balticon

Science Fiction Convention (5th of 2025)

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Next weekend (not this weekend), May 23–26, I’ll be at Balticon in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. As usual, I’ll be spending a lot of time in the dealers’ room (specifically: Friday 2–7pm, Saturday and Sunday 10am–7pm, and Monday 10am–2pm). But this year, I have a serious request: I’m currently experiencing a severe case of tendinitis (my doctor called me an over-achiever: I’ve got tennis elbow AND golfer’s elbow, simultaneously, in my left arm [the last round of golf I played was three years ago, and I haven’t played tennis in more than a decade]). As a result, I’m going to have trouble lifting the boxes of books, so if I can find a willing volunteer or two to help me unload the car and get the stuff to the dealers’ room on Friday, and/or to truck it back to and reload the car on Monday, I’d be grateful. Thank you.

And if you’re looking for me on panels, seek me out:

Friday at 8:30pm in Mount Washington: “When Writing Advice is Rong” with Scott H. Andrews, Joshua Bilmes, Dan Jolley, and Mark Painter.

Saturday at 11:30am in Gibson: “Traditional Publishing Scares Me: How to Traditionally Publish Your Book” with Joshua Bilmes, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Sydney Olivia, and Brie Tart.

Sunday at 10:00am in Federal Hill: “Ducks and How to Make Them Pay” with Martin Berman-Gorvine, Flappy, Kelly Pierce, and Naomi S.

Sunday at 2:30pm in Mount Washington: “Jews In Space: Jewish SF On and Off The Page” with Martin Berman-Gorvine, Randee Dawn, and Alex Shvartsman.

Sunday at 8:30pm in Mount Washington: “Eye of Argon Reading” with A.L. Kaplan, Mary G. Thompson, and Jean Marie Ward.

Monday at 11:30am in St. George: “Short Fire Readings” with Scott Edelman, Miguel O. Mitchell, Mark Painter, and Andrija “Andy” Popovic.

Hoping to see many of you there!

Back-to-back science fiction conventions

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I’m hitting the road on Friday for a couple of weeks. It started with two science fiction conventions on successive weekends, and I’ve decided to extend the in-between and after time, so I’ll be away for a while (with, probably, intermittent on-line access).

This weekend, I’ll be at Balticon in Baltimore, Maryland. As usual, I’ll be at the Fantastic Books table in the dealers’ room for a lot of the time. But programming put me on a slew of panels while the dealers’ room is open, so I hope to have friends staffing the table while I’m elsewhere panelizing. (That’s also a round-about way of saying I might have to miss one or two of the panels I expect to be on.)

If you’re looking for me on those panels, my schedule is:

Friday at 4:00 PM in Gibson: “So, you want to be a writer?” with Joshua Bilmes, Monica Louzon, and Michael A. Ventrella.

Saturday at 2:30 PM in Club Lounge: “Are classics still relevant? Is older SFF ‘unreadable’?” with AD Boorman, Max Baskin, Randee Dawn, and Mark Roth-Whitroth.

Saturday at 4:00 PM in James: “Making Old Hats New” with Eric Hardenbrook and Mark L. Van Name.

Sunday at 1:00 PM in Mount Washington: “Editors Can Be Your Friends” with Scott H. Andrews, Joshua Bilmes, Bjorn E. Hasseler, and Joy Ward.

Sunday at 2:30 PM in James: “Honing the Writer’s Craft Through Short Stories” with Scott H. Andrews, Elektra Hammond, and Alex Shvartsman.

Sunday at 4:00 PM in Club Lounge: “The New World of Publishing” with Joshua Bilmes, Shahid Mahmud, and Alex Shvartsman.

Sunday at 8:30 PM in Guilford: “Plot a story from audience input” with Randee Dawn, Michael M. Jones, Ken Schrader, and Mary G. Thompson.

The convention wraps up Monday, and then I expect to overnight somewhere in Virginia with friends, and then drive down to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, for a couple days.

The following weekend, June 2-4, I’ll be at ConCarolinas for the first time (in Charlotte, North Carolina). I don’t have a table in the dealers’ room, but I will have a table in what they call Authors’ Alley. I fear the table space may be limited, meaning I’ll only be able to show a smattering of the Fantastic Books books that are available. We’ll see. New convention: new experiences.

The panels I’m scheduled to be on at ConCarolinas are:

Friday at 10 PM in Olmstead: “The Ethics of Using AI and Machine Learning in Content Creation” with Bishop O’Connell, William C. Tracy, and Brandon N. Whitworth.

Saturday at 12:30 PM in Olmstead: “How to Destroy the World” with Charlie Kaufman, Darin Kennedy, Cisca Small, and Mel Todd.

Sunday at 12:30 PM in Keynes: “Walking On Sunshine and Where’s the Beef” with Samantha Bryant, Nancy Northcott, and Amy Ravenel.

Sunday at 1:30 PM in Walden: “Mars Wants What?” with R.M. Hamrick, Michael Mammay, Edward McKeown, and Sumiko Saulson.

After that convention, I’ll probably spend another week or so in the Carolinas, before heading back home to New York. Should be quite an adventure! Hope to see lots of you there (and there, and there…).

Convention Weekend

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Once again, convention weekend is upon us! This time, it’s Balticon, in the Inner Harbor area of Baltimore, Maryland, at the Renaissance Baltimore Harborplace Hotel. For more information on the convention, see http://www.balticon.org/wp56/

As usual, I’ll be spending most of the weekend at the Fantastic Books table in the dealers’ room (come see me, even though the dealers’ room is frequently hidden behind something they call Artist Alley, which looks suspiciously like a dealers’ room, in the atrium). UPS-willing, I may have a few advance copies of our new anthology, Three Time Travelers Walk Into… with me (and at least three authors in the book are scheduled to be at the convention: David Gerrold, Gail Z. Martin, and Hildy Silverman). The dealers’ room is scheduled to be open Friday, from 2 to 7pm; Saturday and Sunday, from 10am to 7pm; and Monday, from 10am to 2pm.

I’ll also be on four panels during the convention:

Saturday at 2:30pm, room 7029: “Writing Characters with Agency (In-person)” with Stephanie “Flash” Burke, Gail Z. Martin, and Mark L. Van Name.

Saturday at 4:00pm in the Homeland Room: “What Do Editors Want?” with Rigel Ailur, Scott H. Andrews, Joshua Bilmes, and Nancy Springer.

Sunday at 1:00pm in Room 7029: “Don’t Show Me the Money: Cashless Societies” with Elektra Hammond, Shahid Mahmud, and Christie Meierz.

Sunday at 4:00pm in Room 7029: “Fix that Episode!” with Stephanie “Flash” Burke, Andy Love, Ryan O’Nan, and Hildy Silverman.

I hope to see a lot of you there!

And if you can’t make it to Balticon, the next appearance on my schedule is Freaky Mutant Weirdo 2022: The Steampunk Variant, on June 4, outdoors in Vasa Park in Hackettstown, New Jersey. For more information, see https://www.freakymutantweirdo.com/.