Ad Astra - Part 2

The rest of the weekend is now about to start and will see how it goes.

Saturday evening

Book Launch – Brave New Girls

So it was off to attend another book launch and this one was for a collection fo sci-fi stories featuring brainy young heroines. The actual book isn’t going to be out until August but three of the authors were doing reading from their stories that are part of the book.

Masquerade

Now the Masquerade is sort of a competition for amateurs and this year the show was only about half an hour which worked out really well considering as you can guess there were other things to attend in the evening. I do like attending as I like to see some of the costumes even if I don’t know who the person is suppose to be or anything like that. Seeing the amount of work some people put into their costumes is amazing.

Book Launch – Matthew Bin

One more book launch was on our schedule and again this was Saturday evening. The books sounds really amazing so we picked up a copy of it and now to see when we have the time to actually read it along with everything else that we have to read.

Remainder of the evening

So the remainder of the evening was off to another party which was the GenreCon party and then head back to the room to get some sleep and recharge for Sunday which is the last day of the convention.

Sunday

Of course, by Sunday the energy level is starting to wear out and that is for most of the attendees as we are trying to do a lot of things all weekend long and don’t have a lot of time to relax and recover between the various events.

Project Management for Writers

This panel was to show writers have to move forward on their writing projects. The panelists all used different methods to track their projects and how they were getting things done so it was nice to hear what they all had to say. The two things that I really got out of this session were:

• Time management is also brain management and needs to be managed
• Stop starting and start finishing

Brandon Sanderson – Reading

Once again it was time to get into this panel early to ensure that we could get a seat and that is what we did. The session that was before our panel wasn’t as full so it meant that we could get a good seat and once it was over we moved up right to the front of the room and really enjoyed the reading.

Brandon again did the q&a’s and another reading. Now this reading was really interesting because he told us very little about where the book was part of or anything about it. The reading was great and what he did tell us was the book was very new as it was written on the plane on the way to Toronto from Salt Lake City. It was amazing to hear a reading from a book that was just being written.

Robert Sawyer – Reading

Now this was my final panel of the weekend and again it was a reading by an author that I enjoy reading. Robert Sawyer also did a q&a section and then did a reading from a book that he is currently writing. What is interesting is finding out that this book may never actually come out so we may be the few people that actually got to hear anything about it. Robert Sawyer also apologized about now being at the book signing when he was suppose to be there and once again it was due to the wrong time being on his badge for the signing.

Final notes and observations

The overall convention was a lot of fun and I have to admit that we were both very tired by the time we headed for home. It is always great to see all the friends that we have made and only see at this convention. We see other friends that we see during the year as well so it is a nice mix of friends.

The hotel is great because they deal with a lot of people running around in costumes and also parties that go well into the evening. Now to see how next year’s convention is because it is going to be held in July instead of the normal April or May.

We picked up a couple of other books that were available at the convention but we did keep the number of books down this year which was something for us. Normally the two of us come out of the convention with a pile of books and then realize that we may not have a chance to read them. I did buy one book on Sunday and part of the reasoning with this book was I could get it signed by Brandon Sanderson as soon as I bought it without having to deal with a line up. Now I have a book that is over 1,200 pages so will see when I get to read it.

Conventions can be extremely exhausting like this one is but it is also a lot of fun and I hope that it continues and next year the problems with the panelists schedule won’t happen.