Men to Firefly. The event takes over five host hotels and two of the America’s Mart buildings, and hosts hundreds of guests — writers, actors, artists, bands, and more. To say it is a giant party is to severely under-represent the atmosphere. 🙂

In this Dragon Con recap, I thought I’d show both the fun and the work. I moderated three or four panels this year, which is about average, and was a participant on a couple others. Since I do work a lot during the main days of the convention, I tend to do my partying early when I can.

Thursday

My first order of business every year, once I get settled into my hotel room, is to schlep over to the Sheraton (3.5 blocks away) to pick up the track binder and volunteer badges for the Writers Track. Then I hoof it back to the Hyatt and hand them over to my Director, Nancy Knight.

This year, we didn’t have any Thursday programming on the track, so I was pretty much free to goof off until the next day. Woo!

I’d scheduled drinks with my friend Steve Saffel for 4:30. I’ve known Steve for years, and while we sometimes see each other at other book-related events, Dragon Con is always our time to catch up. Steve is a Senior Acquisitions Editor (aka the Dark Editorial Overlord) at Titan Books, so our conversations are always a fun mix of what’s going on in our lives, what’s going on in publishing, and what we’re each working on at the moment. Incidentally, Steve purchased the very first advance copy of my book, Jivaja, which will be officially released on October 15!

Thursday evening, I had a meet-up with some online friends over at… of course, the Sheraton. So I hiked back over there around 7 to hang out with some geeky peeps.

And since I was already in that hotel, I decided to drop in on the 80s Awkward Dance Party, hosted by the Dragon Con X-Track. Being a kid of the 80s, this was right up my alley! I was really only planning on staying for a little while. I ended up dancing my booty off with friends til 10:30, when they closed the party down!

My friend JP was DJing the 8-Bit Bash, put on by the Video Gaming Track. And, of course, that party was in the Westin. Now, the Westin is located back the way I came, but past the Hyatt and another 2 blocks uphill. Sooo… I hiked over there to say hi to JP.

If nothing else, you’ll get your steps in at Dragon Con!

I popped into the 8-Bit Bash, which was a huge dance party in a ballroom with video games all along the edges of the room — arcade games as well as console games. I said hi to JP and then… because he’s a great DJ and I’m easily corruptible, I stayed and danced for another hour!

Then my 50-year-old legs said, “Girl, you need to find a bed. Now.”

And so I did.

Friday

All of that was the partying. Now for the work! As a note, there are a lot of panels over the course of the weekend. I’m just pulling out some particular highlights.

In Social Media as an Effective Tool for Authors, there was a lot of really good advice. A few tidbits:

• Be consistent in your branding, everywhere
• Be professional — i.e., remember that something you say can completely blow up on social media
• Pick one social media platform and master it — choose the one that speaks to you, whether Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or any of the other platforms
• When ready, introduce one or two other platforms to expand your audience
• Be aware of the Law of Diminishing Returns – how much time and effort you invest should be proportional to how much return you get

The next panel was When Life Interrupts, where I acted as moderator. The panelists were Hawkings Austin, Peter S. Beagle, and Octavia Randolph (if you like Norse history and the Vikings, check out her website!). This was a lovely panel to moderate. All of the guests were well-spoken and the discussion revolved around how to keep writing when life is basically in upheaval.

But we didn’t just focus on bad upheavals. Ms. Randolph, for example, had just moved internationally after paring down all her belongings. She moved to an island she’d wanted to live on for years. So a very happy thing, but also disruptive.

Each panelist simply gave some ideas on how they handled this sort of stress. For some, being very meticulous and focused was important. For others, allowing themselves space to not-work was important. It basically came down to doing what is good for you specifically, but not falling into the trap of just never doing anything.

On a side note, if you ever get an opportunity to meet or listen to Peter Beagle speak, do it! Most questions to the panel, he answered by telling a story. And that man is an amazing storyteller! (Completely unintentionally, Speculative Chic did a Book Club post on The Last Unicorn recently!)

Late Friday night, I was a panelist for Fiction After Dark, which was about stories with more adult concepts. This was a fun one — it always is! — but especially because somehow, I issued a challenge to the writers in the audience.

That challenge? To finish a story and submit it somewhere.

And then I offered to hold them accountable for that via email. I’m not really sure what inspired me to do that (aside from the Fireball I was drinking), but there it is! So I’m hoping to hear stories at next year’s Dragon Con about all of the authors who got some traction on their careers because they’re actually submitting rather than just worrying their heads over submitting. 🙂

Saturday

Saturday morning, I moderated a panel called Steampunk/Urban Fantasy/High Fantasy, etc. Not a very descriptive title. 😉 It was about whether these genres were on the wane, whether readers were getting tired of them. Panelists were Jack Campbell, David B. Coe, Keith R. A. DeCandido, Jennifer St. Giles, and Trisha J. Woolridge (who has a lot of great links for authors on her website).

We quickly dealt with the question of whether the genres are on the wane (no) and whether readers were tired of them (also, no). And then we got down to the Q&A. We talked about business stuff, like how the genres have changed in the last several years, to practical craft stuff, like worldbuilding.

In the late afternoon, we had the Editors Speak Out panel, which I always enjoy moderating. We had editors from Baen Books, Tor, Titan Books (yep, my friend Steve!), Tachyon Publications, and Penguin Random House (I still think they should have called it Random Penguin House when they merged!). Prior to the panel, I’d polled the audience to see what they wanted to know about. And I used those suggestions to fuel the discussion before opening up to specific Q&A.

We started with “What does an editor do, in a practical sense?,” which led to the guests explaining how they do edits and work with their clients. That was really interesting, especially because it’s clear that there’s no single way to do that particular job.

A lot of people wanted to know the weirdest or freakiest experience they’d had with an author. I mean, a lot of people wanted to know that. So we got some funny stories about people sending manuscripts with chocolate, stuffed animals, and other strange stuff. (TL;DR: don’t add anything to your submission except the stuff you’re supposed to have!)

Sunday

One of the things that I love about being connected in the writing world is being able to make introductions for people, whether professional introductions or fan introductions. I got to do both this year!

After the Mighty Men of SF/Fantasy panel, I was able to introduce a friend of mine to one of his long-time favorite authors, Kevin J. Anderson. My friend Victor had met me just after the panelists had taken the stage, and so I pulled him behind the curtain and we caught up while the audience enjoyed the panelists’ answers. As the panel was finishing up, I discovered that Victor was a bit of a fanboy when it came to Kevin’s work. So when Kevin came off the stage (he had just received his Dragon Award for Best Alternate History Novel, so he was still carting the thing around), I was able to introduce Victor and take a photo of them together. Yay!

And the other fun one was a freelance client I’m currently working with, Jenn. Her book is a really cool sort of weird SF western. I dragged her around and introduced her to an agent, Lucienne Diver, and a senior editor at Tor, Claire Eddy. I’ve known both Claire and Lucienne for years, so it was great to help create those professional connections for Jenn.

It’s always fun to meet an idol or someone who might help us with our dreams. I’ve been in both sets of shoes before. But I have to say, I get a lot of joy from being in the shoes of the person doing the connecting too. It makes me feel good. 🙂

The last panel I moderated was called Success… What Happens Now? and included Keith R. A. DeCandido, Seressia Glass, A.J. Hartley, and John D. Ringo. Different people on the panel had different success trajectories — some rose as if catapulted; others had a slow ascent. This made for some good and varied information for the audience on different things that come from success, some of which you wouldn’t think about right away.

One of the excellent pieces of advice given: Get an accountant. ​You need help with those royalty statements come tax time!

Sunday night after the panels, I made it a point to hang out with the writers. I always do this once or twice, at least, over the course of the weekend. If you’ve never been to a writers’ convention or another convention where a lot of writers attend, you may not know that there’s always a central location where writers can be found.

The bar.

That’s not a joke or a cliché either. It’s simply accurate. Writers congregate in bars.

At Dragon Con, this is specifically the Westin Bar. So Sunday night, I walked the couple blocks to the Westin. It was already a bit late, so the crowd had thinned out some. But there were still plenty of folks there. Most of those still left were DC regulars and authors I see around pretty often. But I did get to meet a few new folks, both new to me and new to DC. Always fun.

I did make a great connection with someone who is helping to put together a new convention in Atlanta. I’ll talk more about that later, but I’m SUPER excited, as I’m going to have a meaty role in helping get this convention going.

Even if you don’t drink, if you’re a writer, make it to the bar. You’re gonna meet the coolest people!

Oh, also, at Dragon Con, you never know when you’re gonna find swag! Dragon*Con Swag n’ Seek is a group dedicated to bringing joy and fun to Dragon Con! They spend time before the event creating cool little things to leave around for people to find. When I was at the Westin bar, hanging with the writers, I found this little girl:

Isn’t she cute?? The note says:

If you like, I’m yours to keep —

Share to #dragonconswagnseek

If not, it’s okay — I don’t mind

Please leave me for someone else to find!

Interestingly, I have a little collection of these types of ducks scattered around my house, so it seems very serendipitous that she came to me. 🙂

So, that’s the Dragon Con wrap-up! As you might notice, I don’t really get out to other tracks very often, sadly. It’s okay though. I have lots of fun with my writer family. 🙂

Did you go to Dragon Con? What were your highlights?

 

 

 

Unless attributed otherwise, all images in this post are property of Dragon Con and used with permission.