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Aug. 23rd, 2018 12:45 pm
WorldCon, Part 2
I only had to be at the con by 3 o’clock on Sunday, for a signing at the Tachyon booth, so I slept pretty late. When I got to the booth I saw Jo Walton and Susan Palwick, who had the signing before me, and Jo explained something that made me feel a lot better. Yesterday I’d seen her at the food court and stopped to talk, and she said that she couldn’t talk right then, that she needed to have a conversation with the person she was with. I walked away thinking, Don’t take it personally, don’t take it personally — and now when I saw her she told me that the other person was her movie contact. I felt immediately relieved. Well, of course she couldn’t talk to me! Who’s more important than your movie contact?
I’d sent Tachyon publisher Jacob Weisman my novel and wanted to hear what he had to say about it, but he remained silent, sphinx-like. He promised me he’d send me his editorial suggestions after the con, and I had to be content with that. He did tell me that he liked the title Ivory Apples for the book, and I agreed that it was a great title, but … Well, in my novel Ivory Apples is a book within a book, a cult novel beloved by people around the world, and I said that with that title I was just setting myself up for a comparison I couldn’t win. He insisted, though, and he is the editor, so…Apparently I have a novel called Ivory Apples coming out some time next year.
At the signing I met Rose Lemberg, who uses the pronouns they/them. I ended up misidentifying not their gender but their country of origin — for some reason I thought they were Hungarian. In fact they’re Ukrainian, and one of the few people outside my mother’s circle who’ve heard of the town my mother was from, Munkacs. Later I met their spouse, Bogi Takacs, who is Hungarian, and who told me about a book, Fateless, that has people from Munkacs in it. (In fact the convention seemed to be full of Hungarians. I later met Theodora Goss, who had lived in Hungary until she was seven, and James Patrick Kelly reminded me that he’s part Hungarian. We should do a panel.)
Went to a panel about collaboration, then out to dinner with Jim Kelly, Nancy Etchemendy, and Nina Hoffman. Doug and I are thinking of moving to Oregon so it was great talking to Nina, who made the place sound promising, somewhere we’d fit in — better than in the Bay Area, anyway, which has become far too crowded, overrun with techies and venture capitalists. Jim pointed out a store that sold only milkshakes, and when I stopped and looked at it longingly he said we could stop there after dinner. But we didn’t!!! — the biggest disappointment of the con.
We went to the Locus and Clarion parties but they too were loud and crowded, and I had to get up early for my panel the next day, so I left at about 10. Somehow I’d mislaid my car, and Lori White graciously left a party to help me find it.
