Can*Con 2024, or “How I learned Gilthanas cheated on me.”

As will likely surprise no one, I came home from Can*Con and pretty much collapsed into introvert recharge mode—though I also listened to audio proofs for about ten hours the next day, and that’s a whole other post but the TL;DR is “the audiobook for Upon the Midnight Queer is SO GOOD”—but now that I’ve had a day to “rest” I want to cheer on the Con, the Con organizers, the Con volunteers, and all my fellow panelists and moderators, all of whom were great.

I also learned I am absolute garbage at remembering to take photographs, but I’m putting that down to another point in Can*Con’s favour: I was too busy enjoying myself to remember to pull out my phone.

My Panels

Can*Con isn’t huge, but it packs in a solid mix of content, and over the decade I’ve been going (oh gods, how has it already been a decade?) I’ve watched the programming team work fresh takes on editing, writing, the science of SF, the smaller sub-genres of SF, TTRPG and Video Game writing, pop culture and SF culture, romance, thrillers, and more into the scope of the event, and it just keeps growing and shifting with the times and I appreciate that beyond the telling.

To drive that point home, I got to be on a brilliantly enjoyable panel about polyamory and how it’s handled in writing (which, of course, also shifted into some discussions of polyamory and how it’s handled in life)—all credit there to Steve Kenson and Avi Silver, and our moderator Rebecca Bennett—where I honestly had multiple a-ha! moments about writing, life, and facets of queerness I’m not sure I’d really focused on before. Steve Kenson was the aforementioned “I got to meet this person in real-life finally!” person, and it was a genuine delight to have the opportunity to share in his insights, and Avi Silver’s absolute candour brought clarity to so many facets of the assumptions of what a relationship even is—and what it definitely shouldn’t be assumed to be.

At another panel on how the “fun” stuff in writing—fight scenes, intimacy and sex scenes, humour—shouldn’t be dismissed as not important despite being fun, I have to highlight my fellow panelists James Downe and Aysha U. Farah, who so brilliantly made the connections for the audience between fun and functional, and I could seriously watch and listen to Aysha U. Farah discussing process for years and not get tired she’s so entertaining and captivating (and has this brilliant delivery of the honest realities of writing I cannot oversell).

Finally, I got to moderate some brilliant people through a discussion of the ways in which community are handled in fiction—and then also how community in the real world affects writers and writing: believe me when I say if you ever get the chance to moderate Charlotte Ashley, André Geleynse, and Terese Mason Pierre, you are in for the easiest moderation time of your life. They’re brilliant, knowledgeable, and listening to them discuss community was a freaking joy. Charlotte Ashley’s discussion of “third spaces” has burrowed its way into my thoughts, and André Geleynse’s “yeah, but if you’re an introvert…” vs. Terese Mason Pierre’s “and if you’re an extrovert…” one-two punch conjured real understanding, and I loved both insights, especially from the point of view of Geleynse’s “find a job” notion of entering a new community: not a job-job, but a role, or a volunteer position, or something that gives you a reason to be there, and suddenly structure exists. Introverts unite (only y’know, separately, and with clearly defined rules)! Terese Mason Pierre’s discussions of the responsibilities of community were both timely and thoughtful, and she’s another person I could just sit and listen to for hours at a time, were the circumstances to align.

And that was just three hours of where I was. At the same time, three or four other panels or events were usually in motion, or workshops were underway, or someone was telling everyone the purple dragons in the Vendor Room had been refreshed so if you saw someone carrying one around yesterday, you should hurry before they ran out again.

(I didn’t manage to get a dragon, but I did get a business card so I can get a dragon later.)

The People

Really, Can*Con comes down to those panelists/guests-of-honour/moderators, the con-goers, the volunteers, and the organizers, and as always, it was impossible to meet and speak to everyone, and of course, one of the realities of these events is how if there’s a panel you absolutely, one-hundred-percent want to attend, it’ll be when you’re supposed to speak on another panel.

I scored some great books from the Vendor Room, including the latest Maverick Heart Cycle book from Stephen Graham King, and an autographed copy of the fifth Crone Wars book from Lydia M. Hawke.

I got to meet people in-person I’ve only really spoken with online prior, and—this is the weirdest moment of the convention—I randomly bumped into someone I last saw in a gaming club thirty years ago and their voice hadn’t changed at all, so I recognized them and we played a quick game of “Okay, I remember you had a dog named X, so… that’s when I knew you… uh…” and we eventually got there. I also got to hear some amazing people I hadn’t encountered before for the first time.

Highlights definitely included Lydia M Hawke moderating the panel on “Living a More Relaxed Creative Life” with E.L. Chen, Vanessa Ricci-Thode, and Madona Skaff-Koren, where avoiding burnout—and the cost of not doing so—was handled with grace and humour and honesty, and that honesty was a theme I noticed throughout the Con: writing is hard, it’s worth it, but your health and wellbeing aren’t worth sacrificing in the process.

Another fun highlight for me was the Dragonlance panel, where not only did I find a new to way to explain to people what it was like for a while in the 80s when Dragonlance seemed to explode into not-just-geek-and-nerd spheres, but also Erin Rockfort moderated Kaitlin Caul, Steve Kenson and Evan May through a really fun discussion that didn’t shy away from the more problematic portions of the story and world-building. I really appreciated Kaitlin Caul’s thoughts on that front, including being just as mad as she was about the whole Sturm thing, and Evan May perfectly encapsulating how Tas was great but ohmigods Kender were the worst if you were a DM in a real-world Dragonlance game. More, it was fascinating to get Steve Kenson’s insight on the various shifts in the narrative that came from the realities of Dragonlance being a game-based world, and an IP that quite literally shifted hands and rules systems multiple times over. Of course, he also dropped the bomb that Gilthanas was also a problematic fictional boyfriend, which isn’t a great way to find out that your own problematic fictional boyfriend was cheating on you.

The final panel I attended on Sunday before my battery ran out was another one I’ll add to my list of favourite panels ever: Jesse Scoble moderated Steve Kenson, Felice Kuan, and Aysha U. Farah through “Managing a Big Games Project, from Step 1 to Step 1000” and remember how I said Aysha U. Farah has this amazing style of honesty that I adored? Well, it was back, and holy crap I think this panel made me laugh the most of any I attended. Aysha U. Farah and Felice Kuan were fresh off releasing the latest Life is Strange game—literally, it launched something like five days earlier—and so they drew on this incredible amount of real-world, recently-experienced examples to talk about how there’s never really a “done” so much as there’s a deadline, and how the realities of business, budget—and that other B word, again, burnout—need to find a balance. Also, hearing the balance against Steve Kenson’s experiences in the TTRPG world here was once again fascinating; there are so many pieces of writing that cross over from fiction to video games to TTRPGs, but there are also a lot that don’t, or shift in perspective, or have to be seen in a completely different way: for example how, at the core of it, TTRPG writing is facing the reality that you’re writing without knowing who the main protagonists of the story even are, because the players bring those.

Heckin’ Queer

I also feel like I need to point out how queer Can*Con is, despite it not being a queer-specific event. Normally, when I go to not-specifically-queer literary events, I’ve got my shields up, so to speak, but so many panels and discussions and even just group chats in passing flitted seamlessly with queer inclusion and discourse and language. I’m used to this now from Can*Con, but honestly this year I felt like I saw more queer attendees than ever, and with panels on community, polyamory, platonic tension, and more, the reality was the queerness was just sort of baked in, but not in that Diversity 101 way I’ve often encountered at other not-specifically-queer events.

It felt simple and welcoming, everything from the super-basic (pronouns on our name-badges) to the way topics included queerness in such a matter-of-fact way. I love that.

Quest for Lunch

Conventions are also about the non-scheduled time, and Can*Con was no different. Breakfasts in the hotel restaurant meant wonderful conversations with Lydia M. Hawke, Marie Bilodeau, Steve Kenson, and Stephen Graham King for me—did I mention Stephen Graham King dedicated “The Infinite Heist” to me? Because I maybe cried in the vendor room over that one—but also chatting with people between panels, finding a table after the day’s events are done in the hotel bar and sharing publishing war stories—“Wait? That happened to you, too?!”—and squeezing in meals between panels is as much a part of the experience as the event itself.

We found lunch!

Of course, this being Ottawa, and the event taking place downtown on a weekend, the hunt for some way to get lunch was… interesting. Can*Con is moving next year, and I think the thing I heard most in response to that was, ‘Oh! Will there be open restaurants nearby?’ Which… fair. Plus side, there was a good Indian buffet place within walking distance we found on Saturday, which allowed for a wonderful hour with Brandon Crilly (co-Chair of the event, and thus super-scheduled and nearly always in motion), Steve Kenson, and Evan May, all of whom play in my Star Trek Adventures game online on the USS Curzon, so it was sort of like an Away Mission, really. After that, it was mostly about walking far enough down Elgin to find a diner open that still offered food.

So much diner food. When I came home on Sunday night, I had a glass of milk for dinner.

But seriously, even the coffee shops were closed. Luckily, I’m a tea-drinker and I brought my own supplies.

Anyone want a death prediction?

Circling back to the panel on community and being an introvert, I brought my little tin of Death Predictions from way back when I was accepted into This is How You Die, the second Machine of Death anthology, and I have to say, it made for a fun way to chat with people. Who knew handing out death predictions could be such an effective icebreaker?

Their “Death Prediction Cards” read “Beak,” “Fed Up Barista,” “Revenge,” and “Trying Too Hard.”

Seriously, it was funny how often people came up to me and said, “Are you the death guy?” which is sort of the best moniker ever. I handed out more than half of the cards in the tin, and watching a group of writers and readers react to their predictions was really enjoyable. “Skin Falls Off.” “Cabin Pressure.” “Underwater.” In the hands of SF convention attendees, these all became immediate prompts for discussions of how to interpret the various results, often with comedic results.

But my favourite had to be the young boy who was so very excited to get “Serial Killer.” He was showing it to people at random and saying, “This is how I die!” and I’m sure that wasn’t at all awkward for his parents.

Honestly, I had a blast. Can*Con is a wonderful event, I got to see some of my favourite local people, talk to others I don’t get to see very often from out-of-town, meet people who included some I’d not be overstating to label as my creative heroes, and heard so many voices I wouldn’t normally have access to speak to topics with grace and intelligence.

I look forward to next year.