Loscon Day Three

Loscon Day Three

Day Three of Loscon was Sunday, the last day of the con.  Kris and I started the day at 10:00 am with our panel, “I Got the Music in Me”.  This was mostly Kris’ panel.  It was about how music can invoke certain moods and how that inspires her writing.  She played certain pieces of music, then would read from a scene in her book series that was inspired by it.

This is one place Kris and I differ in our writing.  She likes music in the background, I like quiet.  I don’t mind some of her new-age instrumentals in the background, but anything with lyrics is too distracting.  It’s like my brain has one English language compiler, and if it’s inputting lyrics, it can’t output dialogue.  Also, a certain piece of music may have a certain mood or tone.  But when I’m writing, I’m jumping around various moods.  One character might be angry while the other might be pleading and a third might be confused.  Again, music is too distracting.

There is one piece of music that I do keep thinking of while I’m writing my steampunk trilogy, and that is the theme to, “The Wild, Wild West”.  That show, back in the ’60s, was steampunk long before we even had the word, “steampunk”.  It’s also the same time period, post-Civil War overlaps Victorian England.  I particularly like this version:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILI5ZtyVNbI .  The drums remind me of military drums and two of my adventurer characters have military backgrounds in Her Majesty’s Royal Army during the Crimean War.

Our next panel at 1:00 pm was “Giving Back to Science Fiction”.  Here we discussed supporting what you love, in this case, science fiction, by volunteering.  Our blood drive is a perfect example.  Back when we were in the U.S.S. Alliance Star Trek fan club, we decided to start hosting blood drives for Loscon.  Even after the club disbanded, Kris and I continued the tradition with help from other former members.  Our club also hosted rest stations for the MS Walk-a-thon for several years.

We also discussed how you can use your mundane skillset in volunteering.  For example, my background as an office manager and procurement specialist fits well with organizing and running blood drives.  For my current job, I organize and send out our booth to various health food trade shows.

Between panels, I was able to finally buy a copy of Brandi June’s premier novel, “Gold Spun”.

I know Brandi from GLAWS.  Like me, she volunteers for various GLAWS events, and for a while, we were in the same critique group.  Ironically, I had to miss her first signing because I was in a con-committee meeting for Loscon.

At 3:00 pm we were part of the “She Blinded Me with Science” High Tea with the Guests of Honor.  Not being a tea drinker, I had never gone to one of these events.  And I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that some people paid to sit with us!

I was really impressed with the event.  It’s wasn’t just tea and cookies.  They had eight or ten various types of tea provided by Dragon Marsh,  https://www.dragonmarsh.com/, a long-time vendor at Loscon.  And they served cookies, hors d’oeuvres and finger sandwiches.  I had no idea you could get so filled up on finger sandwiches.  Buy the way, to us Yanks, a cucumber sandwich seems weird, but it’s actually pretty good.  We plan to do it again next year just as regular attendees.

Closing ceremonies was the last event we attended.  There we held the raffle for the blood drive prizes, which was our last official act for the blood drive.

All in all, being fan Guests of Honor was a great experience two years in the making.  And we once again thank the Con Chair, Scott Beckstead, and the entire convention committee for choosing us.

And special thanks to our Fan Guest of Honor liaison, Michelle Pincus (pictured here with Kris) for answering all our questions and taking care of all our problems.   I hope we weren’t too much of a headache.

Dennis Amador Cherry

 

94th blog completed.

First Steampunk novel:  72,197 words.

First Steampunk screenplay:  Need to update with notes from the novelization.

Second Steampunk screenplay:  179 pages, FIRST DRAFT DONE!!!!!

Second Steampunk novel: 0 words.

Third Steampunk screenplay:  38 pages.

New week…

I always thought Scrabble would be a fun game IF I COULD SPELL!

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