Posts Tagged by conventions
This year’s Norwescon!
| April 2, 2013 | Posted by annathepiper under Events |
I’ve had more fun at Norwescon in recent years, in no small part because it’s actually pretty cool to be Dara’s water fairy–i.e., the person who runs water to the musicians she’s bringing in for the concert tracks. It means I get to hang out listening to all the music, and every so often, somebody’ll play something really awesome.
For example, this is the year I discovered Molly Lewis and Hello, the Future!, both of whom involve awesome geek girl singing. And ukeleles. I’m totally now hearing the Doctor in my head saying “I play a ukelele now. Ukeleles are COOL.” And while nerdcore remains not really my Thing, I did nonetheless quite enjoy what I saw of Klopfenpop and Death*Star, in Dara’s MONSTARRS OF NERDCORE concert.
But I also had quite a bit of fun attending three excellent panels. One was a complete geek-out about the movie edition of The Hobbit, in which I amused the panelists by announcing I was reading the book as we speak, in two different languages (and I was told that why yes, that IS extremely geeky). I was particularly pleased that one of the panelists was a young woman who’d just taken a semester on Tolkien at the U-dub, in fact–and that the two men on the panel cheerfully deferred to her as their expert, since her knowledge of the canon was significantly more current.
It will probably surprise none of you that the entire room was pretty much in agreement that 1) yes, we all liked the movie, 2) yes, we all had issues with the movie, and 3) yes, we’re all going to go see The Desolation of Smaug, probably two or three times. I was also quite, QUITE amused at one dude talking about how they prettied up Thorin, Kili, and Fili to get them to appeal to the “tweens and twenty-somethings”, at which point I and the fifty-something woman behind me were all “whaddya mean, twenty-somethings?” Because yeah, we were on board with the Unexpected Hotness of Dwarves.
Another panel was excellently moderated by Diana Pharaoh Francis, and was about Rogues and Anti-Heroes in Fantasy and why we love them and such. We had a delightful discussion about the differences between those character archetypes, and moreover, I was quite charmed by Diana’s purple hair. And Browncoat lanyard. You can’t go wrong with a Browncoat lanyard.
The third panel I quite enjoyed was one on Big Publishing Vs. Small Publishing Vs. Self-Publishing, which, for reasons that should be obvious, is Highly Relevant to My Interests. I wasn’t terribly surprised to see the guys who run small presses of COURSE being all “but of course you should send your stuff to big presses and if not then the small presses”… and this was where I started diverging in opinion from them, because I’ve come to believe that whether or not you submit to a big NY press should in fact depend on what your goals are and how much patience you have. Meanwhile, though, the two women who had more experience with self-pub had stern opinions about whether or not big publishing had worked for them (spoiler alert: it hadn’t, not really).
And in particular, I was pleased to note that Karen Kincy, an author whose book Other had been recommended to me, was on this panel. She spoke quite passionately about her experiences and why she chose to run a Kickstarter for the fourth novel in her series. As a Kickstarter author myself, that was pretty much the most interesting part of the panel for me.
Meanwhile, I had the pleasure of meeting a couple of local authors I’d seen at a previous Norwescon–Tiger Gray and Vivien Weaver, who have a couple of books in a shared universe that are published under the moniker of Hard Limits Press. When they found out I was an author as well we had quite the delightful chat about each other’s covers–and when I told them I had a book coming out from Carina, they were all “ooh, Deb Nemeth” and I said quite happily that she’s my editor. I quickly bought both of their books in trade, and then came home and bought them again in digital form just so I’d have them easily at hand for my commutes.
And. AND! I sold five print copies of Faerie Blood, three of which were with the help of the lovely people of Book Universe. I sold them on consignment so I didn’t get as much money for them, but hey, they were sold, and I was quite happy to give them a cut for doing the work of selling the copies for me!
Music-wise, I had huge fun at the Find Your Instrument panel, in which I totally bugged 
solcita
I did learn two things that may eventually become useful when writing Kendis, though. And those are: 1) there’s not really any such thing as a chord on the violin, but you can sometimes play two strings at once and that seems to be about as close as you get; 2) if you want to do quick staccato notes, you will want to bow down rather than up, since you get more force that way. (Since one of the questions I asked Sunnie was how to know which direction to bow when.)
Cascadia’s Got Talent was fun again this year, even if it was short, and was sadly lacking in a gong. But that was okay, since nobody was really bad enough to deserve being gonged, and a couple of people were actually actively funny and sang well. And I did love Dara’s schtick about the grand prize of Metro bus passes to Kenmore (“Kenmore! It’s on the way to Bothell! Kenmore! We used to be interesting, thank God THAT’S over! Kenmore! Where the appliances go to die!”).
Dara and I closed out the con with what’s becoming a tradition–the Intro to Irish Session panel, which is small but fun and eventually I’ll have enough damn tunes to actually carry a fair share of one of these. But in the meantime, this time, I heavily geeked out about podorythmie and Quebec music as opposed to Irish music, and had the delight of a lady in the audience name-checking Le Vent du Nord. “YES!” I proclaimed happily, as the aforementioned solcita
And I got told by Alexander James Adams that my singing was good on the GBS fanvid that Dara and I showed off to him. Which was awesome. <3
Upcoming author appearances for Anna!
| October 24, 2012 | Posted by annathepiper under Events |
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What, wait, author appearances? Anna does that? Anna does, in fact, DO THAT! If opportunities arise!
I will be participating in the online writers’ convention CoyoteCon this weekend. Right now I’m slated for the Kickstarter & Crowdfunding panel on Sunday the 28th, and I’m the only one on the panel! So if you’re curious about the whole crowdfunding thing, or you have experience to share, come by and say hi and we’ll chat about it!
Meanwhile, I’m showing up for the local Sherlock Seattle convention the first weekend of November, run by none other than the fantabulous mamishka
Norwescon 34: Made of epic and awesome
| April 25, 2011 | Posted by annathepiper under About Me |
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So here’s a super-quick summary of the various awesome things about Norwescon 34, this past weekend:
- At least a couple people seem to have taken my Faerie Blood cards off the freebie rack, because two more people have added me on Goodreads. Thank you, Goodreads adders!
- I did actually sell one of my Faerie Blood CDs, on Sunday afternoon while I was waiting for
- Dara got props from the Seattle Geekly podcast for the awesomeness of her music programming!
- I discovered that nerdcore is, in fact, pretty cool.
- My and Dara’s friend
- I volunteered officially for the first time ever. I got over 15 hours helping Dara by running water to various performers, and by helping man the merch table as well! This netted me several free books and a shirt. Go me!
- Stood in line for nearly two hours to get books signed by
- Bought several awesome shirts, including one of Jayne’s shirts from Serenity and a new Matt Smith Doctor Who shirt!
- Got a mass market copy of
- Had the pleasure of meeting Heather Dale and her husband Ben, and watching them do a joint double set with
- My and Dara’s favorite Barcon quote: VODKA OF THE RIGHTEOUS! APPLE TINIS OF THE JUST!
All in all this was a very, very enjoyable convention and I look forward to doing more Actual Volunteering next year! And maybe doing some actual readings or something. ‘Cause, like, I have a book and stuff.
Hello Norwescon!
| April 22, 2011 | Posted by annathepiper under About Me, Faerie Blood |
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Taking a moment to put up a post before having dinner, just to say that I’ve left assorted business cards on the freebie table and the flyer rack here at Norwescon. If anybody happens to pick one up and comes by this site to visit, hello and welcome, and I hope your convention is being awesome so far!
If you HAVE come by because of Norwescon and you’re interested in buying my book, arrange to find me before EOD on Sunday and I’ll sell you one of my small number of Faerie Blood CDs. That will get you an ePub AND a PDF of the book, both DRM-free, along with a free short story, “The Disenchanting of Princess Cerridwen”. I’m offering Norwescon attendees a special price of $5 per disk!
So say hi if you are at the con and you see this, and tell me how your con is going! Better yet, find me and do it in person. 
Off to Norwescon this evening, find me there
| April 20, 2011 | Posted by annathepiper under About Me |
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Not doing anything in any sort of official “writer” capacity–but I’ll be showing up at various panels out of basic interest, and hope to see any of y’all who might be reading this there. Look for me in particular at any panels where the redoubtable katatomicjimbutcher
I’ll also have the last six Faerie Blood CDs with me, so if anybody who’ll be at the con wants one, bug me about that! And I’ll leave a lot of my business cards on the freebie table as well.
Please also do bug me if you want to meet up for a meal or a snack or something. Those of you who I know locally anyway probably already have my cell number for texting purposes. But if you don’t and you want it, shoot me an email with how I can reach you, and we’ll meet up! (Gmail is my preferred email address, annathepiper as always.) I’m busy early Thursday evening, when I’ll be having dinner with karenjunkersolarbird
See you all there, I hope!
Who’s going to Norwescon?
| March 8, 2011 | Posted by annathepiper under Events |
I am now cleared for time off to attend Norwescon! And I’m taking the Thursday AND Friday, so I’ll be there for the entire convention! Aside from playing backup guitar for solarbird
I’ll be bringing a handful of my Faerie Blood business cards to leave on the freebie rack, and in case anybody actually wants to buy one, I’ll have my small set of Faerie Blood CDs as well.
So if you’re going to be there and you’re interested in meeting up for a meal of some sort or joint attendance of panels or something, let me know!
If anyone will be at Norwescon…
| March 30, 2010 | Posted by annathepiper under About Me |
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… and if you might happen to see me, please feel free to say hi. I won’t be doing anything formal-like related to the convention, I’m just attending like everybody else, but I’m in the mood to maybe see and talk to new faces. I’ll be seeing if I can show up at any e-pub related panels that might happen to be going on; failing that, I’ll probably be hanging out in suitable places to people-watch while I try to poke at words, either on my iPhone or my black MacBook. I’ll be the blonde chick in the dark blue-and-green velvet cap with a leaf pin on it. Chances that I’ll be wearing a Doctor Who shirt with David Tennant on it are extremely high!
So yeah. Hope to see some of you at the convention this weekend!
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