Completely unsatisfying 4th St. con report

Look, folks, I’m terrible at con reports. I never take good panel notes, and I feel like I’m name-dropping if I list the people I talked to. Worse, I feel like I’m name-dropping incompetently, because I’m sure to forget some of my favorite people and make them feel like they aren’t valued, which is just plain unacceptable. So we can’t have that.

But Fourth Street! It was a Fourth Street! And Fourth Street is my favorite con. I am an introvert, and I like very chewy nerdy theory conversations. The single-track mode of programming at Fourth Street sets that up perfectly. Everyone is pretty much in the same place, where you can find them easily, so there is no wandering through hordes and hordes of people looking for the ones who might be talking about things you like. There they are. If you’re looking for one in specific, there’s a very limited number of places that person might be. And the conversation is not limited–it’s very far-ranging, in fact–but it does tend to have all sorts of ready-made entry-points from panels and the little extra things that spring up around the official programming.

This was the first time I’d done anything like the writers’ seminar that precedes Fourth Street. It was basically like being on panels solidly from 9-2:30, with one fifteen-minute break in the morning and one hour-long break for lunch. Lunch was provided–which was good, because by the time lunch rolled around, I was literally shaking with exhaustion/hunger. (Keep in mind that I was really sick for the week preceding the con. Wednesday was the first day I was well enough to shower standing up. Thursday was the first day I was well enough to wear clothes. Then Friday I did the seminar! Um, go team!) So having the lunch provided was great…except that it was with the seminar participants, so it wasn’t really down time per se. I’ve talked to the organizer, and things will be slightly different next year, to allow for value for the participants while still allowing the seminar leaders a minute to themselves.

Every year I try to encourage people to come to Fourth Street. This year is no different. Every year I meet new awesome people. Every year I reconnect with some of my old awesome people, and lament the ones I didn’t get enough time with (both at the con and the ones who couldn’t make it). Seriously: think about this con for next June. There are all sorts of ways to stretch and grow as a writer. Fourth Street is one of them. I came back with six pages of notes for different projects, ideas that had been sparked by things various people had said. It’s that kind of con.

One thing I remember saying on one of my panels that I do want to repeat here: I was talking about how my agent reacted (well! she reacted well!) when I told her I’d been struggling with some health stuff. I said something like, “Everyone in this room deserves to work with people who treat them ethically. All of you. You deserve someone who treats you like a person, with consideration and respect.” That was not actually meant to be limited to that room. Wherever you are in your career–whatever your career is–you deserve ethical treatment, consideration, and respect from the people you work with. Don’t let anybody tell you differently. It matters. There was lots of theorizing and arguing about craft and story and art, and all that is important. It really is. But I really want that point to be heard, because sometimes I think those of us who have been striving for something in the creative professions can want it so badly for so long that we can lose sight of other considerations, including some incredibly important ones.

Anyway. It was Fourth Street, it was lovely, and then I came home and found that I’d sold my 4H kids in space story to Analog. It’s called “Blue Ribbon,” and it’s much darker than it sounds; these things happen. Anyway, it was a great ending to a great con. You should think about coming next year.

Originally published at Novel Gazing Redux

Copper Magic, by Julia Mary Gibson

Review copy provided by Starscape Books.

Michigan in 1906 is a pretty easy sell for a YA fantasy setting for me, and I have a feeling it might be for several of you, too. Violet Blake is 12 years old, and her mother and little brother have left her alone with her taciturn cherry-farming father. The small town in which they live has a spiffy resort hotel that has drawn a newfangled photographer–a newfangled lady photographer–and Violet gets to be her assistant.

All this is because of–maybe because of?–a copper hand Violet finds that grants wishes. And is ancient and Indian, but that’s okay, because so is Violet. (Well. Not ancient. Just Indian.) Through her mother’s side of the family. And all the Indian/Native American characters care about nature, in a vague and unspecified way, and….

Look, this book is very readable. It’s fun to read, and there are some pretty good bits, particularly as Violet figures out that intentions don’t actually count for all that much compared to what you actually do–especially when you have no excuse for not following through with real actions. But I really felt like Gibson leaned pretty heavily on her own intentions when it came to the Native American characters in the book. They were very much a string of tropes about Caring About the Environment without a lot of real impact to that. There wasn’t a lot of depth to the old-time photography, or the ecology, or the First Nations tribe portrayed, or any of the elements that the marketing copy touted. I’m having a hard time finding a balance of how to talk about this book, because there were real consequences for Violet’s actions, and that was good, and I sat down and read it without much pause, so really there was that type of appeal. On the other hand, a bit shallow in handling of speculative and cultural elements. Fun, readable, but not amazing. Would like to see whether Gibson goes deeper with later work or whether this is what she was aiming for.

Originally published at Novel Gazing Redux