Whoops … I had promised to blog about my experience at Confluence this year, but the time has flown.
Confluence is a very nice science fiction convention in Pittsburgh, specifically it’s at the Airport Sheraton, which is a smaller hotel for conventioning, but it boasts a lovely large salon on an upper floor for the con suite, and a small outdoor pool, both things I enjoy. Also, Confluence being a smaller convention has meant, for me at least, it is more intimate, with more chances to have meaningful interactions with fellow-guests and panelists.
Also, they have beer. It’s the only con I know of that provides a keg in the con suite. 🙂
This year the convention was smaller than usual, after being virtual the year before, and with still many fears of Covid. They required masks and vaccination, and the con suite was strictly grab-and-go (except for the beer.)
I had been in Pennsylvania already, teaching at the Alpha Young Writer’s Workshop, and a friend had driven me from there to the convention, with my ten-days-stay-away worth of baggage. We had to provide our own bedding at Alpha, so I had a blanket, sheets, a pillow, a teddy bear, my backpack, my cheeseburger backpack, my yoga mat, and a grocery sack to hold my tea pot, tea things, and two 15-pound hand weights.
(I have to say, that free Cleveland Water Department tote bag is tough! 10/10 would pick up at a street fair again!)
Having left Alpha at 9am and stopping to get McBreakfast on the way, I arrived just in time for my reading slot. I unloaded all my things onto a hotel baggage trolley, signed in, and then took the trolley with me to the reading room. (No one seemed to notice or mind!)
For my reading, I read the first scene of Galactic Hellcats, my flash story “Things From Our Kitchen Junk Drawer That Could Save This Spaceship” and the first scene of The Gods Awoke. To my delight, that fit the half-hour slot perfectly, and the ten or so people in the audience seemed equally pleased.
Then I set off searching for my friend Charlie, who was going to be letting me stay in his room that night. He was in a panel. I hung around the lobby, meeting old friends with my luggage rack in tow, quite content. I had a lot to talk about after the experience of Alpha, and I discovered that my friend Shannon was an Alpha alum!
It was a bit of a whirlwind … concerts, panels, chatting … there were fewer panels than usual, so the audience at each one was packed to the back! I hit the con suite for my beer and then got to spend some time lounging by the pool, just catching up with my friend Vera.
Two big fun things happened for me at this convention. First, for the first time ever, a dealer’s table had my books and I didn’t arrange it myself. So exciting to see Galactic Hellcats at the bookseller’s! The dealer’s room was heavily book-centered, about half the size of usual, but there was also some lovely jewelry and wood crafts.
The second thing was having my first meaningful in-person interactions with Neil Clarke. Which … let me explain …
At my first Science Fiction Writers Association (SFWA) event, I attempted to introduce myself to Neil Clarke and rolled a one. I stammered something incoherent, he smiled and walked away, and I stewed endlessly over how I had maybe ruined my life by being a “kiss ass” and trying to introduce myself to a Big Editor in the first place. Honestly, what was I supposed to say, “Hi! You rejected me like a dozen times! So nice to meet you!”?
(Actually, in hindsight, that would’ve been a better opener.)
Five years later when I was attending my first ever WorldCon, I had just started slush reading for Clarkesworld. Neil Clarke and I had exchanged a few terse professional emails over that, and I thought, “This is it. I have a conversational opener, I can undo my past blunder.”
I soon found him chatting on the convention center’s terrace, and … I hung awkwardly around the periphery of his conversational circle, waiting to be noticed, like a school girl with a crush.
There followed two days of me puppy-dogging Neil Clarke, following him around and not saying anything.
THEN, well … sigh … the SFWA Suite.
SFWA had a private relaxation room at the convention, and it had an open bar of donated alcohols. Including a bottle of single malt scotch! I couldn’t believe how much of a bargain my dues suddenly felt. 😀
By the time my friend Nyla gently dragged me from the room I had definitely consumed more than my annual contribution, and I was dancing on air. Or perhaps that was stumbling. I fell right into Neil Clarke, who was entering the room as we left. I gripped his shoulders tightly and gasped drunkenly, “You’re Neil Clarke! I … I’m drunk!”
He gave me a mildly alarmed, indulgent smile and said, “I’m not,” and Nyla peeled me off of him.
I woke up in the morning remembering every detail of that encounter in excruciating detail.
So … that was it. I was never going to have a normal conversation with Neil Clarke. I gave up. I had doomed it all. We were two ships in the night, linked only by rejection letters.
Then I was put on a panel with him at Confluence.
The panel was “Future of SF” and I was unsure what I could offer to the conversation next to an editor working right on the front lines. If anything, my personal SF is rather … old-school. BUT I had just taught 20 bright and gifted teenage writers!
The moderator was such an old hat at this! He had prepared questions for each panelist specifically, drawing on our own bios and works … he’d done his research and conducted the panel so smoothly!
Then there was a question about my story in Clarkesworld, and NEIL answered the question, and I don’t remember exactly what he said but it was like … a compliment.
Soon we were, well, discussing back and forth, like you do on panels. And it felt perfectly fine and normal.
Before I knew it, my friend Vera had invited both me and Neil to dinner, and the conversation continued. I asked him if he remembered me falling drunkenly on him at worldcon, and he very kindly lied and said he did not.
The convention ended for me Sunday morning with a lovely Kaffeklasch with Micheal Swanwick, who I had never met before, and he had his own drunken stories to tell. Well, the other people in the story were drunk. Then Charlie and I hit the road back to Cleveland, he having generously offered a trip home as well as a place to sleep, making this whole adventure amazingly cheap for me.
It was drizzling lightly as we packed his car. “Okay,” he said, “we have to go back for your heavy bag.”
“This is the heavy bag,” I said, lifting the Cleveland Water tote into place in his trunk.
“I can’t believe you can lift that!” Charlie cried, and lo, the Cleveland Water Tote Bag’s legend will live on.
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