I will be at Balticon, the annual Baltimore F/SF con, this Sunday for the day, including on several panels about editing and podcasting:

From Slush to Sale (Sun, 1:00 PM)

This panel will be a reprise of the ‘From Slush to Sale’ roundtable that I was on in February hosted by the Baltimore SF Society. Other editors on this panel include Hildy Silverman, editor of Space & Time, who has bought several of my stories.

We’ll be discussing various aspects of the submission, acceptance, and editing process, including the ever-popular ‘what do editors want’ and its converse, ‘what do editors see all to often’. :)

Jake Bible We Hardly Knew Ye: The Current State of Podcast Fiction (Sun, 2:00 PM)

This panel features a number of prominent podcasters, such as Mur Lafferty. I will be representing the trends in ‘hybrid’ online magazines–those, like BCS, that publish short fiction in text / ebooks and in audio podcasts.

Editors’ Q&A Session (Sun, 4:00 PM)

This panel includes several editors of theme anthologies and will answer audience questions about submissions, acceptances, and the publishing process, for anthologies and magazines. I’m moderating, and I’ve got a stack of my own questions to ask, including some that I bet you’ve never heard before. :)

I will also have the requisite stack of shiny BCS flyers and postcards. If you see me in the halls, feel free to say hello!

I had a great time at Capclave, as usual.

I met many neat folks, including Carol Frank of WSFA, Katie Hartlove of Cold Moon Press, writer Alan Smale, GOH Nick Mamatas, Alexander Harris and his fellow Baltimore SF buddy whose name escapes me, fellow VP alums L. Blankenship, Peter Sursi, and also Stephanie Sursi.

And I renewed acquaintances with many others, including editors Neil Clarke and Sean Wallace, BCS authors Dave Millstien and Ann Chatham, Danielle Ackley-McPhail, Larry, and Jen, Melissa, Renee, and Day, and the always brilliant and engrossing James Morrow.

I really enjoyed reading from my satirical fantasy “The Sadly Only Mildly Dramatic Tale of Sijo Uthwen,” which is forthcoming from Space and Time. That was great practice for when I read it at World Fantasy next month.

I enjoyed all my panels, especially the one on rejection, where we got to talking about personalized rejections like I write for BCS and how to approach comments on your work, and the one on online publishing, talking about magazines and publishing formats and models and who in the field influenced us and impresses us.

Well met, all!  I hope to return next year. I’m a little concerned about crowd control re: next year’s GOH. (Hint–he’s gone from huge within the genre to huge within the mainstream, thanks to his TV show on HBO.) But he is a brilliant and engrossing guy, with a neat history at DC-area cons, so I’ll brave the sea of fans to hear what he has to say.

Cheers, Capclave.

In the post-ReaderCon sexual harassment revelations and groundswell, something that incensed me equally didn’t get much discussion. With autumn con season upon us, it’s on my mind again, and I welcome input.

Genevieve Valentine’s account of her harassment at ReaderCon also included mention that she, while on a panel, was referred to by a fellow panelist as “missy.” I find such belittlement, of anyone for any reason, colossally offensive.

Having at the time just moderated a ReaderCon panel myself, I immediately wondered, what’s the best response to something like that, when it’s happening?

I’ve thought about it, but I’m not the most socially adroit, so I would appreciate hearing others’ thoughts.

I think the response would be different depending on what role I was in: audience, fellow panelist, or panel moderator. Here are the responses I came up with. All comments welcome.

As an audience member: when the panel opens for questions, ask the disparaging panelist a two-part question. ‘Did you actually call that other panelist _____, and if so, why in the world would you disrespect a fellow panelist like that?’

As a fellow panelist: when the disparaging panelist finished, or maybe even interrupting them, ‘Did you actually call this other panelist _____? If so, then I’m not interested in a single other thing you’ve got to say.’ And leave the panelist table and walk out of the room.

As the moderator: when the disparaging panelist finished, ‘Did you actually call this other panelist _____? We don’t belittle people like that, at least on any panel I’m moderating. If you do it again, you can answer to the con-com.’

(My vindictive side would like to include in that last one ‘or I will call security and have you removed’ or the Conan-esque ‘or you and I can step outside and discuss it.’ But those don’t seem wise. :) )

Any thoughts? I do think it’s something that deserves pointing out in the moment. But if the disparager chose to get belligerent, things might get tense.

I hope to never need this. But if I ever see this sort of thing happen, I would like to have an idea of what might be a good thing to do.

Thanks very much for any comments.

I had a great time at Capclave, a couple weekends ago.  (Except for the con-crud that delayed my postlude…)

Highlights included moderating a small press panel with Neil Clarke, Sean Wallace, and Mike Walsh of Old Earth Books. Meeting BCS authors Adam Corbin Fusco and David Milstein; hanging out with Jen and Melissa. Chatting again with BCS author and novelist Genevieve Valentine. Seeing co-GOH Cat Valente again (I met her last year at World Fantasy, when the BCS party woke her up at 2 AM :) ).

Speaking with James Morrow, who lectured my year at Odyssey. His novel about Darwin’s lady assistant flying a steampunk airship over the Amazon, which he read from at ReaderCon 2010, is in rewrites and hasn’t yet found a publisher. Which is sad because the excerpt was great. He really liked the cool BCS flyers I had.

Chatting in the bar for hours with co-GOH Carrie Vaughn, a fellow Odyssey grad and bestseller who I had never met in person.  She is mostly known for her urban fantasy, but she’s read tons of epic fantasy and published several dozen short stories, and knows a ton about the field.

The Terry Pratchett surprise visit. I’m not familiar with his work, but I know he’s a very clever and engaging guy. The excerpts that his assistant read from his new book were quite droll (although the assistant read for way too long and interjected his own opinions too often).

They only made enough time to take one question, and it wasn’t about his books but about a BBC documentary he had helped make on assisted suicide for terminally ill. He talked for twenty minutes about that, made even more profound because of his own health situation, and it was utterly fascinating. (I will be blogging about that specifically later.)  Someone in the crowd put it on youtube, and Capclave posted an mp3 of the audio.

The GOH interview. I didn’t know how they would do it with two GOHs. It turned out that Carrie and Cat know each other, so they interviewed each other and took pre-written audience questions.  It was the best GOH interview I’ve ever seen. They were engaging, witty, and profound. Topics included the sociological underpinnings of the mythoses of vampires and werewolves; writing for shared-world anthologies; writing goals and achieving them; where they live and the sense of place in their writing.

I was only at the con for a day and a half, but I had a great time seeing these cool people and having great conversations. That seems to be what I mostly get out of cons–talking to clever people about interesting things.  I’ll definitely be back next year.