Con Report: Con-Cept 2010
By Angela Roberts
Oct. 6, 2010
The best conventions are those at which you forget to eat. Or at least it’s not a priority. Fan Expo is usually like this. You get so busy going from panel to panel to seminar that you don’t realize you’re hungry until your stomach is rumbling. You’re just enjoying yourself too much to care. The convention that I and co-editor, Mila Rishkova, attended this past weekend, Con-Cept, is another example of this kind of fun con. Con-Cept is a fan-run convention held annually at what is now called the Hotel Espresso in Montreal, Quebec. Small, intimate, and friendly, the main attraction of conventions like Con-Cept is the great programming. Unlike big commercial cons, Con-Cept caters best to the literary side of SF, providing numerous panels on writing and a forum for authors to showcase their work and hopefully get new fans. Mila and I fed our interest in the discourse of writing and scored some great interviews that will be appearing soon on the site. We also met some interesting people and had a lot of fun.
We started our trip on Saturday. I thought about going Friday, but circumstances did not permit this to happen. So, Saturday morning, I arrived around 10 am, paid and got my badge, and hurried off to the first panel; a lively talk on trends in fantasy discussed by fantasy authors Tad Williams, Violette Malan and Jo Walton. I’m not sure if it stayed on that topic all of the time, but some of the best panels usually don’t. I’ve always thought, and Mila agreed with me, that the hallmarks of a great panel are good energy and lively conversation. Sometimes it can be more interesting when the participants are circling a topic rather than following it by rote. This was the case for this panel and the next one, which Mila joined me for, on writing for characters. After this, we attended the Guest of Honour presentation for Tad Williams in which local comic book writer Mark Shainblum interviewed the acclaimed author. Williams was entertaining and smart, as he was all weekend. We enjoyed the presentation quite a bit. Then, having a break, we went off to lunch somewhere neither of us has been since university, the Faubourg shopping centre on Guy and St. Catherine. We made it back for an interesting panel on time management for writers, then browsed the dealer room where we each bought books, one of which, Small Magics, I purchased from the author himself, Erik Buchanan. An interview with this talented writer which I conducted on Sunday will be posted on the site later this month, so watch for it. We finished our day with a panel on writing for plot, another fun, off-the-rails, discussion that was full of great insights.
Sunday, I attended the convention alone. I arrived in just enough time to attend a fun panel on editing and knowing what to edit, then it was off to the business room to conduct my interview with Tad Williams. We had arranged the interview the evening before after the Plot panel. It was definitely an awesome experience. Tad Williams was kind, engaging, and really interesting, and I think everyone will like reading the interview when it appears on the site soon. It was definitely a great experience for what was probably my very first time conducting a real interview. After scoffing the sandwich I’d brought for my lunch, I went to my next interview with Erik Buchanan. That was also a lot of fun. Afterwards, there was only time for a few more panels and talking with a few more people. Time passed quickly this weekend, in a good way, as it often should when attending a con.
Coming up soon will be the aforementioned interviews with Tad Williams and Erik Buchanan, more artist profiles, and another book review by Mila. Also, count the days: Our next issue comes out October 31st!
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