[Writer Post] ApolloCon 2015 Report

Okay, so it’s all getting done. I think. Finger’s crossed. One convention down. One convention to go – with a deadline. I can do it. I can. But while it’s still fairly fresh, let’s talk about ApolloCon. This is a convention that I’ve come back to this year after taking a couple of years off. It’s still small, but there are some changes happening.

They’ve moved to a new hotel – the Memorial City Westin. The hotel had some interesting…quirks. The guest rooms had one of those glass shower stalls with the rain like shower head. It was nice, but only had ONE tiny ledge to put anything on and one towel rack – for up to four people. The meeting floor had rooms tucked into weird corners which made it easy to miss seeing people because they were going around the corner. The elevators were the sticking point – anything above the meeting room floors required a room key to access – and the key would pretty much only access that floor. The consuite was not on one of those open floors. An amazing team of volunteers from the USS ZAVALA stood watch at the elevators to send up attendees to the consuite floor (which was actually a kick butt 2-bedroom apartment with a full kitchen. Best Consuite Facility EVER!).

It was hard to gauge how many people attended ApolloCon because of the ability to lose people quickly. But the panels all had more attendees than panelists. The panels seemed pretty well thought out and received. I finally got to meet Jim C. Hines after “knowing” him online for years. He’s a lovely individual. We had a blast with Jayme Lynn Blaschke and Martha Wells on a panel called “The Struggle” which was originally titled, “I Suck”.

This was after I let Tex Thompson talk me into being part of the Writers’ Workshop. DL Young and I had a group of three writers (the “science fiction” group), two of whom are friends of mine. I did sweat this – but I made copious notes and was able to tell Deborah Kent that yes, her writers’ group harpy is full of crap. And fortunately she and Marion Carpenter are still friends. The third… well, it’s his piece and his choices. There’s always a risk in doing these things, but for those who are really serious about getting better as writers, it’s worth the momentary pain of the grilling.

Got to have dinner with two great groups of people. Bill Crider, Scott and Sandy Cupp on Friday at one of their favorite Mexican places. Tex, Shawn Scarber, Mickey Finn and a crew of other people on Saturday night. These dinners are not about the food (necessarily) but the company and conversation. I may be under deadline, but I’m definitely feeling the recharge from being around like-minded creative people and some of my favorite fans. And, I got to meet some new writers and fans who are pretty darn nifty.

I hope this convention finds a way to continue to make strides. There’s been a lot of improvement this year, but they still need to find a way to continue to grow. I did do some good networking as well. I tried to pace myself, because woo hoo… Friday marks the beginning of SoonerCon and it all begins again.

Tags: ApolloCon, convention, Conventions, sf convention, workshop, Writing