One day until the awards ceremony and we were all starting to get nervous. There was some rampant speculation about the grand prize, and I have to admit that I was playing a lot of mental chess with myself.
The day started out quite well. We arrived at Author Services and began critiquing the stories that had been submitted the previous day. We were all quite impressed with the efforts of the other writers. It’s amazing what you can turn out in 24hrs if you put your mind to it.
Next up were a bunch of guest lectures by various judges. I took copious notes, which, of course, I will post later. Highlights included the Doug Beeson and Yoji Kondo show which was mainly Doug with Yoji quipping various hilarious one liners that had us cracking up. I took almost no notes of Dave Wolverton’s speech, because it was more “awesome stories” than “direct advice”. You’ll have to attend the workshop yourself to hear it, or alternatively, subscribe to his Kick In The Pants mailing list (highly recommended).
I missed half of Jerry Pournelle’s speech, because we were summoned to do an interview with Book Radio on Sirius Satellite radio. I was a little nervous because the interview was going out to an audience of two million people, but I remembered to plug www.everydayfiction.com this time, unlike the previous interview with Adventures in Sci-Fi Publishing. Afterwards, the interviewer asked me about the magazine, so hopefully I can hook her up with Camille for an interview.
That night, we went to rehearsal and got our first view of the stage. It was super impressive. Author Services really knows how to put on an awards ceremony. We were shown the tape on the stage which indicated where we should stand, and asked to speak into the mic to figure out how loud we should be in order to project to the back of the room.
Having been released, I met Alicia and Stacey Jones (Alicia’s friend) in the Chop House where we waited for the arrival of fellow Claronite, Emily Skaftun. Emily was my neighbour and one of my best friends at Clarion West, so I couldn’t wait to introduce her to my wife Alicia. Sean Williams was having a party in his suite, so I invited everyone upstairs where I managed to introduce Emily to a few people before she was whisked away by Tim Powers who toured the room with her. I hope the experience encourages her to enter (and most certainly win) the contest herself.
The party went great, but I retired early since I was still exhausted from the 24 hour story, and I wanted to save some energy for the awards ceremony the next day.
One Comment(+Add)
Hi, Jordan. I am hoping I can reconnect with you and the others and give this interview another try. Are you interested? Shoot me an email and let me know!