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ICON Schedule

This afternoon I’m flying down to Iowa to be Toastmaster at ICON 38. Which means I get to introduce and interview and generally hang out with their long list of guests of honor:

Any suggestions for questions I should ask, or particularly juicy stories I should share during opening ceremonies? 🙂

Here’s my schedule for the weekend, assuming nothing changes:

Thursday

Friday

  • 1 – 5 pm: DreamCon
  • 7 pm: Opening Ceremonies

Saturday

  • 9 – 10 am: Martial Arts in SF (Elm)
  • 3 – 4 pm: Fandom 101 (Elm) – Tentative
  • 4:30 pm: Guest of Honor Speeches/Interviews (Rosewood)
  • 6 pm: Art/Benefit Auction (Elm)
  • 10:30 pm: Bulwer-Lytton/Vogan Poetry (Waterloo)

Sunday

  • 9 am: Benefactor Brunch
  • Noon: Reading (Dogwood)

Looking forward to seeing at least a few of you there!

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• Garden Ninja is holding a sale–30% off everything, including Goblin Quest miniatures (as well as their nifty new Schlock Mercenary mini)!

• I’ll be at Schuler Books in Grand Rapids tonight at 7:00 (the Alpine Ave. location) reading my muppet werewolf story and signing copies of The Mermaid’s Madness [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy] and anything else you’d care to buy or bring.

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So I survived my first Guest of Honor experience at Icon, and I’m still processing the whole experience.  I had a wonderful time and came away completely wiped, which I think is exactly the way it should work.  How cool was this weekend?  Let me put it this way: they brought me a shrubbery.

They also gifted me with a drawing of Jig the goblin, done by Kurt Wilcken.  Not to mention the opening skit, which included three of my goblins and my three princesses. And don’t forget that jacket in the art show (pictures below). Oh yes, I could definitely get used to this 🙂

Huge thanks to my liaison and fellow CatsCurious author Catherine Schaff-Stump, who spent the weekend spoiling me rotten and pointing out those annoying little details like the fact that it was 3:02 and I was supposed to be at a 3:00 panel. (And for reminding me how to spell liaison.) Thanks also to everyone involved with the planning, as well as the folks actually making things happened.  This was one of the better-organized cons I’ve attended, and I had a blast.

I’ll have more musings on the whole experience, but I still need to sort it all out and recover my coherence, which started abandoning me about mid-morning on Sunday. So for now, here are a few pics from the weekend.  (If anyone else has pictures from the con, I’d love to see ’em!  For some reason I didn’t get much time for taking pictures.)

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Guest of Honor Tips

I wanted to say thanks to everyone who chimed in on yesterday’s post.  One of the things I love about my online community is that it’s wonderful for support and for reality-checking–in this case, the reminder that envy is human, and that in fact I’m not the only author in the whole wide world who isn’t getting the six-figure advances 🙂

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So tomorrow I fly to Iowa, where I’ll be doing my first stint as Guest of Honor at a convention. Thank you, Icon!

In order to avoid embarrassing myself too much, I’m compiling a list of suggestions for what notto do as GoH.  Here’s what I’ve come up with so far.

  • “I’m your guest of honor, and I’ll wear pants when I’m good and ready!”
  • Guest of Honor Speech: Two hour PowerPoint of I Can Has Cheezburger pics.
  • “Oh, handler?  I would like you to bring me … a shrubbery!”
  • Insist that all filkers sing “The Song of Jig” whenever I enter a room.
  • “I’m here today to tell you about ShamWow! Call now, and I’ll throw in an additional set of ShamWows absolutely free!”
  • If any former guests of honor attend, stalk them back to their hotel room and proclaim “There can be only one!”
  • Respond to all questions with quotes from Ghostbusters, Princess Bride, and Monty Python.
  • Anyone who wants an autograph must first prove they’re not a brains-hungry zombie.

Please feel free to suggest your own.

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