Writer's Grove

I got to say thanks

You may have noticed by now that in addition to being a writer I’m rather a fan of other writers. I really dig stories; regardless of whether they entertain me or make me weep or resolve to have the courage that the hero(ine) has, stories are vital to my life and make it better. So when I get a chance to meet someone who wrote one of those stories, it’s really important to me to say thanks. That was the best part of WorldCon for me.

I got to meet Charlaine Harris and thank her for Sookie.

I got to meet Carrie Vaughn and thank her for Kitty Norville.

I got to meet Gail Carriger and thank her for Alexia Tarabotti.

I got to meet Chuck Wendig and thank him for Miriam Black and Mookie Pearl and his blog and his tweets and for being the coolest mofo ever.

I got to meet Kim Stanley Robinson and thank him for the Mars trilogy that I read like five times when I was in high school and college. Devi Pillai, an Orbit editor who apparently wished me to die of surprise, brought him by unexpectedly and I nearly shat kine. If I hadn’t been sitting down already I would have fallen down. So grateful I got to do that and not pee from excitement. I owe Devi a bottle of whiskey.

Rationally I can see that my need to say thank you is a bit silly and won’t even begin to balance the scale; the stories always do far more for me than my thanks do for their authors. But I feel so much better afterward, like it’s a debt that needs to be repaid, and I have found that, on the whole, authors are pretty receptive when I tell them they’re awesome. It’s a huge relief when I get to say thanks.

But I think I had some extraordinary access by dint of being an author myself. If I had been attending WorldCon as a reader only—that is, without the “in” of being a published author who can sit down in the bar and have Kim Stanley Robinson show up at your elbow because you know an editor—I doubt I would have had a chance at meeting some of them, let alone chatting for a few minutes. See, there were plenty of authors at WorldCon—myself among them—who weren’t included on a single panel and weren’t given a signing time. So how would I, as a reader, find authors easily if they weren’t included in the program anywhere and I wasn’t following them on Twitter—assuming that the authors I wanted to see even had a Twitter thingie? Would I even know that they were there?

Myke Cole and Justin Landon put together this cool event called Drinks with Authors precisely for that reason—a big ol’ party in a bar near the convention hotel so that people could meet authors who weren’t otherwise easily accessible at the Con. I went for a while and met someone who (I think) felt about me the way I felt about meeting Kim Stanley Robinson. She wanted me to sign a book, and when I asked her who I should make the book out to, she froze and her eyes grew wide with panic. She’d forgotten her own name for a few seconds because she was thinking about saying something else to me and I threw her off. And then she was embarrassed, but she didn’t need to be. I totally get that, because I’ve been there. A lot. I practically slobbered on Patrick Rothfuss the first time I met him, poor guy. I can talk to him now without losing my mind because I’ve told him how much I love the Kingkiller Chronicles and thanked him for writing it. And the same thing was true for this spiffy reader: Once she told me she loved the series and thanked me for writing, she relaxed and we took a picture and gabbed, and we both parted as very happy humans.

But that experience made me a little sad later as I thought about it. Not about our meeting—that was awesome! I was sad about other meetings that maybe never happened because so many authors were left out. I hope that spiffy reader got to meet everyone else that she wanted to at WorldCon. I hope everyone who wanted to meet me did so, but I think maybe I missed some people, judging by some tweets I received—and by a couple of sisters who spotted me in the hotel lobby as they were on their way out to catch a taxi to the airport. They were like YAY WE WERE BUMMED WE DIDN’T SEE YOU BEFORE AND NOW WE SAW YOU GOTTA GO BYE.

I worked around it as best I could. I had a ninja signing in the bar with Chuck Wendig on Saturday that we tweeted and some fabulous people came by to talk to us. But wow, I wonder which other writing hero(in)es of mine were at WorldCon that I missed seeing. And I wonder who else missed out on seeing some author they really dig because of whatever happened with the scheduling.

Ah, well. Hopefully I’ll meet up with those authors I haven’t met yet at some shiny shindig in the future. And if you happened to be looking for me in San Antonio and never found me, or never even knew I was there, I’m truly very sorry. I’ll try to get back to Texas again someday.

And because it can never be said enough: Thank you very much for reading.