(no subject)

I took so many notes today and they are all out of order. This is all the fault of a stray comment by capnoblivous who admitted to me just before the maskoballo (which I attended long enough to admire the costumes and the decor and the pretty smoke and for Donna Hanson to carefully engineer me a moment of acute shyness, to her great glee) that he had lapsed into fanboy mode and had entirely forgotten to promote his brand new and gorgeous book. This he did in front of several new acquaintances (one of whom was Ian Mond I think, and the others will remain nameless forever, largely because I am in a kind of name-overload zone) and we got into a debate on how kosher the recipes were. Stu was convinced that most were, but I am afraid only some are, but reassured Mr Mond that the stories are perfectly kosher. Which was a whacking great lie, because Tessa's story, just to name one, is not.

I lost my identity during lunchtime. KJ Bishop and I exchanged selves for a bit (by mutual agreement - we decided it would be convenient). I have no objection to having being her. The Etched City is one amazing book.

Before I get any scattier, I am going to take a break and sort my notes so that I can be thematic rather than random. Go get a cup of coffee or something: I won't be long.

The day started for me with my Arthurian panel. Davina was moderator again and she really does a good job. This time I paid more attention to her cues and as a result Chris Barnes got a fair go. This is a good thing, as Chris is amazingly tall and is a bit of a weapons expert. My personal favourite question (asked by Davina) was the exact nature of a theoretical Excalibur - he went into the possibilities in fair detail. His main argument was that it had to be one-handed, which limited its length and weight. He also talked about comic books and some modern Arthurian literature. I managed to sound pretentious by mentioning Barthelme - I am going to try for more pretension tomorrow, just to see what happens.

The other panel member was Russell Kirkpatrick who was in one of his witty moods. His carefully considered announcement was that he would agree with everything I said. Every time he said "That's right", the audience laughed. Honestly, audiences should not encourage him!! Mind you, they laughed at my jokes, too, but Russell has it all worked out and audiences will laugh at almost anything he says, as long as he says it with a particularly straight face.

My cause of the minute for that panel was to try to communicate a sense of the difference between the historical Arthur and the various cultural Arthurs. Archetype vs artefact vs artifice sums it up. I told people about the naming of Widuwilt, about the riots caused by the monks of Laon when they announced in Cornwall that Arthur was dead, and a bit about the Breton Arthur and the medieval Breton belief that Arthur came to rule the Antipodes instead of dying. I mentioned chastity tests and satire and early Arthurs and the size of the grave of Arthur's son and a bunch of other things. People were dizzy with overinformation.

One thing we all agreed on was the vital importance of Monty Python and the Holy Grail to Arthurian studies. Russell and I had an almost-dispute on Marian Zimmer Bradley and feminism, but he was so busy agreeing with me he forgot to argue and we ended up nodding happily to each other. It gave me a chance to point out that I once spent a whole sick winter reading every single prologue to MZB's short story collections to illuminate how she viewed feminism and the result explains a lot of things that some people find dissatisfying with The Mists of Avalon.

Now that you have heard every single word about one minor panel (we had an audience, though, despite the hour and etc - and unlike one other panel - Sat 9 am is not a time for vast attendance at anything and should possibly be revised out of existence) you might want some of the rest of the day.

Short version (in case you are tired): lots happened

Long version:

I explored the dealer's room and, due to friendships in *all* the right places, scored a bunch of freebies. Everyone was getting all the freebies, to be honest, but I managed to get extra chocolates. I can't wait to get my Cory Doctorow CD home and start reading (yay the Conjure table - I want to go to Brisbane!) and to read a Simon Brown chapter. I didn't wait to read the Dave Luckett freebie, but sat down at once to it. All the other things were bookmarks and postcards for my various collections. I managed to escape without Harry Potter by running into a sister and a niece and spending quality time with said niece (and introducing her to Glenda Larke "The first famous author I have ever met" she told me, happily.).

I went to a couple of panels (as usual I would move towards one and get detoured by interesting people. I kept running into Jenny Fallon, for instance, and each time we met she fed me a curious tidbit of what she is doing in the NT - that lady leads an exciting life). Certain people summoned me downstairs for a private signing, which was really nice of them - it made me feel like a writer, depsite the very juniorness of that writing.

I managed to get into the panel on moving out of genre fiction with Poppy Z Brite (a bit more relaxed than last night - I keep wondering how very alien we are to her, thinking how very exotic Louisiana was to me when I visited), Neil Gaiman, Jack Dann and Fiona McIntosh.

Jack Dann and Neil Gaiman are dangerous together - conversations go in odd directions and expletives enter.

Gaiman was chairing and came in late. Dann initiated a slow handclap to encourage him. Gaiman, of course, made an Entrance.

Once the initial ribbing was over, the panel got down to business. They asked each other if anyone knew what the topic was. Brite offered that she had read it in her room before she came down. None of the others were at all certain. An obliging audience member read it aloud as a question and the four writers chorussed "yes" in answer to that question. From there on, the panel was mainly a series of bad jokes, intermittently punctuated by discussion that was kind of close to the topic sometimes.

One line by Gaiman (one liners this weekend are always by Gaiman - it seems to be an unoffical convention rule) sums up his position on the panel: he defined zen cool as the sound of one finger clicking.

Now I need something to sum up Jack Dann's presence on the panel. That's almost too easy - at one stage he admitted that an early knack for pornography helped pay his mortgage. The more I see of Jack Dann the more I think his personality is not larger than life. It *is* life - the rest of us are just very small.

A defining statement for Poppy Z Brite? Well, she admitted to writer's ego. She also had the whole panel wearing sunnies so that when Gaiman sauntered up that centre aisle, he was greeted by three dark-glassed faces.

Fiona managed to introduce mentions of bodily parts, but she also admitted to writing non-fiction. For the others, non-fiction was more something they dabbled with or dreamed of. For me, her comments were a reminder that name and fame is not the game. I loved the moment when she admitted to travel writing and editing - it brought the wider world of writing to Contiuum.

At 12 pm I was Trevored. Being Trevored is a disorder commonly known amongst Cabberra writers of speculative fiction. In this case I was given a chunk of leaflets for Conflux3 and told to hang onto them like grim death til the announcements were made and then to make sure that every single person in the hotel had one. I did my best, and also managed to ooh and ah when the names of Ray Bradbury and Steve Jackson were added to the already-formidable list of Conflux3 guests.

I ran into Jon Blum, who was still apologising for his wife's absence. We did manage to ascertain that Kate and I might have gone to the same school and that we both probably loved it equally.

It was standing room only for Neil Gaiman's guest of honour speech. It must be tough for the other big guests to be so much in his shadow. It makes it hard for them to just mingle the way GoH normally do at Cons, because he can't do that without vast hordes streaming after him. The saving grace is that he is such a very good guest - says all the right things, nice guy, beloved by all, properly sarcastic etc, because even a hint of realisation of how unbalanced the whole thing is would spoil the artifice and topple the tower.

Just for the record, for all my gushing about Gaiman (that is the public speaker in me - he is just totally superb at reading audiences and understanding what they really need, and his timing is awesome), my favourite book by any of the writers at this convention is Wizard of the Pigeons. It is one of the outstanding fantasy books of all time, and I kind of lost it and said this to the author tonight. I was entirely embarrassed about it, too - it was like saying the unsayable. I am glad I collapsed and gushed though, because Hobb is a totally nice lady and not only took it in stride, but answered one of my burning questions about how she developed such a strong feeling of outsiderness.

Now, back to Gaiman. My favourite line from his Guest of Honour speech was about the writing process of Good Omens "I wrote a very serious book and Terry Pratchett danced behind me scattering jokes." He didn't speak much, though. He gave us a couple of readings from Anansi Boys and then the MirrorMask trailer and electronic press kit. It was an excellent hour, but the debate last night still beats everything else hollow for pure entertainment.

I went to the launch of Lucy Sussex's new book (A Tour Guide to Utopia) mainly because Lucy and I had a long intense conversation about writing and history after Magic Casements earler in the year and I wantned to see this book launched.

To my surprise, Gaiman was the official launcher. To my even greater surprise he had never launched a book before. This made the whole thing short and sweet, because he knew nothing about the long speeches that often make up the great part of Australian book launches. Lucy did a reading before he came and I now have to read the book, because she used her 19th century history in one of the stories and I really have to find out if her utopian women are connected to the Princess Ida club. If they are then that club is haunting me this year and I might have to take drastic measures to make it go away. Would singing Gilbert and Sullivan backwards do the trick?

My notes at this point disintegrate into a comment that I spent a lot of time gossiping. I may just have been chatting, since the pureness of my mind makes gossip unlikely.

After scrawling "gossip" illegibly for my notes, I went to cheer on Stu Barrow at his talk on patents. He didn't need the cheering, as he did very nicely, but the talk was worth attending in its own right. Stu was informative and fun and I am guilty of learning.

During his talk, there was a whole group sitting round me that exuded intensity and perkiness and made me feel faded. The chief culprits were Zara Baxter and Anna Tambour and Wendy Dunn. I wanted to get an energy transplant from them, but none of Stu's patents would have done the trick. I did work out that if an historical novel were written with all of Stu's patents as technical aspects, it would have to be classified as historical fantasy. If he sends me webbed info on the best of the patents, I promise to link to it in a post.

Donna Hanson and I walked to Flinders St for Indian food and I needed that walk. I also needed the Voyager 10th birthday celebrations, including the cake with the blue icing. Sean Williams was a joy as an MC. Jennifer Fallon's latest book was launched (reading!!). Karen Miller's The Innocent Mage was made available ahead of publication and it looks very spiffy (more reading!!). Karen looks massively relieved that it has finally reached this stage.

Big day tomorrow and this has taken too long to write. If you can't make sense of this entry, then let me know and I will edit it. I promise to go through all my Continuuum entries and fix egregious typing errors when I get home.