Writers Weekend

[rhienelleth]

Absolutely fantastic, especially for the price of admission, and all of you aspiring writers out there need to go in the future! I know, I said the same thing last year, and plane tickets are expensive, etc, etc.

Yo, Mark and I got to pitch our book (more his than mine, because it's finished, if not edited) to two very high on the food chain NY editors this weekend (from TOR and Bantam/Spectra), and one very neat lady who also happens to be a great agent (from everything we hear). Every single one of them asked us to send it, which means even if they asked everyone else who pitched to them to send their manuscript, that is still three people in the biz looking at our stuff that weren't before. And we're not in the slush pile when submitting to any of these three people. We have escaped that bottomless pit of nothingness.

That is to say nothing of the cool panels, workshops, and the just plain socializing we got to do. We met Jeff Grubb, which will be meaningless to 95% of my f-list, but for the other two of you who would care and weren't there this weekend, he's one of the main guys behind much of 2nd edition D&D, like Forgotten Realms, Manual of the Planes, Spelljammer...and his wife (very briefly) played Caramon back in the days when TSR was creating Dragonlance. We got to meet him, and hear the story of how R.A. Salvatore first pitched Drizzt to TSR. Gamer geek coolness!

I sat at the same table as Jo Beverly for dinner one night, and talked to her. I met editors, authors, agents, fellow writers and gaming fans. It was an awesome, awesome weekend. Karen should be awarded sainthood for doing this every year. Seriously, there were wonderful speeches which addressed this at the banquet, and they were all so very true. The organizational feat of something like this deserves sainthood.

They say what happens at WW stays at WW, but I will say the Saturday night banquet rocked, and the auction afterward held many a hilarious moment, mostly having to do with monkeys, crocodiles, socks, a lock of Jay Lake's hair, and a fan dance which shall no doubt be infamous at future events. (Sorry dthon.) jaylake has pictures at his journal.

kistha was kind enough to show me the wonders of using a client to update LJ, and also how to separate my communities from the rest of my f-list to make sure I don't miss any more posts by actual friends. (Yay!) She is also, it turns out, a master of disguise. She did an amazing panel on it that I believe is my favorite from the entire weekend. :)

We never did get to beading, other than chatting about it some with kistha, and shadawyn and I stopping in the halls to admire each other's bracelets. Alas, these events are hugely busy, and I kept forgetting to get shadawyn's room number from her, so I could call when kistha and I were hanging out.

I'm sure there's a ton more I should say, but frankly, I'm wiped. We had a five hour drive, and I didn't exactly sleep much any of the nights we were there. And I'm packing for TX tomorrow. Suffice to say the weekend was great, I can't wait for next year, and I'll add more bits as they occur to me.

Comments

[shadawyn.livejournal.com]

Ugh. Yeah. Sorry I kept missing you! Glad you had fun, though :D And made contacts ;)