I woke up at 6am today with another couple of thousand words to write on my 24 hour story. I basically barricaded myself in my room and wrote like crazy, stopping only for a quick lunch. By 3pm I had churned out what I think was a pretty respectable 3100 word piece called SOCIETY RETURNS THE FAVOUR, involving Nicky, the insane conspiracy theorist who’d chased me down Hollywood Boulevard the previous day.
We returned to Author Services by 5pm with stories in hand and KD disappeared to print them out, selecting through arcane means the three we would workshop the next day (She threw them down a flight of stairs and selected the one that traveled the least. I chose 12pt font for my story, and thus, was spared.)
That night, we attended a BBQ for the arriving judges and got our first chance to meet the illustrators. They knew the titles of the pieces they’d illustrated, but not the authors so it was a great chance for them to get to know us in person, and for us to get to know their artwork. My illustrator Joshua J Stewart (whose name we jokingly shortened to J.J. Stew) was absolutely amazing. His portfolio contained any number of pieces that would make stunning book covers. In my opinion, he was a strong candidate for the gold award (though the level of talent on display among the illustrators was generally stunning).
Tim Powers grabbed Cheryl and I and introduced us to writing luminaries, Jerry Pournelle, which resulted in an awkward moment where he didn’t remember her story, but managed to entertain us with first hand stories about the McCarthy era. Truly a fascinating gentleman.
I tried talking to Sean Williams, but the guest speaker for the awards ceremony, who’d been hovering around the edges of the BBQ until then, chose that moment to dive into conversation. He’d been so quiet until then (and looked a little stunned) so I chose to retreat, figuring I could talk to Sean later.
The food was great, the conversation and atmosphere delightful (though a little dark to check out the illustrators’ work) and generally a Cool Deal. A good time was had by all.
We got copies of the stories we were to critique at 9pm (Don Mead, Heather McDougal, and Schon Zwakman were the lucky “winners”) and we retired to our rooms to do our critiques. I got together with Gra to do mine, but he was just too damn interesting and so I didn’t even get started until 11pm. I was exhausted the next morning.