In summary – MileHiCon was an excellent experience, once again.
In not-so-summary, for those of you with longer attention spans…
Friday opened with Toastmaster Paolo Bacigalupi (The Windup Girl, Ship Breaker, etc.) introducing the guests of honor, which included authors Rachel Caine and Katherine Kurtz, as well as award-winning artist Donato Giancola. Then we broke out into an author signing session (with snacks!) and mingling in the hotel bar afterwards. There, I reconnected with sibling co-authors, Dani and Eytan Kollin, who wrote The Unincorporated Man (winner of this year’s Prometheus Award) and Unincorporated War. On Saturday, Dani and Eytan did a reading from an as-yet-unpublished short story called “Confessions of a Vampire Knight in the Zombie Wars.” This was, they admitted, them giving a big middle finger to the modern view of vampires as beautiful and heroic (and sparkly). Very snarky, very fun story.
Finally got to meet Mario Acevedo, author of the Felix Gomez Vampire Detective series. He’s a great guy and we actually share the same agent. He participated in a panel about adapting books to screenplays and comics, and displayed the latest release in the comic book series starring Felix Gomez. He also did a reading later from his newest novel, Werewolf Smackdown and was part of a two-hour workshop on refining elevator pitches for those writers seeking representation and publication.
Ran into literary agent Sarah Megibow, of the Nelson Literary Agency. She was, as always, incredibly friendly and cheerful, and participated in some great panels, such as How and Why to get a Literary Agent.
Paolo Bacigalupi read some from his novella, The Alchemist, which was written in a shared world he developed with Tobias Buckell. And he moderated the Guest of Honor speech panel with flair (and a towel dance, which I know will show up on Facebook or YouTube at some point).
Other panels included “Next in Urban Fantasy,” where authors discussed the various creatures that have been and might be popular in the genre, “Building the Ensemble,” which went over secondary and minor characters and how they compare to the hero/heroine, and “Villains: An Author’s Best Friend.”
It was a great time, hanging out with fans and writers, all enjoying somewhat frenetic atmosphere. Definitely a big jump in the number of steampunk costumes this year, though plenty of classics such as Harry Potter, Star Trek/Wars, and, of course, Avatar. For those who didn’t make it this go-round, there’s always next year!
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