Andy Duncan's Blog, page 5

ICFA-31: The wrap party

Below: The Dell Award finalists barely could contain themselves. Anthony Powers, Lara Donnelly, Rebecca McNulty, Rachel Sobel, Rachel Halpern (almost visible) and Miah Saunders. Below: Rebecca McNulty, Anthony Powers (almost visible), Rachel Sobel, Rachel Halpern, Lara Donnelly and Miah Saunders. Below: Rebecca McNulty, Rachel Halpern, Miah Saunders and Lara Donnelly. Below: Lara Donnelly and her dad, Richard Donnelly, who's so proud of her he will overlook the hat. Below: Pepe Rojo and Sydney Duncan. Below: Chrissie Mains. Below: Elizabeth Hoiem. Below: P. Andrew Miller. Below: Bill Senior. Below: Elizabeth McManus, winner of this year's Graduate Student Award for her Friday-afternoon paper "Protecting the Island: Interior and Exterior Space in Lost." Below: Jedediah Berry, winner of this year's Crawford Award for best first book of fantasy for his novel The Manual of Detection. Below: Jim Casey, new president of the IAFA, with the unclaimed power cord he cherished for much of the evening. Jim and I were classmates at the University of Alabama, where we had such hopes. Below: Joe Berlant and Mark Wingenfeld, dazed by their release from the book room. Below: Amelia Beamer and Rick Wilber. Below: Ellen Klages, Amelia Beamer and Charles Vess. Below: F. Brett Cox and Francesca Myman. Below: Two views of Liza Trombi and James Patrick Kelly. Below: Veronica Schanoes, Jeana Jorgensen and Marie Brennan. Below: Ellen Klages fails to frighten Russell Letson. Below: Amelia Beamer successfully frightens Peter Straub and Gary K. Wolfe.

ICFA-31: Ambushing people in the lobby

Below: Gary K. Wolfe, Joe Haldeman and Peter Straub. Below: Rachel Sobel, Rebecca McNulty and Joe Haldeman. Below: Steven Erikson and Aidan-Paul Canavan. Below: Stephen R. Donaldson and Jennifer Cox. Below: Nora Jemisin and Karen Burnham. Below: Liza Trombi and Amelia Beamer. Below: Liza Trombi, Amelia Beamer and Francesca Myman. Below: Jeanne Beckwith and F. Brett Cox. Below: Graham Sleight. Below: Peter Straub. Below: Rusty Hevelin. Below: Rusty Hevelin and Gary K. Wolfe. Below: Tom and Santa De Haven, Rachel Sobel and Rebecca McNulty.

ICFA-31: Saturday banquet

Below: Kij Johnson and John Kessel. Below: Jen Gunnels and Ellen Klages. Below: Three photos of Sydney Duncan, Liza Trombi and Karen Burnham. Their conversation eventually focused, as you can see, on Karen's amazing tattoo, a 14-hour job I should have gotten a photo of. Below: Sydney Duncan, Karen Burnham, Liza Trombi and Amelia Beamer. Below: Daphne Grace and Kij Johnson. Below: James Patrick Kelly and Ted Chiang. Below: F. Brett Cox and Jeanne Beckwith. Below: Jen Gunnels and the ever subtle Stefan Hall. Below: David G. Hartwell and Amy Branam. Below: Andy Duncan (photo by John Kessel).

ICFA-31: A Friday outing

Several of us, conference-crazed, took advantage of the nice weather by fleeing the hotel Friday afternoon for the Nature Conservancy's Disney Wilderness Preserve, just south of nearby Kissimmee.

Below: What are Ellen Klages, Charles Vess and Karen Vess looking at? Below: Oh, it's a family of sandhill cranes. Below: Karen Vess and Ellen Klages on the boardwalk. Below: Two views from the boardwalk. Below: Ellen Klages meets a turtle. Below: The turtle demands a close-up. Moments later, it got tired of us and crawled off the road and safely back into the brush. I wish I had taken some photos of East Lake Fish Camp, a bit of Old Florida where we relaxed and ate exactly the lunch we wanted (catfish and beer, in my case). I did, however, take a photo to prove exactly why straying off the "main roads" in the Orlando area can be so bewildering, at the intersection of Boggy Creek Road and Boggy Creek Road: (Yes, we all immediate thought of the 1972 drive-in classic The Legend of Boggy Creek -- it was that sort of crowd -- but I believe that was set in Arkansas, not Florida.)

ICFA-31 photos: The Saturday lunch bunch

A bunch of us walked to the Eastern Pearl, just off South Semoran Boulevard (Highway 436) north of Orlando International Airport. It was quite good.

Below: Timothy Anderson, Jen Gunnells, Veronica Schanoes, Farah Mendlesohn and Suzy McKee Charnas. Below: Sydney Duncan, Graham Sleight, Gary K. Wolfe and Peter Straub. Below: Amelia Beamer, Jeanne Beckwith, Liza Trombi and F. Brett Cox. Below: Amelia Beamer, Jeanne Beckwith and Liza Trombi. Below: Gary K. Wolfe and Peter Straub. Below: Peter Straub, Amelia Beamer, Jeanne Beckwith, Liza Trombi and F. Brett Cox.

ICFA-31 photos: Saturday poolside

Below: Amelia Beamer and Ellen Klages in the swim. Below: Bill Senior, Liza Trombi and Amelia Beamer wait for the group shot. Below: Austin Sirkin, Jeana Jorgensen and Anthony Powers. Below: Bernardo Fernandez (a.k.a. Bef), Charles Vess and Pepe Rojo. Below: Dennis Danvers. Below: Jeanne Beckwith and F. Brett Cox. Below: Nora Jemisin. Below: Patricia McKillip and David Lunde.

Random photos from years ago

I just rescued from storage a couple of bins of old photographs, and these are among the first ones I saw in the cache. This is me at night in the living room of our house in Northport, Ala., in my natural nocturnal state, sitting and reading. This is Sydney, caught in the act of photographing the master bathroom of our Northport house. We were so proud of the first house we bought together that Sydney documented every room, once it was furnished. We moved in on Memorial Day weekend 2001. I'll spare you most of the room-by-room photos, but this one is worth mentioning because it documents that wondrous thing, an attached two-car garage. By the time we put our heads together to make a list of all the features we wanted in a house, the must-haves and the nice-to-haves, Sydney and I were such veteran apartment dwellers that an attached two-car garage didn't even make the list. When the Northport house turned out to have one, we both said, "Oh, OK, very nice," and thought no more about it. Then came the first trip home in the rain with groceries. "This is incredible!" we told each other, dancing with joy. No more splashing on foot through parking lots and scrambling up outside stairs in all weathers, just to get indoors after parking! You better believe an attached two-car garage was at the top of our list when we moved in 2006 to the appropriately named Frostburg, Md. I might add that we're unusual in our neighborhood in that we actually use our garage as a garage, and not as a storage unit, a workshop or a TV room. This photo shows one of our finest Kentuck Festival acquisitions hanging in our Northport living room. Doug Odom created this life-sized alligator from the pieces of a demolished barn. The flapping tail is made of rusty tin and is wicked sharp; you have to hang the piece high enough so the unwary don't cut themselves on it. Alas, we have no room to display it in our Frostburg house, so it's still in storage, still wrapped in the amazing homemade cardboard sheathe that Sydney constructed for shipping in 2006. How long is it? Exactly the length of the interior of a Subaru Outback; that's how we (barely) got it home. As we walked through the Kentuck crowd with this thing, the crowds parted in silent respect. "Oh," one woman said, "you're the ones who bought it!" We're thinking of lending it to some gallery or other exhibit space here in Allegany County, which could use more alligators.