FenCON XX

After-Action Report

Image by me

This weekend I was busy down in the MetroMess¹ being a Publisher² at FenCON XX. Decent little convention, despite some issues with the Con Hotel being jerks.

Rita didn’t come along, so I started out the weekend already tense, but several long-time friends showed up, who have dealt with Twitchy Ian before, and a Good Time was had by all.

I’d like to start out by offering an apology — I was supposed to be on the “No [Deleted], There I Was” panel, but the past months of getting up at 0500 hours every morning meant that making a 2200 hours panel just wasn’t happening. I tried, but I was face-down and snoring by 1900 hours. If you went to that panel expecting to see me, sorry about that.

Jonna, Lisa, Nick, Mike, and I stayed at an AirBNB off-site, which was a decent little stay apart from one tiny detail — the water heater had … issues. The crew got to experience the breadth and depth of profanity that can be drawn forth from Ian under a 52 degree Fahrenheit shower way too early in the morning.

We had a “What’s New At Raconteur Press” panel — decently attended — where we introduced John Van Stry, who will be the first novel we publish; and Wally Waltner, who will be our second novel. To say that we are extremely excited by our debut novelists is understating things quite a bit. We also finally let the cat out of the bag regarding how we’re going to publish our novels. Because we’re Raconteur Press and we can’t do anything the “normal” way, we will be serialising our novels.

Each one will be broken down into 20k (+/-) chunks, and each part released electronically once a week. After the whole novel has been released in serial form, we’ll release the complete novel and e-book and dead-tree format.

And because we’re Raconteur Press, there will be extra goodies inside each edition.

We also announced the results of our first ever ‘Best Of Raconteur Press’ edition. This is a collection of stories picked by our authors as being the best stories of the year. Ben Yalow graciously agreed to look at the final 25 nominees and whittle that down to the final ten.

He gave us 11. We’ll release that collection later in the year. Raconteur authors choosing the best stories from amongst their number for the year will probably continue, if the collection sells well.

I was a panelist for three different panels, and I think I comported myself admirably. We did discover, however, that the phrase, “The mics aren’t working in Conference Room #3, and Ian is asking for a multi-tool” will bring Con Tech Support at a dead run³.

The Raconteur Press Wiffle Ducks made appearances in some .. odd places:

“Yeeesss … exterminate them all!”

“Does this land have … a flag?”

And Your Publisher may have had a bout of the Sleepy Sillies:

The “prow” to the right is where the red Wiffle Duck is located above.

All in all — apart from not having Rita there — a decent little convention.

You should go by and give them some encouragement.

Now, I am utterly exhausted, so I’ll see y’all around.

Ian

1. Dallas/Fort Worth Metropolitan Area

2. Y’all do realize that I’m the CEO of Raconteur Press, right? Apparently this was a surprise to at least one person this weekend.

3. I like Todd too much to actually disassemble his equipment — the multi-tool line was a joke — but apparently I have an entirely-undeserved reputation for something.