Farpoint 30 Autopsy

 

Another quality post brought to you by Steve! 

Hey, everybody!  Don't forget, WE ALL LIVE IN A FASCIST POLICE STATE NOW, THANKS TO THIS ONE FUCKING GUY.  Who's the fucking guy?  Well, take a fucking guess.

Meanwhile, I'm back from my first convention of the year.  Now we are so happy we do the Dance of Joy!  Doy-doy-doy-doy...  (How's that for an IYKYK?)  I've been attending Farpoint for...gosh, it must be six or seven years now.  Okay, I double-checked and it appears to be six years.  

But what I realized this year was that I hadn't seen my usual con partners, Elizabeth Corrigan and our very own Mary Fan, who I used to say three or four times a year for what must be at least three years due to the pandemic.  It was time to rectify that mistake!

Last year I felt wrecked having to drive back and forth to Farpoint multiple times, so this year I decided to try to limit my panels to just Friday and Saturday.  So I drove down to Baltimore Friday night, checked in, and sat on my first panel, "How to Build an Alien," the subject being, how do we avoid the Humans But With Funny Foreheads cliche.  (Farpoint, in case you couldn't guess from the title, is a largely "Star Trek"-themed con.)  

We actually had a pretty decent audience for a Friday night, and as of 5:59 pm I thought I was going to be the only panelist.  So I got ready to give the folks a hell of a show, even if it was just me on the other side.  But, within about thirty seconds three more panelists piled in, including the moderator and thankfully the pressure was significantly lessened.  We still gave them a hell of a show, of course!

Then I headed over to meet up with Mary and Elizabeth for dinner.  It may have been a while, but it's nice to see old friends and fall back into old rhythms.  It may have been three years but it felt like no more than three days.

I headed home, and since moving into Air Studio International Headquarters, I am about a half hour closer to Baltimore than previously, so it was actually not a miserable weekend in terms of driving.  People say it happens after cons a lot, but I was really feeling rejuvenated as a creative this time, particularly from seeing Mary and Elizabeth, so I sat down and wrote an entire original piece for my Saturday reading, "How an Enormous Black Poodle Almost Killed Me and Vincent Price's Daughter."  I was planning just to read something from my stockpile, but there you have it!  My 2023 original piece done.

Saturday morning my first panel was at noon, and that was "Write What You Know," which, ironically, was actually meant to be a takedown - or, at a minimum, a dissection - of trite writing advice.  To the aspiring writer in the front row who took down a whole moleskine of notes, I see you!  I also recommended that all of the aspiring writers submit to THE PERFECTLY FINE NEIGHBORHOOD, so hopefully we'll see some movement there.

For the hour of lunch that we got a managed to get a sausage, egg, and cheese muffin that was frozen solid in the center, just the way I likes it, and set about editing the short piece I had written the night before.  Shockingly, it was not bad.  There were a few bits I didn't quite like, but after doing this for ten years, I have a pretty good feel for how audiences will react to readings, and I could tell this one was going to be decent.  So I headed over to the Derby room and when it was still empty at 2:05 pm, without even a sign of my other reading partners, I suspected I'd get another hour to myself.  Maybe I could get another ice muffin!

But all of a sudden an audience poured in alongside the other readers, and I suppose what happened is everybody got stuck at other panels.  My weekend has been thankfully broken up with at least one hour between each panel, but clearly not everyone got that luxury.  So I read "Black Poodle" and people seemed to enjoy it!  I'm actually glad I did it in front of a different audience before some of the bigger cons coming up this year, because I definitely noticed some saggy parts that I can tighten up.  Although, if you don't mind me tooting my own horn, I noticed as I was speaking some of the weak turns of phrase and changed them on the spot.  But now those changes can go into the official script!

Then my 4:00 pm signing came and Billy West and Carlos Alazraqui almost immediately left their stations so...I did not sell any books.  But, all in all, I very much enjoyed Farpoint again this year, as I do every year.  It was a very nice, leisurely way to kick off the con season, with the panels not being overwhelming and not having to table or deal with packing and hoteling.  And for those of you who want to hear "Black Poodle" in its entirety, well, you'll just have to make it to another one of my events this year.  For now, ciao, everybody, even though I'm not Italian.