More on ConText

On Saturday I posted on the first evening of ConText, but then events took over and I was so busy that I couldn't find time to post—at least not in a lucid and coherent way — about all the fun of Saturday and Sunday.

In terms of today's post, well first of all I apologise for the poor quality of the photos, but the weekend was beset with technical difficulties in the camera department …

So what did happen? Of my own panels on the Saturday, the highlight was probably the noon session with Catherine Asaro and Russell Kirkpatrick where we talked about "Keeping It Real in SFF", particularly in terms of believable characters and societies in the midst of fantastic settings and events. The thing that made it most fun was when Catherine and I had a quite different point of view from Russell on the relationship between individuals and societies, particularly when it came to influencing events—so we got to have lively discussion rather than simply sitting there politely agreeing with each other.  I suspect this made the session more fun for the audience and I know we three panelists had a pretty good time.

L. to R. Frank Victoria, me, Donald Wolcott: Word & Inage Panel

My favourite Saturday panel in terms of attending was Donald Wolcott's workshop on musical improvisation. Donald is Catherine Asaro's musical collaborator and in this session he took us through the process of how he improvises around both musical themes generally and also in relation to Catherine's speculative works. I found the session fascinating and was pleased to be able to pick up on some of the aspects it raised when Donald and I joined Frank Victoria for the "Word & Image" panel on Sunday 5.

The focus of the session was to discuss the creative relationship between writer and artist in speculative fiction and how the different art forms spark off each other to generate new creations. Once again, I found this a fascinating session, not least because of the insights into both Frank and Donald's creative process and the way in which the discussion illuminated both strong similarities but also differences between the art forms. And although it can be difficult to be 100% sure when one is on the panel, I received the impression that the audience enjoyed the session as well.

Frank Victoria & me with "Tymon's Flight" & the cover poster behind

Immediately following on from the Word & Image panel was a Reading, where I read from both my own works and Mary Victoria's Chronicles of the Tree novels: Tymon's Flight and Samiha's Song. I also had Frank, Mary's husband, on hand to help me out as required during the Q&A that followed the reading. I should say straight off that we recorded the reading and hope to bring you this to you here in the next day or so. But just to give you an idea of how it went, I interspersed the readings so the audience got a better flavour of the distinction between my and Mary's "voices" as authors. Both Frank and I felt this approach "worked" in terms of how the reading went, with the order being: Tymon's Flight, Thornspell, Samiha's Song, The Heir of Night—and yes, ta-da-da-dah-dum, in a world first exclusive for ConText (;-)) an excerpt from the prologue to The Gathering of the Lost, Book Two of The Wall of Night series.

Meeting Bu: 1

The final highlights of my Saturday and Sunday  at ConText—other than the Sir Julius Vogel Award ceremony which I have already reported on here—included that  I got to do The Grand Symbiosis: History & Fantasy panel with my partner, Andrew (our fellow panelist was Steve Litton.) Doing a panel with Andrew was a lot of fun, especially as we were talking history & SFF, two of our favourite subjects. Another highlight was that I got to meet Bu, the Caber, for the very first time, in company with his friend Kirstin Wright … I thought

Meeting Bu: 2

Bu was quite, quite charming, if a little shy …:)

And Bu's friend Kirstin was one of the many fellow SpecFicNZ members that I got to meet over the course of the weekend, both at panels and 'around the traps', as well as at the formal get-together on the Saturday night. I think all of us enjoy the buzz of feeling that we are a community of speculative writers and artists—and I would like to thank Ripley Patton in particular for

with Ripley Patton at ConText

doing so much to make that happen.