The 2020 World Fantasy convention was great. The committee pulled off a difficult task and, in spite of some tech issues, it went well. Then again, when you take an event like World Fantasy and make it virtual for the first time, there are bound to be some technical issues.

They used an app called Crowd Compass, which I’ve used for other events and really like (the Voiceover and text-to-speech works very well for my Mac and my iPhone. I can’t say that about all convention apps.) Even so, they needed to have it specially designed for WFC’s needs, and that’s where some of the glitches happened. They dealt with them with aplomb and I have nothing but praise for how well the event was run.

I’ve done a lot of Zoom meetings and workshops this year. WFC chose to have the panels as Zoom Webinars, which I also quite liked. The readings were Zoom Meetings. The format worked well, and you could access them on your mobile device or computer.

Wednesday was officially a pre-con day full of workshops. I took two by David Farland and one by Dave Butler, both are excellent writers and their workshops were stellar. If you have a chance to hear either of them talk about writing, go. It was awesome.

And I attended a panel on taking care of old books. The panel was full of curators who restored old books and could talk for hours. The fifty minutes was so good.

What I really loved is that the day of workshops was included in my membership. That was great.

Friday I was supposed to be on two panels, but at the last minute, the other panelist for Disabled Characters in Fantasy Fiction backed out, so it was cancelled. I hope it will be put on next years’ schedule because it’s a conversation that is important in today’s market.

The other panel was called Poetic Fantasy. We talked about writing poetry, about some of the things that motivate us, and we talked about poetry. It was so much fun! I have to give a shout out to the others on the panel. I will definitely be getting their poetry! Jayrod Garrett was the moderator. He was excellent. And he’s also a poet, which was even better as he got involved in the conversation as well as directed it.

The other poets were: 

Brandon O’Brien: https://www.brandonobrien.space/

Holly Lyn Walrath: http://www.hlwalrath.com/

Mandy D. Chew (who writes with her husband): http://chewsjoy.com/

Mary Soon Lee: http://marysoonlee.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/

Jayrod Garrett: https://evolllution.com/author/jayrod-garrett/

Brandon brought up that spite is a great motivator for writing. I’m not sure if that would work for me, personally, but it’s a fantastic idea.

I have a great deal of respect for all the panelists and the moderator. It was a lot of fun being included in the group.

it also gave me more of a drive to write, and to get enough poems that match a theme to eventually publish a chap book. In time.

Below is the description for the panel.

Poetic Fantasy

Poetry is one of the oldest storytelling forms, but it is often underrepresented in genre literature today. This panel will celebrate the poets who use this ancient form of storytelling to spin a captivating tale.

I met Jayrod at LTUE about ten years ago (as he reminded me). I’ve attended  all but two or three LTUEs since 1985. One was LTUE VII in 1990 because we lived in California, Jessica was six months old and it was a fifteen-hour drive. I think I missed one in the last eight years. I may have missed two, but I’m not sure. The years tend to blend into one another. I helped on the committee from 1985 to 2015 in one capacity or another. For the tenth anniversary in 1992 I was the first student chair. As the other chair put together the program book and wasn’t sure how to list me, I was left out. But I didn’t really care at the time. There were a series of student chairs and “ghost” chairs after that. Usually the student chair was fairly new and the “ghost chair’ had the experience. In my chase, the “chair” was new to the committee. She was actually the secretary, but when the chair and vice-chair stepped down, she assumed the responsibility. It was hard for me with two little kids, but I had help from Pat Castelli, a former chair, and we got a lot done to help the chair and the symposium. My first post-high-school publication was in The Leading Edge Magazine, a semi-professional speculative fiction magazine put out by students at BYU. LTUE was started by some of the same people who started TLE. It was a great environment for students who loved science fiction and fantasy. My first experience as a panelist was at LTUE, too. And now, I can add World Fantasy to the list. For me, that’s quite an achievement.