Reading, Writing and Recharging
My husband forced me out of the house Memorial Day weekend and I love him for it. You see, every once in awhile, even writers need to be around other writers without having to worry about kids, chores, and what to plan for the family over a long weekend. So, my husband conspired with one of my oldest friends to get me to a convention I'd been thinking of skipping this year. Boy did I need that.
Balticon, also known as the Maryland Regional Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention, is held every year over Memorial Day weekend. I've been attending off and on (mostly off) since sometime in the 1990s. I always enjoyed myself, but I really didn't know many people and I was, at the time, an underground writer. I was writing, but I never told anyone I met at the convention that I was a writer. That all changed in the 2000s, and boy am I ever so glad it did.
Let me tell you a little bit about Balticon. If you've heard about SF/F conventions before, you have most likely heard about fan conventions. These range from large to small, have panels filled with authors and actors, have long autograph lines, and hallways filled with people in costume. Some of the best known conventions include San Diego ComiCon, Atlanta's DragonCon and NYC's ComiCon. Balticon is that, but it's not at the same time. To start with, Balticon is much smaller than the very large conventions and the focus is on the creative process rather than large scale fan-creator interaction. This is a convention where the panelists are just as likely to be sitting next to you in the audience as they are to be answering questions during their own panel.
Don't get me wrong - both types of conventions are fantastic! But for me, Balticon is special. In this action packed weekend I have found a family of sorts - a very creative one, and a very supportive one.
I wasn't planning on going this year for a variety of reasons. My husband, G-d bless him, decided none of them were relevant, especially when Charlie Brown, the editor of "Dirty Magick: New Orleans" and one of my oldest friends, asked me to come up. Boy am I grateful to have them both in my life because I definitely needed the recharge I always get after spending a weekend with these amazingly creative people I have in my life. There are far too many of them to count, or list, here. If you sign up for my mailing list or FB page you will probably see me mention them on occasion, especially when our work intersects.
For example, the photo of me below is from the "Dirty Magick: New Orleans" launch party Saturday. Paul Ellis, http://paulkellis.com, a fellow "Dirty Magick" author took photos of all of us as we read to a packed room. Between sitting at an autograph table with another publishing group and chatting with them for an hour, reading to a full audience, hanging out at various places to chat, and brainstorming everything from articles to stories to pranks I can now say that my batteries are fully recharged and I am raring to go for the next year.
Then I will probably need to be pried out of my writing cave again to make the trek to Baltimore to spend a weekend with my writerly family while my hubby and son wave me off with a smile and many hugs, knowing, probably better than I do, how much I need to spend this time with this family of wonderful misfits.
