Showing posts with label Ad Astra. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ad Astra. Show all posts

Monday, May 15, 2017

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.

Thursday, May 11, 2017

Ad Astra - Part 1

Ad Astra is a volunteer run science fiction literary convention in Toronto.

Here are some of my notes from the weekend event.

Friday evening is when most of the attendees, vendors, panelists and guests of honour arrive for the weekend. The event runs from 6 pm on the Friday event through to around 5 pm on the Sunday and there are a lot of different things to see and do.

The Guests of Honour this year were:
Brandon Sanderson
Kristen Britain
S.M. Stirling
Eric Choi

My schedule was a little lighter this year but I also wanted a bit of time to relax and see some of the other activities and not just be going to panels like I did a couple of years. So now, here is what I did this weekend with my observations and such.

Friday evening
Book Launch - Brandon Draga
This was a book launch of an author that we have got to know through attending Ad Astra. This was the fourth and final book of a series and we had to go and make sure we got one of the first copies of the book. It is always great to go to a book launch and help support a Canadian author.

Meet and Greet
This is an event held in the ConSuite where the Guests of Honours and Returning Guests of Honours are all together and also a chance to meet and maybe talk with them. This year Brandon Sanderson was one of the more popular guests and when he walked into the ConSuite he realized just how busy it was so he decided to go out into the hall for a while. Because it was busy we also decided to go out in the hall to cool down and am ever happy we did. The result of going out into the hall was the ability to listen to Brandon answer questions and talk with a bunch of attendees. Sure the hall wasn't very wide but it a wonderful chance to be among a small group of people standing and listening to him talk. After about an hour Brandon actually made it into the ConSuite and continued to talk to a group of people in one of the small areas of the room. It was great to see how this went and he did spend the entire two hours of the meet and greet talking to people.

After the meet and greet was over we stayed in the ConSuite for a while and then headed back to our room to relax and prepare for a busy Saturday.

Saturday
The Art of World Building
This was my first panel of the day and one of the reasons I wanted this panel was to hear Brandon Sanderson talk as well. I know that there had been a problem with the information that the book and the schedule have. The pull out schedule has one time and the program book has a different time. What ended up happening is Brandon Sanderson missed this talk because the time on his badge was 1 pm and the panel on the pull out was 12 pm. The panel was pretty good and there were five our panelists involved so it was pretty busy.


Guest of Honour Hour – Brandon Sanderson
I wasn’t really sure what to expect from a Guest of Honour Hour but wanted to go to it as I wanted to enjoy listening to Brandon as I have heard him talk on a podcast (Writing Excuses) that we listen to. I knew this was going to be a popular session because even Art of World Building was extremely full and it was in biggest room that the convention had. We made sure that we got there in time to see part of the panel before this to ensure that we would get a seat. Once Brandon arrived we knew it was going to be a good time.

Brandon immediately apologized for the mix up about his schedule and offered that if the convention could find him a room he would do a short version of Art of World Building to make up for the mess up. That was really nice because it wasn’t his error but the convention that put the wrong time on his badge. It ended up that the person that was going to be setting up the large room for another evening for the evening which was also part of the convention gave up a half hour and that way Brandon was able to do both the Guest of Honour Hour as well as the other half an hour in the same room.

Brandon has a wonderful style of presenting and he did a part q&a’s then did a reading from one of his books and then finished up with some more questions. The second part which was the art of world building was also good because he was explaining how he builds his stories and it was great.

The time went extremely fast and I was then looking forward to the reading that Brandon was scheduled to do on Sunday afternoon.

Book Signing
The convention does offer a chance for the attendees to get books and other items signed by some of the Guest of Honours as well as other authors that are attending the convention. As soon as the extra time was over for Brandon we headed down to the signing room to ensure that we could get in line and as you can guess it the line up had already started to grow and that was about half an hour before the signings started. I stayed in line to ensure to get a couple of books signed by Brandon Sanderson. We also had a couple of books for Robert Sawyer to sign but he didn’t show up and that is when we figured out there might be a problem with more schedules. I did get the books signed by Brandon Sanderson and then it was off for a quick dinner and then onto more events.

Now to grab some food.  The remainder of Saturday and all of Sunday will be posted on May 15th.