How Salt Lake City Won the Bid to Host the World Fantasy Convention - And How We Lost It

(cross posted from World Fantasy Convention 2020's blog)

The year was 2015. World Fantasy Convention was held in Saratoga Springs, NY that year. As always, the attendees list was a Who’s Who of fantasy authors, editors, artists, and agents. I attended the convention with my long-time friend, Dee Ann Larsen. Dee Ann and I had traveled to London, England to attend World Fantasy Convention 1997, and she’d only missed one in all the years since. I had gone off to climb the corporate ladder for a number of years, and to write books in a different genre, but I missed WFC. This annual gathering is unique – not quite a writers’ conference, not quite a fan con, not quite an expo. The professionalism of the membership and the program has always appealed to me, not to mention the focus on my favorite form of fiction. So, I returned.

One thing I love about WFC is the atmosphere. Everyone is friendly and approachable: executive editors, bestselling authors, world-renowned artists. On Saturday I found myself standing in a hallway talking with a couple of people and Mr. David Hartwell, senior editor at Tor Books, joined our group. David was one of the founders of the World Fantasy Convention and headed up the executive committee of the board. Needless to say, I was a bit awed to have him drop over and chat, as if he was a normal person.

After a few minutes, he glanced at my badge and said, “Salt Lake City? We’ve never been there. You should put in a bid to host the convention.” I laughed. “I’ve never run a convention in my life.” He said, “No problem. I would help you. Come to the board meeting on Sunday.” I told him I’d think about it.

I told Dee Ann about the encounter, and we talked about what running a convention might look like. Of course, we both agreed that there was no way the board would ever grant the convention to a couple of inexperienced newbies. But we decided to go to the board meeting and just sit on the sidelines and listen.

It was like a gazillion corporate meetings I’ve attended. Lots of business stuff, a recap of the convention’s performance and attendance, stuff like that. We sat there, listening and honestly, a little bored. But then David said, “Okay, let’s get an update from the Salt Lake bid.” And he pointed at me! I cast panicked look at Dee Ann, thinking, “Oh crap!” (Only I was thinking a different word completely.) I’m sure we both looked a little dazed as we stood and faced the board.

Here’s the thing. I was a corporate director for a good many years. I’ve given presentations to far scarier boards of directors than those folks. And I’m pretty good on my feet. So I launched into a sales pitch for Salt Lake City, how Utah has a huge saturation of fantasy authors and artists, how the fans of the genre are among the most enthusiastic anywhere. How the Salt Lake International Airport was a hub for several large airlines. I mentioned the focused community effort during the 2002 Olympics. Dee Ann talked about how much WFC knowledge she possessed from twenty years of attending. When we finished, David said, “Good. We’ll expect your bid at the next board meeting.”

Dee Ann and I sat down and looked at each other. What had we done? In our room that night we talked it over, and we admitted that the idea of hosting a World Fantasy Convention was kind of exciting. It couldn’t hurt to look into it, right? Check out a few hotels. After all, David Hartwell himself had promised to help us. We went to work, and the more we investigated, the more enthusiastic we became.

And then, the following January, Mr. Hartwell died from a head injury sustained during a fall. That was a loss that shook anyone even distantly involved in the genre. I admit, my initial thoughts were, “But he promised to help us!” Without David’s patronage, we were even more certain that the WFC board would never accept our bid.

When we presented our bid at the 2017 WFC board meeting, the board grilled us pretty thoroughly. There was one other bid presented at the same meeting. Then they sent us all into the hallway while they made a decision. By then Dee Ann and I knew that running a convention was a lot of work, and asking a well-respected organization like WFC to entrust their annual gathering to a couple of inexperienced newbies was a longshot on the order of winning the lottery. We were confident that we would escape the task. I felt satisfied that I’d executed my duty to David Hartwell’s memory – I’d done what he asked, and that’s all anyone could expect.

The board room doors opened. Mike Willmoth, our board mentor, walked into the hallway, stuck out his hand to me and said, “Congratulations.” Tears sprang to my eyes. And they were not tears of joy! We’d done it. And now, we had to do it!

So that’s how Salt Lake City won the honor of hosting the 2020 World Fantasy Convention. The board awarded the 2021 convention to Montreal, the other bid presented that day. Since then we’ve put together an amazing committee full of experience, enthusiasm, and skill. We’ve got a fabulous line-up of guests who are worthy of being honored by this international organization. In other words, Salt Lake is ready to host the World Fantasy Convention!

How did we lose it? To that I have one thing to say: COVID-19.

Sigh.

We have the same awesome committee. The same wonderful guests. The same supportive board. We’ve successfully switched gears and are transitioning to an online environment, where we are confident we can offer some unique and innovative features while still providing the elements that WFC members expect and enjoy.

Are you in? I hope to see you online in October!

 

Ginny Smith is a Co-Chair of WFC 2020. When she’s not running conventions, she is an award-winning author with thirty-seven books in a variety of genres written as Virginia Smith. In 2019, she returned to her literary first love with the release of Sister of the Brotherhood, an epic fantasy novel written under the pen name Ginny Patrick. Find out more at www.VirginiaSmith.org.

My First WFC by Steve Rasnic Tem

Cross-posted from "A City of Salt and Fantasy" - www.WFC2020.org

My first World Fantasy Convention was in 1981. That was number seven, held at the Claremont Hotel in Berkeley California. It was my third year selling professionally and 1981 had been particularly good with the publication of 13 short stories. I’d worked with a number of editors at that point, including Charlie Grant, Roy Torgeson, Lin Carter, Fred Saberhagen, and George Scithers, but I’d never met any of them. All our communications had been through the mail or over the phone. I’d also never met any of my fellow horror writers. I heard Alan Ryan, Karl Edward Wagner, and Dennis Etchison planned to attend, along with some of the British writers and editors with whom I’d been corresponding, and the anticipation of meeting so many figures I admired was overwhelming.

One thing you may have noticed about that list of writers and editors is that, unfortunately, all of them are gone now. My late friend Ed Bryant and I would sometimes read the glowing tributes to authors who had passed and Ed would say, “Well, I hope they told them these nice things while they were still alive.” Attending a World Fantasy Convention gives you a great opportunity to practice Ed’s advice. The sad fact is you may not have another chance.

Although my primary interest was horror fiction, I did that rare thing of actually attending panels, as many panels as I could squeeze in, representing all the branches of fantasy fiction. The somewhat eclectic theme that year was Mark Twain, Jack London, Ambrose Bierce, and Clark Ashton Smith. The guests of honor included Peter Beagle and artist Brian Froud. Karl Edward Wagner was the toastmaster.

I learned a great deal in a relatively short period (and even today if you see me in the audience at a panel I usually have a notebook and pen ready). The panelists talked about writers I had never heard of before and provided insight into technical and career aspects of writing I hadn’t considered. By the end of the convention I had a long list of works and writers I needed to track down and many questions I wanted to consider concerning my own writing.

But even more eye-opening were the conversations I had with other writers regarding markets, handling professional issues, and the current hot topics in the genre. Several of the horror writers in attendance were talking about Dallas Mayr’s first novel Off Season, published the previous year under his pen name Jack Ketchum. There was a lot of speculation that this might be a currently famous author writing under a pseudonym. Off Season was a controversial, violent novel, and several writers from the quieter, supernatural end of the horror spectrum didn’t much care for it and thought it a step in the wrong direction. Alan Ryan, however, thought Dallas brought a special quality to the genre and was on his way to becoming an influential figure. I bought a copy at the con and read it on the way home. I wasn’t sure if I liked it or not. Off Season was bleak and explicit and unlike anything I’d ever read before.

It’s been almost 40 years since that convention, and some of the details are a bit fuzzy. Wasn’t Joe Lansdale there handing out copies of his first novel, Act of Love? Or was that the following year in New Haven? And was that the convention where I first met Robert Silverberg, and British editor David Sutton, or did those introductions occur in Chicago?

I suppose the exact details of time and place aren’t important. Every World Fantasy Convention has meant more introductions, more information, increased opportunity, and a better understanding of the career I’ve devoted more than half my life to. I expect this one, WFC 2020 in Salt Lake City, to be no different.

~~~

Steve Rasnic Tem is a past winner of the World Fantasy, Bram Stoker, and British Fantasy Awards. He has published over 450 short stories, with some of his best collected in Figures Unseen: Selected Stories. His latest collection is The Night Doctor and Other Tales . Visit Steve’s home on the web at www.stevetem.com.



You'll have an opportunity to meet Steve in person in Salt Lake City at World Fantasy Convention 2020. Be sure to bring a copy of his book for the autograph reception!

Halfway There by Mary Soon Lee

Cross-posted from "A City of Salt and Fantasy" www.WFC2020.org

In recent years, there’s been an increasing awareness of the importance of diversity in fiction, including diversity in gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, disability, wealth, and age. Along with this has come a discussion of own voices, and the extent to which it matters whether a story about, for instance, a lesbian unicorn, is written by a lesbian. Alas, I have yet to find a unicorn story written by a unicorn, lesbian or otherwise.

As an author who is half-Asian, half-European, a person who grew up in London, but whose parents grew up in Penang (Malaysia) and Dublin (Ireland), I’m not that sure what my own voice is. I struggle to describe the backdrop for some of my work: do I say it is Asian-inspired, that it contains Asian elements, or that it draws upon Asian culture? It might be more accurate to say that – like me – it’s halfway there.

The longest project I’ve completed to date is an epic fantasy, approximately one hundred thousand words long, told in poems. It doesn’t fit neatly into boxes. It’s not a conventional novel, because it is rendered in poems. Those poems are mostly free verse, lacking rhyme and meter, the kind of poems that aren’t always considered “real” poetry. For mainstream poetry audiences, it doesn’t help that the story features dragons, demons, monsters, and a form of horse magic. And the secondary-world setting mixes together Chinese and Celtic elements as filtered through the lens of someone who is more of a Londoner than she is either Chinese or Irish.

The project, The Sign of the Dragon, is unquestionably a hodgepodge work. It’s also the single thing I’ve written that matters most to me. It began with one poem, a poem written without forethought or planning, at a time when I was returning to fantasy after a decade wandering in the land of mainstream poetry. In the poem, a sixteen-year-old boy is sent to a mountain with his older brothers after their father, the king, dies. His older brothers head into the snow, one after another, and vanish. And then the sixteen-year-old heads into the snow in his turn, where he meets a dragon and becomes the new king. (This poem, and several others from the story, may be found on my website: http://www.marysoonlee.com .)

At the time, I was concentrating on standalone poems, those I could conveniently complete during the daytime while my children were at school. But I found myself drawn to the boy, and returned to write more and more poems about him, over three hundred in the end. In the fourth of those poems, I named my main character Xau, and with that uncalculated choice, his amorphous country shifted toward China. A couple of months later, also without premeditation, I named his first enemy Donal, and the corresponding country shifted toward the Celtic. These things arose without a plan, out of the deeper, hodgepodge, halfway place that I come from.

Reading remains my number one pursuit, ahead even of writing. As a reader, I enjoy diversity in a multiplicity of flavors, whether it connects to my own experiences or not. To give a very few examples: recently I’ve been loving LGBTQ fantasies, from JY Yang’s Tensorate novellas, to K. D. Edwards Tarot Sequence, to T. Frohock’s Los Nefilim stories. And in Asian-flavored fantasy, I’ve loved ranging from the old, including Chinese classics such as the The Journey to the West, to the new, including work by Fonda Lee, Guy Gavriel Kay, and Aliette de Bodard.

While I lack the expertise to offer authoritative judgments on the current state of diversity in the publishing industry, I can report that I have found homes for some of my own Asian-flavored work, including short stories that appeared in Fireside and Daily Science Fiction. And I think it’s a promising sign that The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin – as translated from Chinese to English by Ken Liu – won the Hugo Award in 2015. As for The Sign of the Dragon itself, an early version of the first fifth of the narrative was published by Dark Renaissance Books. I’m currently looking into publishing options for the whole story.

The future of fantasy fiction depends on readers, writers, and publishers. Here’s hoping it’s rich and diverse, open to authors who share their own experiences through their work, as well as to those who write with empathy and understanding about unicorns, dragons, and others different from themselves.

~~~

Mary Soon Lee was born and raised in London, but has lived in Pittsburgh for over twenty years. She writes both fiction and poetry, and has won the Rhysling Award and the Elgin Award. Of late, she’s strayed from fantasy and science fiction to science poetry, and her book Elemental Haiku (containing haiku for each element of the periodic table) was published by Ten Speed Press in October 2019.

Connect with Mary on Twitter @MarySoonLee. You can meet her in person at World Fantasy Convention 2020 in Salt Lake City. Look for her there and be sure to tell her you read her blog post!

My First World Fantasy Convention by Paul Genesse

Cross-posted from "A City of Salt and Fantasy" -  www.WFC2020.org

Why are there a hundred people in line to get signatures from that guy? Who is he? Neil Gaiman you say? I haven’t heard anything about him. That was in 2002, when I attended my first World Fantasy Convention (WFC) in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I had no clue about most of the “famous” fantasy and sci-fi writers. I felt like such an idiot.

I was just amazed there were a hundred people in line for him, but no one at the table of Mr. Robert Jordan (at that moment). So very odd. I’m now a huge Neil Gaiman fan, and WFC helped introduce me to dozens of great writers and editors. It also taught me about the business. The panels were professional, and filled with things a rookie like me needed to know. I learned so much that first year and in subsequent years. I went seven years in a row, 2002-2009, and then another handful of times since then whenever the gathering took place in the continental United States.

The reason I started attending WFC was my writing teachers: Kij Johnson and Michael Stackpole, and others had encouraged me to attend—as well as people in my writing group. They knew I was serious about getting published and that was the place to find the contacts to make it all happen.

I didn’t have any friends who were attending, but then I saw two writers who had been on panels at Gen Con, where I was first told to attend WFC. Jean Rabe and Janet Deaver Pack took me in, and asked me to dinner. They gave me great advice and I learned how kind they were. I made new and wonderful friends who have endured for almost twenty years now. That’s the thing about WFC, you’ll probably meet people who will become your writer friends for years.

At WFC I seriously bonded with one of my writer brothers, Bradley Beaulieu. We started sharing a room when we attended each year and became great friends, helping each other with our books and stories. I don’t know where I’d be without Brad, but he has pushed me to become a better writer so many times.

I gained such valuable friendships and contacts over the years at WFC, and I got to meet legendary writers like George R.R. Martin, Neil Gaiman, Stephen R. Donaldson, Denis McKiernan and so many more. I listened to them on panels and then had drinks with them in the bar. Eventually, I joined in on panels, did signings and readings there as well. It was surreal and awesome.

My first time attending was intimidating, exciting, and most of all enlightening. I learned how things were done in the writing world. I got to know people, and ended up meeting an editor who eventually bought my fantasy series. Most of my first short story sales came from WFC and led me to getting several stories published with DAW Books. WFC launched my own editing career.

I’m so glad I attended way back in 2001. World Fantasy taught me so much and if I hadn’t gone, I doubt I would have had any sort of career at all.

~~~

Paul Genesse is the #1 Amazon Bestselling Author of Sakura: Intellectual Property and the bestselling Iron Dragon Series. Learn more on his website. 

My First WFC by Carol Berg

Cross-posted from "A City of Salt and Fantasy" - www.WFC2020.org

When my first novel, Transformation, was published in August 2000 and I discovered that the sky did not open and reveal a whole new dimension of existence, I asked my agent, “What do I do now?”

“First, put up a website,” she said.

“Done.”

“And you could start going to conventions.”

Visions of Galaxy Quest!

In horror, I stammered, “What would I do there?” I’m a mom…from Colorado. I drive my kids to band. To the orthodontist.” I’m an introvert, for god’s sake!

“No, no, no,” she said, ever calm. “It’s not what you think.” She proceeded to speak of readers eager to discover new authors…of reviewers with bulletin boards (!!)…of WorldCon… World Fantasy…panel discussions…other writers. Terrifying.

“No costume necessary,” and, “it’s like a family reunion.”

OK. That made a bit more sense.

I survived Chicago WorldCon 2000. I did three easy panels. Met another first time author who felt as intimidated and fish-out-of-water as I did. Spent a lot of time wandering around pondering the mystery of Fandom. Got through my first autographing—me and my six-week-old mass-market paperback sharing a table with Robert Sawyer, Kevin Anderson, and Frederic Pohl. But it didn’t feel like family. Willing to try one more con, I ventured to Corpus   Christi for the World Fantasy Convention.

I was instantly leery. Neither my agent, my editor, nor my one convention friend was to be there…and it quickly seemed that everyone else already knew each other. There wasn’t much programming, so what was I to do for three days? As I trudged away from the registration line with an enormous bag of books, I spotted a woman in the registration line, who looked a lot like someone I had met at a writers conference in Denver. Mustering my courage, I approached and asked, “Aren’t you Laurey from Denver?”

Why yes, she was. As soon as she had her own ponderous bag of books, she introduced me to several friends she knew from previous World Fantasy conventions—a reunion of sorts. They whisked me away into glorious barcon and weekend of talking about books and writing, experiences and trivia. One of these new friends dragged me around the Friday night mass autographing and insisted that I actually walk up to Ellen Kushner and tell her what I had just said about Thomas the Rhymer. A true fangirl moment. I did not implode.

Since that that first welcoming weekend, I’ve only missed three WFCs. When asked to provide a favorite memory for this post, I found too many to count.

In Montreal, the Corpus Christicadre put on the first of a series of room parties where our growing group of acquaintances read to each other the works of our hearts. And a young woman came up to me after a panel and said those magic words, “I’ve not read your books, but could I buy you a cup of coffee? I’d really like to talk.” She was assimilated.

The November cold of Minneapolis was warmed with group breakfasts at Hell’s Kitchen. And when I had my first of many readings that were slightly too long for my time slot – the entire audience followed me into the hall like goslings after Mother Goose, and sat on the floor while I finished the reading.

In Washington DC, we got ferried to our now traditional room party in a limo. And every time we sat down together there was someone new, people who began as nervous newbies and have since built sturdy careers. People who’ve found success where they didn’t expect. Others who write and strive for the joy of the work.

In beautifully warm Tempe, I learned that every person at WFC had a favorite cold remedy, from special cough drops to magically appearing hot toddies to generously laid on healing hands. And there a group of my faithful readers showed up to make sure I met the incomparable Janny Wurts. In Austin, there was the special reading for a group of fans in front of a giant fish tank. In Saratoga Springs, it can be very difficult—and hilarious—to find a grilled cheese sandwich for your Canadian roommates at midnight.

San Jose provided the best bar staff in the world, and the grand generosity of friends willing to hold the best tables, so you can pick up the conversation right where you left off.

Columbus. Another very cool hotel for conversation, and the task of persuading one of the coolest dudes I know that if I could do the fangirl moment, he could too. Thus he sat down with a writing idol and since that night the con he runs has had a string of the most fantastic Guests of Honor in convention land.

Then there was San Diego, and yet another new friend from the northlands left multiple groups of convention goers breathless from laughter with her readings from an Icelandic saga of truly epic charm.

And never ever will I forget the Ladies’ Auxiliary Bar. Here’s looking at you Meg, Laura, and Brenda!

Always throughout were opportunities to hear erudite discussions—Connie Willis, Gene Wolfe, and Steven Donaldson talking about characters?—and to meet with editors, agents, new authors, and authors whose work you know you should have read but haven’t.

My WFC stories are certainly different from yours. Kind of mundane. Kind of goofy. Kind of comfortable. But then, this is family. My World Fantasy family. My agent was so right.


I’m looking forward to a grand reunion in Salt Lake City!

~~~

Carol Berg has lived a large portion of her life in Middle Earth, Camelot,
Wonderland, Jim Chee's New Mexico, Victorian London, Cold War Berlin, the Welsh borderlands, River Heights...you get the drift. While studying mathematics at Rice University, Carol carved out a place for studies in English, History of Art, and reading, reading, reading. After another degree in computer science and well into a career as a software engineer, Carol took up a hobby of writing her own fiction. After fifteen epic fantasy novels, a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, and multiple Colorado Book Awards, Carol now writes fantasy adventure as her doppelganger  Cate Glass.

A Conversation with Ann Chamberlin

Cross-posted from "A City of Salt and Fantasy" www.WFC2020.org

Today we’re talking with author and playwright Ann Chamberlin. Ann is a member of the World Fantasy Convention and is also serving as the Registration Committee Head for WFC 2020!

Ann spent big blocks of time as a child in Europe where her father was professor of mathematics. She has traveled across North Africa, Turkey, Syria and Jordan. She lives in an old farmhouse on nearly two acres near Salt Lake City--except when she's in her book shop at the Arizona Renaissance Festival.

Ann’s nineteenth book, a memoir of her grandmother, is due to be published this year. Most of her books are historical novels set in the Middle East, including a trilogy published by Forge set in sixteenth-century Turkey. This trilogy spent almost a year on the Turkish bestseller list after being translated. She has also written many plays, including JIHAD, which won the best off-off Broadway new play of 1996 and which also received a production in Bogota, Colombia at a conference for theatre women for peace.

Ann has a degree in Middle Eastern archaeology and anthropology from the University of Utah and excavated a dig in Israel in 1974 as part of those studies.

WFC2020: Thanks for taking the time to chat with us today. When did you first know you wanted to be a writer?

AC: Before I could write. I would take blue essay books my dad brought home from the University of Utah, draw pictures and make my mom write the captions.

WFC2020: I hope you still have some of those first books around! I’m sure some of our readers would love to contract with an agent. How did you meet yours?

AC: I like to write between dances at folk dancing; sometimes the rhythm is just what I need. I was doing this one day in 1977 when a dancer I’d never met came up to me and asked what I was doing. I told her.
“Do you have an agent?” she asked.
“No, I don’t think I’m ready for that.”
“Write to this guy.” She gave me a name and address on a piece of paper.
The next week, she was there again. “Did you write him?”
“Not yet.”
“Write him.”
So I wrote, just to be able to tell her I’d done it.
I never saw her again, and Bart Fles sold my first novel, even though he said he’d never heard of the woman who’d given me his name.

WFC2020: By the time we gather in Salt Lake City for WFC 2020, your nineteenth book will be out. Congratulations! Of all those books, which are you most proud of?

AC: I guess the Turkish trilogy, since it’s had the most success and brought me the most wonderful reception in Turkey. Those are Sofia, The Sultan’s Daughter, and The Reign of the Favored Woman. But I’m always partial to the thing I’m working on at the moment.

WFC2020: Tell us about your most recent book or story.

AC: I just finished a historical mystery set in Paris during La Belle Epoque. It needs final rewrites, but now I’m fascinated by the work on a new memoir of a friend of mine who lives in Paris.

WFC2020: That sounds like a great story. We’ll look forward to hearing more in Salt Lake. And speaking of World Fantasy Convention, you’ve attended several. What do you like about WFC?

AC: World Fantasy Convention is a good place to connect. Meeting my editors is always best.

Ann is one of the people you’ll meet in Salt Lake City! In fact, she’ll probably be one of the first people you see, since she’ll be running the registration desk. In the meantime, find out more about Ann and her books on her website. www.annchamberlin.com

Author photo by Ann Florence

Throwback Thursday - WFC 1996

Cross-posted from "A City of Salt and Fantasy" www.WFC2020.org

My first World Fantasy Convention was way back in 1996. I was an aspiring writer with a bunch of short stories and stack of rejection letters under my belt. I wasn’t interested in costumes or games, so the well-known fan cons held little appeal. What I wanted were contacts in the publishing industry, the more the better. A friend invited me to room with her at WFC and promised the convention would be full of opportunities to meet editors. So off to Schaumburg, Illinois we went.

The first day I walked around in a daze, nearly giving myself whiplash as I spied writers whose books I’d read and admired. By day two I felt a little more at home. Early that morning I headed down to the hotel coffee shop for breakfast. Sitting at a small table in the corner was Ellen Asher, one of that year’s Guests of Honor. Ellen was the editor-in-chief of the Science Fiction Book Club, of which I was a long-time member. I sat at the table next to her and ordered breakfast. Instead of going over the program book, as I’d intended, I pulled out the latest catalog from SFBC, spread it out before me, and began reading. Ellen leaned over and said, “I couldn’t help but notice what you’re reading. What do you think of this month’s selections?” I spent the next thirty minutes engaged in a delightful conversation with a woman whose finger was firmly on the pulse of the genre I loved.

The panel discussions were eye-opening, and motivating, and just plain fun. I will never forget one in particular. The title was, “Is there a market for 1,000-page novels?” The panelists were mostly editors, which was why I was in that particular session. I listened as they discussed the realities of increased production costs, and higher cover prices, and whether or not readers would be willing to pay that much more for a book. One by one they seemed to come to the consensus that, “It would be nice, but there probably isn’t a big enough market for books that size.” All except one guy on the end. He remained mostly silent, leaning back in his chair with his hands folded across his stomach. Finally, he answered the question with a simple, “Well, I hope so.”  That man was a writer I’d never heard of – a guy by the name of George R. R. Martin. His book, A Game of Thrones, had been released 2 months before.

One of my goals for the convention was to connect with Kristine Katherine Rusch, then editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. She’d contributed heavily to that stack of rejection letters I had at home. I attended a panel she was on with her husband, Dean Wesley Smith, and afterward in the hallway joined a cluster of people talking to them. When I had a chance I introduced myself – and she knew me! She remembered my name! I was flabbergasted. Then Dean started introducing me to the others standing there. Someone asked jokingly, “You’re both Smiths. Are you related?” Dean put his arm around my shoulders, and said, “Yeah. She’s my little sister. We’re proof that you don’t need a stand-out name to make it in this business.”

That first WFC remains one of my favorites. Not because of the schedule, or the location, or the ice cream social, but because I felt like I’d found my people. I joined a close-knit group of people who loved to read and write the same stories I did. They spoke my language. (And no, I don’t mean Elvish!) WFC still feels that way to me. Networking? Yes. Making contacts? Certainly. But mostly, it’s like a family reunion.

I’ll see you in Salt Lake!

~~~

Ginny Smith is a Co-Chair of WFC 2020. When she’s not running conventions, she is an award-winning author with thirty-seven books in a variety of genres written as Virginia Smith. In 2019, she returned to her literary first love with the release of Sister of the Brotherhood, an epic fantasy novel written under the pen name Ginny Patrick. Find out more at www.VirginiaSmith.org.

A Conversation with Joe Haldeman

Cross-posted from www.WFC2020.org

Today we have the pleasure of chatting with Joe Haldeman, a legendary writer who is a mainstay at the World Fantasy Convention. Named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Joe Haldeman has earned steady awards over his 50-year career: his novels The Forever War and Forever Peace both made clean sweeps of the Hugo and Nebula Awards, and he has won three more Hugos and three more Nebulas for other novels and shorter works. Three times he’s won the Rhysling Award for best SF poem of the year. He won the World Fantasy Award for short story in 1993 for “Graves.” In 2012 he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. His latest novels are a trilogy, Marsbound, Starbound and Earthbound, and a stand-alone novel titled Work Done For Hire. The graphic novels of The Forever War and Forever Peace are out from Titan.

Joe was a combat soldier in Vietnam, which strongly influences some of his work. The movie rights to The Forever War have been sold to Warner. When Joe’s not writing or teaching – he’s retired from M.I.T., where he taught every fall semester for 30 years -- he paints, bicycles, plays the guitar, and spends as much time as he can out under the stars as an amateur astronomer. He’s been married to Mary Gay Potter Haldeman for 54 years.

WFC2020: Joe, thanks for taking the time to talk with us. You’ve won about every award there is. Does any single award stand out as particularly special?
JH: The first Hugo, by all means, for The Forever War. The Nebula for that novel was awarded first, though, and that was a big night, too.

WFC2020: I’m sure those were both never-to-be-forgotten moments. The Forever War was published early in your career, but it’s still gaining new readers. And now there’s a graphic novel. Tell us how your partnership with graphic artist Marvano came about.
JH: Marvano (Mark Van Oppen) read The Forever War when it came out, I think in English (though of course he also reads other languages). The Dutch translation may have been the first European edition, soon followed by German and French, and he could have read any of those. Mark found me at a Worldcon, I think in London, and asked whether I'd like to collaborate on a graphic novel -- and of course I said yes.

WFC2020: It looks great, and is definitely on our To-Read-Soon list. We love “first” stories. How did your first novel sale come about?
JH: I sold my first novel, War Year, by sending the manuscript to the publisher -- Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, at the suggestion of author and editor Ben Bova. But The Forever War, my first successful book, was rejected by 19 publishers before it sold to St. Martin's Press. (I met the editor, Thomas Dunne, at a boozy party thrown by the Science Fiction Writers of America in New York City. He bought the book a short while later.)

WFC2020: That boozy party certainly paid off in spades! Which of your books would you recommend to new readers who may not be familiar with your work?
JH: If they read science fiction, I recommend The Forever War. If they like thrillers, Tool Of The Trade. General readers might prefer the Worlds trilogy -- Worlds, Worlds Apart, and Worlds Enough And Time (all of which are told from a female point of view). My most recent novel is Work Done For Hire, about a future soldier who is a retired sniper.

WFC2020: You’ve been a regular attendee at World Fantasy Convention for a number of years. What’s your favorite memory from WFC?
JH: Winning the World Fantasy Award for the short story “Graves.”

WFC2020: The award ceremony is always a highlight at World Fantasy Convention, especially if you win one of those coveted awards. What are you working on now?
JH: A science fiction novel called A Woman's Way and another called Phobos Means Fear. I'm also supposed to write a short comic play for the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, not due for another week, which I'd better start pretty soon.

WFC2020: Where can we find you on the Internet?
JH: I have a fairly regular blog that my wife posts on Facebook and at joehaldeman.com.


Joe Haldeman and his wife Gay are two of the people you’ll get to hang out with in Salt Lake City. Be sure to check out his blog and his website and bring your favorite Joe Haldeman books from home for him to sign. And it’s a fair bet to say you’ll be able to find a few to add to your collection in the WFC 2020 dealers’ room.

Valley of Lights by Stephen Gallagher

Cross-posted from www.WFC2020.org

Until a couple of years ago I thought of Stephen Gallagher, author Guest of Honor at WFC 2020, primarily as a screenwriter. He’s been instrumental in many creepy-and-fascinating shows, some of which you can read about on his Guest of Honor bio page posted on the WFC 2020 website and in even more detail at www.stephengallagher.com. Being a confirmed Whovian, I was drawn to Steve’s work when I discovered he wrote two classic Doctor Who episodes.

Then I read Valley of Lights.

In this supernatural thriller, Phoenix Police Sergeant Alex Volchak is on the hunt for a vicious killer. But this perp is unlike any he – or anyone else on the force – has ever encountered. After a gruesome murder, Alex follows up on a lead and has the suspect in hand … then the light fades from the man’s eyes and Alex comes to a horrifying realization: the real killer has just vacated the body he’s been using. But where did the creature go?

The back cover of Valley of Lights tells the reader, “…Volchak discovers the true nature of a predator that has survived among us unnoticed for generations… It’s older than the desert, a thing without a name, but as vicious, jealous and self-preserving a creature as ever walked the earth. And it hides in plain sight.”

How’s that for a hook?

I love police procedurals and fantasy, including the occasional dark fantasy story, so when I saw a Tweet from someone to Steve saying, “This is one of your best!” I decided to give it a try. I was captivated from the first scene and drawn into a world that was at times so real I expected to look up from the pages and find myself in the Arizona desert.

Valley of Lights is so much more intricate and captivating than I anticipated. Part of that is the premise, but the biggest contributing factor is the strength of the writing. I read this book aloud to my husband during a cross-country driving trip, and there were times when I stopped and said, “Oh my gosh. Listen to that paragraph again!” Both of us were mesmerized by the prose, the descriptions, the gripping action scenes, and the characters that were so real we felt we knew them. We finished the trip before we finished the book, so unpacking had to wait as we sat on the living room sofa, reading the last few chapters.\

Much of my “To Read Soon” list is occupied by Stephen Gallagher books. I finished The Kingdom of Bones and Chimera – both excellent. Next up is The Bedlam Detective. I can’t wait!

Click on the Valley of Lights book cover to buy a copy from Amazon. It’s available on Kindle, naturally, but I’d recommend getting a physical copy. That way you can have Steve autograph it when you see him in Salt Lake City. I hope you don’t have to stand in line behind me, because I’m going to have a bunch for him to sign.

~~~

Ginny Smith is a Co-Chair of WFC 2020. When she’s not running conventions, she is an award-winning author with thirty-seven books in a variety of genres written as Virginia Smith. In 2019, she returned to her literary first love with the release of Sister of the Brotherhood, an epic fantasy novel written under the pen name Ginny Patrick. Find out more at www.VirginiaSmith.org.

An Unusual First WFC by L.E. Modesitt Jr.

Cross-posted from www.wfc2020.org

Unlike most of today’s fantasy writers, I didn’t attend any conventions until more than ten years after my first story was published. My first World Fantasy Convention didn’t occur until twenty-five years after I sold that first story… and that was in 1997.  The 1997 WFC was held in London at the International Hotel in the Docklands, which back then was a very out of the way location, about which many attendees complained. That was the year that Game of Thrones was a nominee for best novel, and lost to Rachel Pollack’s Godmother Night, as did one of my favorite novels, Terrance Green’s Shadow of Ashland.

Part of my delay in going to World Fantasy was because I wrote and published only science fiction until The Magic of Recluce came out in 1991. Even after that it took considerable arm-twisting by my longtime editor, David Hartwell, to persuade me to go.  Once I decided to go, however, I knew I wasn’t going to London if Carol Ann wasn’t with me.  But because she was and is a Professor of Voice and Opera (and a lyric soprano), that required arranging for someone qualified to take over teaching her courses and applied voice lessons at the university.

She managed those arrangements, and I scraped together the funds, and that took some doing back then, but we managed to get there, if with a stop in Dublin for EuroCon/Octocon, a detour insisted upon by the redoubtable David Hartwell, and made more interesting by the fact that the airline couldn’t open the cargo doors of the plane to unload luggage for more than an hour.

We had no sooner checked in at both the hotel and the convention, and been badged, than someone – to this day, I have no idea who that person was – found us and insisted that Ann McCaffrey was looking for me and wanted to see me immediately.  At that time, I definitely knew who she was, but I’d never met her, nor did I know that she was going to be there, but if she wanted to see me, I wanted to be seen.

Both Carol Ann and I were escorted to where Ann was holding court – and she did hold court. By that time she was silver-haired, but still tall and erect, and a very commanding presence. She also had a long silver-topped walking stick that might as well have been a scepter. As I recall she was seated on what amounted to a high upholstered built-in wall bench, but she immediately insisted on us sitting beside her, Carol Ann on one side and me on the other.

As the first order of business, I was politely commanded to sign – to her – her copy of The Soprano Sorceress, the first book of my Spellsong Cycle, although at that time, the second volume had not been published.  She loved the book, so much that she gave it and the second book glowing blurbs.  This might possibly have been because, before she became a writer, she had been a professional soprano.

In any event, we talked briefly about books, for five, possibly ten, minutes. Then she turned to Carol Ann, and the two of them began to talk singing, Ann lamenting the fact that her singing career had been limited because she had, as she put it, a “burr” in her voice. The two of them sat there talking singing for the next half hour, to the obvious dismay of several publishers who were trying to get her attention. What made that slightly disconcerting was that one of those publishers was Tom Doherty – my own publisher.  But Ann was having none of it.  For that time, singing was far more important than writing.

We had a few short interactions later at the convention, and I did get her to sign one of her books for one of our daughters, because, especially at that time, I was not my daughter’s favorite author; Ann McCaffrey was.

And that was my first World Fantasy Convention.

~~~ 

L. E. Modesitt, Jr., is the author of more than 70 science fiction and fantasy novels, nearly 50 short stories, and technical and economic articles. His novels include four fantasy series, including the Saga of Recluce and the Imager Portfolio. His first story was published in Analog in 1973. His most recent book is The Mage-Fire War, and his next book is Quantum Shadows [Tor, July]. He has been a U.S. Navy pilot; a market research analyst; a real estate agent; director of political research;  legislative and staff director for U.S. Congressmen;  Director of Legislation/Congressional Relations for the U.S. EPA; and a consultant on environmental, regulatory, and communications issues. 

WFC Note: We’re thrilled that Mr. Modesitt will join us in Salt Lake City for WFC 2020! Be sure to grab a copy of his latest book so you can get him to sign it for you. 

As many of you know, I wear many hats. I'm one of the co-chairpersons running the 2020 World Fantasy Convention. WFC2020 has recently launched a blog dedicated to this year's convention, its guests, and members. The blog is called A City of Salt and Fantasy. I plan to cross-post the content here because I think you'll enjoy hearing from a variety of fantasy enthusiasts as much as I do. You can visit the blog at www.wfc2020.org.

Thanks for indulging me in one of my passions - well-written fantasy novels!

Ginny

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Welcome to the official blog for the 45th World Fantasy Convention. In 2020, the annual gathering of professionals, collectors, and fantasy enthusiasts will be held in Salt Lake City, Utah from 29 October through 01 November. We hope this blog will become the go-to place for All Things Fantasy. What books are everyone talking about? What fantasy artists are making a splash? Who are the authors we’ll meet at this year’s convention, and what books are they most excited about? We’ll cover all that and more.

This will be WFC’s first visit to the Beehive State. Why Salt Lake? Because we are a “City of Salt and Fantasy”! A large number of fantasy writers and artists call Utah home, and fantasy enthusiasts abound. We are excited to introduce the members of World Fantasy Convention to Utah, and to introduce Utahns to WFC.

In the coming months we’ll offer interviews, articles, book reviews, and more, written by and about our guests and members. We’ll discuss topics of interest to fantasy aficionados, revisit memorable moments from past WFCs, and delve into the convention’s theme, “Fairyland was nothing like this!”

So bookmark this blog. You don’t want to miss a single post!

Interested in writing for this blog? Check out our Blogger's Guidelines.

~~~

Ginny Smith is a Co-Chair of WFC 2020. When she’s not running conventions, she is an award-winning author with thirty-seven books in a variety of genres written as Virginia Smith. In 2019, she returned to her literary first love with the release of Sister of the Brotherhood, an epic fantasy novel written under the pen name Ginny Patrick. Find out more at www.VirginiaSmith.org.