In short: they liked it.

When I was asked to review “Exit Interview” by Patrick Johanneson (debut 8/3 and reviewed by Anonymous), I was pleased as I clearly remembered reading it the day it arrived in my inbox–always a good sign. I enjoyed it as much reading it a second time.
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They also pointed out that no less a luminary than Mike Resnick — Mike Resnick! — has sold a story to Daily SF. That’s some esteemed company to be in, methinks. (For those not in the know — Mike Resnick has been nominated for more Hugo Awards than any other science fiction writer.  Including Grandmasters like Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein.)

So.  How’s your day been?

see more hipster robot webcomics and pixel t-shirts

Not only is it up on the site now, but it appears to be the “Featured Story” on their site, too. Woo hoo!

You can click the little wee screenshot to see ‘em, if you want.

On tap for tonight: Write Club. (Followed up, almost certainly, by a farewell to a couple of our writers, who are going to Guelph* and China, respectively.)

____
* I think it’s Guelph, anyways.

We said “Sure!”

Gimli beach, seen from the breakwater

It’s a pretty laid-back festival, as such things go.  Gimli is a small beach town about an hour north of Winnipeg, with a good-sized harbour on Lake Winnipeg (which is often referred to as an inland ocean).  We got to town about 10:30 in the morning, wandered around the harbour and beach area for a bit, found a festival programme, and sort of planned out our day.  We had lunch at the Europa Diner, which serves huge portions of delicious food — we ended up taking home a box of fries and a box of salad that we just couldn’t finish — then wandered over to the main stage at the park, where a concert was slated to start at 1:30.

The concert proved to be sets by some local talent.  I got to hear a six-year-old boy playing piano; he started out at the mike, saying that he was going to play “Strangers in the Night” (“I wrote it myself”) and then had to be reminded, via a stage whisper from the concert MC, to actually go and play the tune.  He was a pretty decent pianist for a six-year-old. (I’m 38 and I can’t play worth beans.)

I had taken a separate route to the concert from Mom and my wife. (I’d wanted to check out the Fris Nok game, which turned out to be groups of three or four throwing Frisbees at beer bottles set on poles stuck in the ground — not quite what I’d thought it might be.)  So just as the six-year-old was finishing up his set, they wandered up.  They’d been in a little bazaar-style area, checking out the wares.  When the next performer took the stage, I wandered over to check it out.  There were English-Icelandic dictionaries for sale, and all manner of jewelry, including lots with Mjolnir.  I found one pendant with Huginn and Muninn, Odin’s ravens, engraved on it, but while I am quite taken with the ravens, I’m not the type to wear such things.

When I left the bazaar, the ladies were about ready to move on.  There was a Norse combat demonstration coming up, and I really wanted to see it, so we headed back towards the harbour.  On the way we stopped in at the Reykjavik Bakery, and bought some vinerterte and a loaf each of Viking bread.  Mmmm.

The combat demo was really quite intriguing. It started off with a brief look at a small group of villagers, left behind while the able-bodied men went a-viking. (The narrator alleged that the word “viking” isn’t a noun but a verb; to go viking apparently means to travel in search of plunder or trade. I’d heard that before, but according to my favourite online etymology source, that may or may not be true.)  The women, the children, and the greybeards were left behind, and perforce needed to develop and maintain skills with weapons, both to hunt for sustenance and to fend off attackers, since not all Viking types got along with each other.

So the demo opened with a group of women, children, and old men practicing their archery, firing (blunted) arrows at a shield propped on a stick.  Then a raiding party approached, and the villagers drew together, ready to defend themselves, to the death if need be.

Then another raiding party approached. The two parties squared off, traded jeers, and rattled spears on shields.  (During this, the villagers made their quiet escape.)

And the narrator picked up his microphone, and led us through about a half-hour of Viking-style combat, with spears, hand-axes, saxes (long knives, the sign of a free man), Dane axes (long axes, really a hybrid between axe and spear), shields, Berserkers, swords, and all the other tools, implements, and traditions of Viking combat.

I felt kind of bad for the re-enactors; they fought — and fought hard — in long sleeves, heavy pants, heavier mail, with heavy weapons, under the hot, hot last-day-of-July sun.  They put on a heck of a show for us.

Then, once the combat ended, we wandered through the Viking village that was set up on the knoll.  Mom chatted with a couple of the ladies, who were knitting Viking-style; apparently one of them had studied it in England, and the other had learned it from YouTube.  O brave new world.  I snapped a bunch of pictures, and listened in on explanations here and there — one man, standing by his gold-hand-on-red-flag banner, said that the pennant served several purposes:  You could rally your own men to it; it would let your enemies know where you were, so they’d come to fight you; or it might scare your enemies away, if your reputation preceded you.

And after we’d toured the village, we had a bit of ice cream, and then we said à la prochaine to Gimli, headed home.

(If you don’t sign up, all is not lost; stories show up on their site about a week later, and I will for sure post a link to it here, and on Facebook, and on Twitter, and probably Google+ …)

I arrived in the late morning, and stalled my car going into the hotel’s parking garage (it’s a steep climb, and my car was in third gear, not first as I had thought). Once I parked, I found my way to the eleventh floor, where I signed in, paid up, and got a badge with PAT J. written on it.

I ran into Craig almost immediately. He was easy to pick out: of all the gents wearing suits there, his was the one without goggles or gears or brass accoutrements. Glancing at the con programme, I noticed that there was a panel discussion underway on the state of SF/F literature. The two of us snuck in to the back row, and caught 75% of the discussion. It was a good chat; apparently high fantasy is outselling SF by a considerable margin, and at least one author is apparently being asked to provide three fantasy novels for every SF manuscript that he turns in. This might be partly because fantasy seems to lend itself far better to long, sprawling epics, multi-novel series, and the like. Consider The Wheel of Time, or George R. R. Martin’s series (A Song of Ice and Fire, IIRC), or even the Dark Tower saga that I love so much. Now try to name a science fiction series that lasted more than four novels. (Other than L. Ron Hubbard’s dekalogy, which I’m pretty sure he wrote just so he could say he had written a dekalogy.)

One of the panelists was a gent named Chadwick, who orders in the SF at McNally-Robinson‘s Winnipeg store.  I’d met him at Words Alive.  He told me that there were copies of Tesseracts in the dealers’ room, and I should go sign them when I got a chance.  “Sure,” said I.

The next session featured Craig Russell reading from his novel Black Bottle Man. He read for a solid hour — basically he just started at Chapter 1 and went till sixty minutes had passed, which took us neatly to the end of Chapter 5.  It was a good reading — Craig’s background is in the theatre, and he recommended that, if you’re going to do readings, and you’re nervous about it, take some acting lessons.  Good advice.  Reading in church probably helps quite a bit too.

After that I had about an hour till the next event, so I wandered into the dealers’ room. Sure enough, the McNally-Robinson table had a couple copies of Tesseracts, so I signed them.  As I was putting them back in place, I thought, Gee, that guy looks familiar.  So, long story short, I introduced myself to Robert J. Sawyer.  I even remembered to give him a card.  (All in all, I took 16 cards with me to Keycon, and only came home with one.  Great success.)

After that, I returned to the panel room for a talk on the state of Manitoba fiction.  It was called a panel discussion, but really, with three panelists and five attendees, it became more of a chat.  Craig (who was one of the panelists) introduced me to Chris Rutkowski, local UFO and ghost author, who said, “Yeah, I’ve seen your site.”  So I guess I better keep this site up to date, eh?

Next time:  My meeting with the On Spec editors.

Published, woo hoo!

Hey, does anyone know — can you spell Ouroboros with a lowercase “o”?
Update: Yes.