GenreCon 2013 Roundup

I spent the last weekend at GenreCon in sunny Brisbane. Brisbane is incredibly pleasant for such a big city – at least where I was staying at South Bank.

Clean and tidy, open and airy, they’ve put a lot of effort into making the riverfront appealing, including a rainforest walk, a free pool/beach, a massive open-air stage and a café and restaurant district.

GenreCon itself was held at the State Library, a modern building with a bookshop and café outside, and great facilities inside.

The event began with a cocktail party where I caught up with a bunch of friends including Mark and Luke Mercieca, Amanda Bridgeman, David Versace and Josh Melican, and met a whole heap more.

I only wish it had gone on for twice as long.

We followed up the cocktail party with drinks at the official Con hotel, though I snuck off to bed a bit early as I didn’t want to risk a hangover.

Some people chose to risk it judging by the zombie stares and Twitter talk the next day.

Day 1 was full-on. It included:

• fantastic keynote speakers
• workshops
• panels.

The highlight for me was the workshop on creating book trailers with Scott Baker.

Scott gave us lots of very useful information disguised as common-sense, straightforward guidelines, but in reality he made it clear that a professional-looking book trailer is really hard to pull together, and potentially quite expensive.

The other big highlight of the day was a great chat I had with the lovely Rochelle Fernandez from HarperVoyager.

Not being faced with the prospect of having to pitch a novel to her at any point, it was a relaxed, easy-going conversation. It felt like a catch-up with an old colleague.

Saturday night featured the Cutlasses and Kimono’s Banquet, where Chuck Wendig’s speech: 25 Reasons Why Genre Is Awesome (or something to that effect), had the room in laughter and cheers. Brilliant speaker. He loves wombats of the steampunk variety, apparently.

He followed it up by answering 25 Questions, which produced just as many laughs.

The final day was the ‘interesting’ day.

It started with a ‘What the?’ moment.

I woke up well before the con started, and being slightly hung-over following the banquet and after-party, I figured I needed a little more sleep.

So I took it upon myself to roll over and get some.

At some point I started awake, and panicked. You would have too.

There was less than ten minutes until the con started. I bolted for the shower, determined not to miss anything.

That was stupid, of course.

The hotel was a ten to fifteen minute walk from the con, and I still had to pack up and check out.

Regretfully, I decided to sacrifice the keynote speeches, get organised, and arrive late as if I’d intended to do so all along.

Naturally enough, being at a genre convention, I entered a Time Warp at that moment.

Time Warp you say? Seriously? Yeah, seriously.

Nothing else could possibly explain it, not even the fact that the room was fairly dark when I woke and my watch has hands but no numbers.

After checking out of the hotel, I was about halfway to the con when I decided to check my social media feeds on my phone.

My phone was clearly broken. The time read 6:56am. What the…?

I checked my watch. Same thing. I looked around. The streets were fairly quiet for what was supposed to be about 10am, and the sun oddly low in the sky.

Thanks to my own personal Time Warp, I’d been given the gift of several hours.

Stranger things have happened, like the time I fell ten metres and then swam to the edge of the pool without a single broken bone.

Taking the Time Warp in my stride, I did what every red-blooded Australian would do.

I picked up some coffee and banana bread, and went for a long walk along the river. I even took some photos on my phone.

I got to the library a good hour before the con started, too. Impressive, no? Just like I planned.

Despite that, I felt as if I’d already had a big day.

After downing another coffee I rested on a bench, my ‘Duff Beer’ hat over face, and nursed my Time Warp-muddled senses until Peter Ball let me in early (what a champion!).

Day two highlights: Lean Pub – a way to publish your work as a serial, or just publish them as an e-book. Looks pretty interesting. I’ll be playing with their site and maybe using it for a series of short stories and/or writing articles.

The other highlight was the Thinking Like a Pro panel with Valerie Parv, Keri Arthur and John Connolly. Always good to get the perspective of a pro.

Unfortunately I missed the final panel and The Great Debate as Qantas refused to hold my plane for me.

Okay, technically it’s their plane, but I’d hired a seat and paid for a wonderful dinner of three tiny biscuits and a microscopic tub of relish.

The lessons I took home from GenreCon were vastly superior and much more filling than the Qantas meal, and definitely worth the effort.

A big thank you to Meg Vann and Peter Ball and all the other Con Ninjas for putting on such a great, professional event. Cheers guys – rest up for a bit.

Read last year’s GenreCon roundup or check out some other reports from David Versace and J Michael Melican.