Dance, Dance, Dance: ConText Officially Rolling!
I had hoped to bring you some colorful photos of the ConText opening from last night, but alas—the camera refused to co-operate with the whole colorful opening photo meme. So regrettably, I shall have to rely on words to paint in the details instead!
Intriguingly, dance was the main theme of the opening ceremony, with a solo jazz performance by international literary Guest of Honor, Catherine Asaro, and two colorful and entertaining sets from belly dancing quartet, Arabian Rendezvous. Angie, the leader of the belly dancing troupe, also performed a solo dance with a sword balanced on her head—an impressive display of dexterity and balance.
Immediately following the opening I was off to do my first panel, on the ‘Wild wild world of the writing blog’ with fellow author and SpecFicNZ president Ripley Patton. The focus of the ensuing discussion was both around why we decided to blog as opposed to using other social/internet media, and why we felt the need to use the internet at all—i.e. why not ‘just write’?
The answer was that blogging offers us a way to communicate and interact with readers and the wider writing community—an opportunity that is more important because of the physical isolation of living in New Zealand, a long way from the areas where many/most of our readers are located. A ‘far step’ too, from regular conventions and conferences of the kind that we are getting to enjoy this weekend, which offer a realtime opportunity to communicate with readers.
So the internet is an important medium for two-way communication with readers and the wider reading/writing community. In addition, Ripley and I both found that we preferred blogging as our main medium of communication because we want the primary focus of that communication to centre around our books/writing, as opposed to being more socially orientated.
Questions were asked around privacy and how much information should be shared, but we both felt that to a large extent decisions around this would be personal to the blogger and probably driven by the primary focus of the blog. In general, Ripley and I both feel unease when the content of a blog, particularly a writing blog, becomes too heavily personal or pursues controversy for its own sake—again, our focus is primarily on writing-centered content.
And that, folks, by and large, was the opening evening of ConText, the 32nd National Science Fiction Fantasy Convention. Tomorrow I have panels on Keeping It Real in SFF (with Catherine Asaro and Russell Kirkpatrick), the Grand Symbiosis between History and Fantasy (with Steve Litten and Andrew Robins) and a kaffeeklatsch to keep me busy ahead of the SpecFicNZ party tomorrow evening.
Thanks for sharing about your time there so far!
I hope I’ll get some better pictures today–some pictures at all would be nice!:)
‘Wild wild world of the writing blog’ is an interesting panel. I agree on the importance of internet for authors. Thanks to the blogging world I discovered so many new authors.
Keeping It Real in SFF and the Grand Symbiosis between History and Fantasy sounds like awesome panels! I wish I could be there!
I wish you could be here, too, Giada!:)
Sounds like it started off to a good start. Thanks for sharing.
It was a great start and a great convention—not least because of The Heir of Night jointly winning the Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best Novel, but I’ll be bringing you some more hightlights soon.