[Rocket Sheep]

Yes, well... the bar... I went to my first con last year and ended up in the bar on the first night with a guy known to all as "Scary Costume Man". He actually was more hilarious than scary. And I didn't mind that but the con went downhill from there.

There were room parties that became mobile, ping pong championships that stole my pants, an anti-Clarionborg campaign, being labelled Trailer Trash because a group of us couldn't afford the hotel, the chance to meet every drunk in the city, and a stalker who took two days to figure out I wasn't a man (I'd offended him via the internet, you see). Anyway, it ended up being a very weird con... not something that could ever happen to a normal person on their first con experience. I tend to attract trouble. There were good things too. I got to chat to lots of great writers privately. They were hanging out in all the quiet spots I found to avoid the stalker. And some of the panels were interesting.

This year I'm going to this one: Continuuum (http://www.continuum.org.au/index.html) but if anyone is thinking of heading downunder check out the Nat con in Tassie 'Thylacon' and also the Canberra one 'Conflux' and there's also something in Adelaide and Perth... this year too... but the first three I mentioned are all around the middle of the year... oh an there's one in Auckland about the same time... and you can drive off and check out Hobbitsville later.

[Radthorne]

...ping pong championships that stole my pants...
This is, um, an Australian phrase, I take it?

...and you can drive off and check out Hobbitsville later.
I've heard that the sets that are left are unpainted, de-foliated, etc. due to some agreement with New Line Cinema. Probably not quite as pretty as in the movies, I imagine...

[alison]

Certainly, feel free to drag me into a bar. I keep trying to entice Rocket Sheep to come up here to the States to attend either World Con or World Fantasy; perhaps we can swing an Australian package deal on writers and I can get both of you?

You're on! Though do you think they might iris scan and send us back? It's been happening to a few Australians lately, and if Rocket Sheep is as wicked as she says, and gets around with no pants after pingpong games (I don't know what it means, either - but I'm sure there's a story there) - well!!!!

[Rocket Sheep]

Those are the rules of ping pong. If you get no points before the other person gets to 21 you have to run down the street with no pants on. Don't you know the rules?

[alison]

I bow down and grovel in my ignorance, o Rocket Sheep. (If I knew how to use those smiley things at the side, I'd put up the shocked looking one.) But Great Flaming Ovine One, forgive me for observing this, but you must be pretty bad at ping pong, if you got no points at all. Or were you seeing two ping pongs, and kept hitting the wrong one? I don't want anyone seeing the parlous state of my knickers, so I'll take note and gracefully decline any challenges that might come my way...

I guess we should let Rad get back to his news...

[Rocket Sheep]

Yes we should... altho it'll have to be good to top my profound badness at ping pong.

I'm amazed at how many cons are on in WA alone this year that Radthorne can drive to.

You know in Australia, the same core group of people go to nearly every con in every state (and only five of the states are having them in 2005, remember we only have one major city per state and one con) but if you compare the size of Australia to the size of the USA... that is pretty amazing (mind you if you compare the price of airfares in Aus to those in USA, that is pretty amazing too, mind you they probably don't have to peddle so hard in the US).

Anyway, a con in Australia is about meeting familiar faces. I'm not sure I'm ready for an American con.

[Radthorne]

Please, let's go back to playing ping pong in our knickers. I think that's a far more interesting topic... When did you say we got out of that bar? :eek: (I can see that tanking Rocket up a bit will lead to a highly entertaining evening...)

And yes, Rocket is very wicked. She professes to being an innocent sheep, but lurking beneath that wooly exterior lay the heart of a dragon, seeking to fly free and escape the boundaries of suburbia. And she does so, by writing excellent prose that is both humorous and dark in turns. It is by that which we can see the true sheep.

There do seem to be cons around every corner up here. As Maus said, I even have my own, RadCon. :D I don't even know what the Rad in that is supposed to mean. At the regional ones that I'm driving to, they are fairly insular, in that I see many of the same people at all of them. They range in size from about 300 up to 2500 attendees. I believe CascadiaCon, the North American replacement for WorldCon while it's in Scotland, is anticpating 3000 people.

I'm not entirely sure either how this many cons can be supported, but they seem to keep on going. Being such a small fry, I try to go to anything where someone invites me to be on panels. Building "buzz" is a slow process, but if you keep working at it methodically, eventually something may come out of it. I have one delightful older woman who comes to almost every con and sits in my panels knitting caps and things for her grandchildren. She's read The Road to Kotaishi and asks me at every con when the next book is coming out, because she really, really wants to read it. Another couple of months and she should be able to get her hands on Sabakushi!

[alison]

Rad means "radical", I guess? That's a pretty good abbreviation for an sff writer. Doesn't work with my name, I just get "Crog", which is way uncool.

I love the story of the old woman knitting at your panels. There are irresistible echoes of the old women knitting around the guillotine in Revolutionary France, but so long as it's not your head.

Cons do sound like potentially overwhelming events, but obviously I must check them out if I want to be a fully rounded person (preferably with the True Sheep at my elbow to keep me safe). (True about her work, too, Rocket, ewe modest thing).

Oh god, it's too early in the morning. I'd better get some coffee.

[Radthorne]

I'm not sure where RadCon's Rad comes from, but mine has a slightly more offbeat story to it. When my son was born, I suggested to my then-wife that we both change our names, combining mine (which used to be Radke) and hers (which was Hawthorne). Thus we, and our son, became Radthornes. (Alas, the relationship proved less enduring than the name idea). When Lise (my present wife) and I married, she elected to adopt the Radthorne name as well. Thus there are only four of us Radthornes in the world. (If you plug my name into Google, 95% of what you get back is for me, with most of the rest related to either Lise, my son, or his mother. There's also a gamer who combined parts of his first and last name to get Radthorne as an online handle, and some dog kennel in England from the 80's that had that name, but that's it.) "Radthorne" also sounded better than "Hawke" which would have been the combination of the other two halves. And as much as I thought about it, I resisted the temptation to name my son Hawke Radthorne. That would have been pretty cool, though, huh? ;)

And I think "Crog" is a lovely name. Ok, maybe not lovely. But it does have a certain edginess to it... maybe write a little sci-fi with it?

Guillotine?!? :eek: And I thought she was such a sweet little old lady... I must be careful not to "off" any of her favorite characters, or I might be in big trouble...

The True Sheep... I really like that! And I shan't let her forget it, either! I know what berg she is in; are you in the same one? Are you, like, neighbors and have just been holding out on us? Or has the Official Author Forum served to lay the foundation for a new Antipodean friendship?

[Rocket Sheep]

Crog sounds like someone with a club who likes to drag her boyfriends round by their hair... I should stop there.

Berg, Rad? As in Iceberg? I think the word is burb. As in 'burbling saditude" (Vandermeer, get out of my head!). And I know we're not neighbours because Alison is next to the sea, and I'm smack dab in the centre of ALL the burbs.

It's really cool about you having one dedicated fan, Radthorne. I think you need a fanclub. We could chase you at cons, tear your hair out and sell it on ebay for hundreds... that would get you noticed. ;)