As reported, I attended ConFusion 2020 in Novi, Michigan last weekend. I enjoyed a confluence of wonderful coincidences, had a lot of fun, and met some fabulous new friends.
First, the coincidences. The week before the con I began reading “The Light Brigade” by Kameron Hurley, which I finished during the con and highly recommend. Kameron was a guest of honor, whom I shared coffee with in a small group at a kaffeeklatsch. Kameron’s a wonderful writer and person who encouraged me in my writing and showed genuine interest in what I had to say, and who shared a lot about her own journey. Also, in the days leading up to the con, Bogi Takács posted a series of intersex literature resources on Twitter, which I found immensely helpful, as a novel I am querying has an intersex main character. E was also a guest of honor, and I also had a kaffeeklatsch with em! Bogi shared anecdotes about events in Hungary, helped bring me up to speed on current controversies in the literary world, and was simply a delight to chat with.
John Scalzi was also in attendance as a guest of honor and hosted a DJ dance party on Saturday night. I’m usually one people must force to stay up late these days. All Scalzi had to do was put on some slammin’ tunes, and I was up until almost 2:00 in the morning playing the dancing fool.
ConFusion had outstanding programming, too, for a writer. Although I didn’t go to many of the panels on the craft, the one on training sequences inspired how I’m going to handle my main character’s initial training scenes in my current WIP. The Friday panels on the business side of things really dropped the knowledge bomb, though. I learned oodles at those. Might just be filing as a fiction writing for the first time this year. Ugh, itemizing! Ugh, receipts! lol
As for the people, I’m not going to try to name all the names, because there’s just not enough bandwidth to name them all. I reconnected with some folks, made plenty of new friends and connections, and even met a few authors I knew of but hadn’t seen in person. On the Border for the win for dinners we didn’t have to drive through the snow to get to! Was the con perfect? No, of course not. No con is. There were some coordination issues, and not all the logistics worked out. Also, I didn’t have any agents go goo-goo eyed over my books and offer representation–not that I was expecting even a chance to pitch, but you never know. Still and all, I will definitely attend again. Hopefully next year I’ll check in early enough to be a panelist, too.