Albacon 2008 Report

Albacon was a bit of a mixed bag, but on the whole, I had a good time. Major upsides:

• It was great to hang out with my friend morvenwestfield, who roomed with me. We went to panels and events together, went walking around downtown Albany on a fruitless search for a Subway shop (but what a beautiful weekend it was!), shared wine in little skull shot glasses I brought, and hit all the room parties on Friday and Saturday night.
• Although there was no Broad Universe table or Rapid Fire Reading at Albacon, dealer Larry Smith kindly put morvenwestfield‘s and my books out on his table, on commission. Alas, we didn’t sell any books.
• Programming Chair Chuck Rothman assigned me a reading time at the last minute–so last minute, that on one of the program sheets in the registration packets, it was printed on a sticker that had been manually applied to each sheet! Fortunately, I had brought my “reading copy” of Mortal Touch with me, and I spent about an hour on Friday night, before I finally went to bed, choosing a reading and running through it to check the timing. It wasn’t my absolute best reading ever, but it went well, and I had four attendees in addition to morvenwestfield, two of whom seemed a bit bored and two of whom were enthralled. (“That was great!” one of them said when I finished.) As the author readings at Albacon went, this was average attendance–I spoke to (or attended the readings of) several authors who had the same number of listeners or less, while only Guest of Honor Todd McCaffrey had a bigger audience, that I know of. I thanked Chuck warmly on Sunday for giving me a reading time.
• All three of the panels I was in on Saturday went well, including the one I moderated on “Write What You Know.” (The other two were on Tolkien, and on British fantasy authors in general.) The panels tended to have small audiences, however. The Sunday panel, on small press vs. traditional publishing, was unfocused because we only had a couple of audience members and the panelists more or less chatted for twenty minutes in the hope that more people would show up. (We were competing with Todd McCaffrey’s reading.) But my fellow panelists were small press owner Ron Drummond, Gary S. Blog who was the Fan Guest of Honor, and David G. Hartwell, who is a senior editor at Tor Books, and that was very cool.
• I finally bit the bullet and bought an attending membership for Anticipation, the 2009 Worldcon in Montreal. They were there with a dealer’s table, and gave a room party, and I figured I might as well commit to it before the rates go up or the dollar collapses. By that time I’ll have books out by two Canadian authors.
• A lot of the postcards I put in the freebie rack were taken, along with three of the five flyers I put out for IPNE’s Publishing University next month.
• I drove via the “scenic route” through southern New Hampshire and Vermont–all two-lane roads except for maybe five miles, altogether, on I-91 and I-787. It was peak foliage, gorgeous weather and the landscape was stunning. Wilmington, Vermont is such a pretty town, I may drive over there some time just to get a longer look! And Bennington, Vermont is downright funky.
• The hotel, in downtown Albany, was much easier to find than I feared, and the view from our 12th floor room was breathtaking. There were walking tours being offered from the hotel, but I didn’t have time to take one. Albany is the state capital. And the hotel has free wi-fi.

On the down side–and I don’t want to stress these too much, since the plusses far outweighed the negatives:

• Albacon had a general problem with clear communications. Signage could have been more clear and more widely distributed, and the people at the Registration table and in Operations never seemed to know what was going on no matter what I asked them. Many of the concerns that came up at the final “Planning” meeting on Sunday directly related to this issue, and would have been prevented with better communications across the board.
• I was so busy, I missed most of the actual convention! If I didn’t have a conflicting event, I was too worn out by the end of the day to feel up to attending. I didn’t take part in or see the “Make a Horror Movie” project, the Banquet, the Art Reception, the Masquerade or the “Saturday Night Extravaganza.” morvenwestfield went to the GoH Interview with Todd McCaffrey, and we both dropped into the Ice Cream Social although I couldn’t have any ice cream.
• My volunteer project for the children’s program was a total dud. That’s all I’ll say about it, and again, communication inadequacies had a lot to do with this. I was disappointed, but on the positive side, at least it galvanized me into an intensive crash course on my new camcorder, which is actually less complicated than my digital camera. Now I have NO excuse not to get those book videos done!
• There were a few problems with the hotel, of which the most troublesome was the fact that most of the convention guest rooms were on the upper floors (11th and up), the convention function rooms were on the two floors below the lobby level, and one of the four elevators was out of order all weekend. This is also the first convention I’ve been to since I started going to them last November where the hotel room did not have a mini-fridge. That’s a nuisance when you pack in all your food for dietary reasons. Fortunately, I’d brought a small cooler.
• Albacon is a small convention, normally running around 300+ attendees. They had 457 this year because Anne McCaffrey (who was forced to cancel due to health concerns) was the scheduled Guest of Honor, and because of the one-shot “con within a con” programming for the “1632” fictional universe. The atmosphere was a little cliquish as a result, somewhat like Boskone although not nearly as bad. I’ll never go to another Boskone, but I’ll go to Albacon again.

This coming weekend is The New England Library Association show, although I don’t know how much time I’ll actually be there. I’m exhibiting the hardcover edition of Mortal Touch, and planning to help the IPNE table with setup and take-down. After that is Samhain and some family obligations, and after that is Publishing University, for which I am doing all the design work (website, program book, etc) and a panel, with Shel Horowitz. I thought about going to Philcon, but honestly, I am just about conventioned-out at this point. I’ve got to get back to writing and editing actual books! I’ve been doing nothing but promotion for two months now, and I need titles to promote!