emma_in_dream

The Australian Science fiction Foundation today announced the short list for the 2012 Norma K Hemming Award for race, gender, sexuality, class and disability in Australian speculative fiction. The Winner will be announcedat the 51st Australian National Science Fiction Convention in Melbourne.

The Short List, in alphabetical order, is…

Black Glass novel by Meg Mundell published by Scribe Publications

Bluegrass Symphony collection by Lisa L Hannett published by Ticonderoga

The Devil’s Diadem novel by Sara Douglass (1957 – 2011) published by HarperCollins

Eona novel by Alison Goodman published by HarperCollins

Hindsight novel by A A Bell published by HarperCollins

Nightsiders novel by Sue Isle published by Twelfth Planet Press

Road To The Soul novel by Kim Falconer published by HarperCollins

The Shattered City novel by Tansy Rayner Roberts published by HarperCollins

Yellowcake Springs novel by Guy Salvidge published by IP

Congratulations to those short listed!

I enjoyed Yuletide enormously - it was the first thing I'd written since Pearl was born.

Anyway, I was asked for a serious work set in fifteenth-century Italy, perhaps featuring an artist. And I produced a romp about Lucrezia Borgia styled after Bridget Jones. I found it incredibly hard to exaggerate her life comically as it was basically one long stream of exaggeration (though often not of the comical sort).

http://archiveofourown.org/works/295617

Vorkosigan saga - A Fine and Private Place - http://archiveofourown.org/works/294074/chapters/470439?show_comments=true#comment_505165

Bagthorpe sage - Bagthorpes v Zombies - http://archiveofourown.org/collections/yuletide2011/works/297348

Misfits - Fucking with Destiny - http://archiveofourown.org/works/301580?collection_id=yuletide2011&view_adult=true

Singin' in the Rain - Tea for Three - http://archiveofourown.org/works/301580?collection_id=yuletide2011&view_adult=true

I am participating this year! Yay! It's the first time since Pearl's birth that I've felt I might actually be able to produce a minimum of 1000 words to order.

Very excited about my prompt.... Must now do some 'research'.

I am pleased that I managed to get my registration in. I had to do it three times and it kept bouncing. (BTW: If you are my Yuletide writer looking for hints, that's why I wrote such brief prompts. I rewrote it several times. Anyway, will try to write more here about what I like later. Basically think happy ending and sugary sweetness and you're there.)

Um, actually, only look if you want to read a slash story in the BBC Sherlock universe, featuring an asexual Sherlock.

I feel quite guilty about getting such a great story in return for my donation to the Queensland RSPCA during the floods.

http://lavvyan.livejournal.com/487313.html#cutid1

I was on the organising committee for Swancon 2001, and now, a decade later, I think that I am sufficiently calmed down that I can handle hearing feedback.

To remind you, that was the con at the Rydges in town and the guest was Robert Silverberg.

Organising the con was incredibly difficult - partly because that was the year the GST was introduced and no one at the tax office knew what this would mean for a group like Swancon; partly because of committee issues; and partly because of the mysterious drop of the Australian dollar against the American one. It was enraging to hear economists repeatedly saying that there was no reason for this drop as our money was worth less and less while we were locked into getting the World's Most Expensive Guest.

Anyway, at the time I was far too engrossed in it to take anything other than adulation as an appropriate response. I've calmed down now (cough, after a decade) and I'd like to know what people thought of the con.

I am so sorry that the great Joanna Russ has just died. I must say, too, that my dream line up for a con has been decimated in the past month...

No Diana Wynne Jones, no Joanna Russ.

Cecelia Tan had better exercise well and eat sensibly....

Program

There were a lot of things that I wanted to go to, but very few that I did get to. I got to one of the conversations with artists, which I really enjoyed.

If anyone has program notes on That Space Ship has Girl Cooties, the romance stream or SF, Social Network and Blogging, I’d love to know. I felt like Tantalus this year, looking at all the good things on the program and being unable to get to them.

Accessibility

I have considered the accessibility issue. In future, perhaps concommittees need to ask a different question of the hotel. Not 'can people in wheel chairs get in?' but 'describe the steps people in wheel chairs must take to get in'.

In the case of the Hyatt the real answer is 'you can get dropped off at the top of the ramp and then with great difficulty get around inside the building'. Or 'you can park on the street and go up a vehicle only ramp, hoping like heck you survive the experience'. Or 'you can park in the visitor's bay, pay insanely massive amounts for the privilege, fail to find the unsigned lift, and get wedged in a escalator, oh and on the last day the escalator will break down too'.

I certainly plan to complain to the Disability Services Commission and request that WASFF try to get some better hotel choosing processes in place to help future committees.

The Best of the Con

Each con does different things really well. The dealers room was particularly good this year.

There was obviously a great relationship with the publishers.

The children’s program was incredibly well put together, though in a very small space.

The awards ceremony was really stylish and incredibly organised - actually ran to time! I got to co-present the A Bertram Chandler with my ASFF hat on.

Plus my experience of the auction check in was great.

The Worst of the Con

Well, the hotel obviously.

Trying to stop Pearl from running amok, with mixed success.

I had mixed feelings about the art show. I liked the professional entries but I did not like the way the amateur art was segregated and set up a bit like an afterthought.

There was also some issue with sending out notifications about who was on which panels. I didn’t get any emails to let me know - I realised I was on two panels on the Thursday when I was reading over the program. ‘I’d like to attend that... Oh, I am *on* that.’

Then I searched for my name and found that I was on something else as well, the fanfund panel, which I simply could not attend as it was in the middle of the girls’ naptime. If I had had any advance notice I could have sorted something out, prepared, etc.

I know I was not the only one to have this problem and I think that might be why there were such a lot of moved panels.

I have a suggestion for next year's concom. Perhaps after the emails are sent out, a notice could be put on the livejournal to say that people have been alerted. Many folks who are regular participants would thereby bed to alerted.



Note to self: suggestion for 2012, will talk about art journalling and my DUFF trip art journal.

Note to self: craft suggested as a theme for Gynaecon 2012. Must prepare!

A quick check shows that the City of Perth has an accessibility plan but it appears to apply only to public areas.

The Disability Services Commission is the place to go: http://www.disability.wa.gov.au/index.html

I will phone them after Easter.

My first day at Swancon. I found it much more stressful than I had hoped. I can’t afford to stay at the con this year so I am commuting - that means a small visit in the morning and then a longer one in the afternoon after my kids have naptime.

But getting in and out is so insanely difficult. So mind-numbingly difficult. I drive in and we find a parking place and then I unload the car and get Pearl to one side and strap Ruby in and walk back. And then there is no way into the hotel.

It’s a five star hotel and yet there is no entry if you have a pram. (Or a wheelchair or whatever). There are lifts but you have to go up flights of stairs to get to them. There are tons of stairs, but no way for me to get in.

In the end we have been using the car ramp which is labelled ‘not a pedestrian access way’.

As we were leaving at the end of the day I could not even find a way to get down the first step onto the ramp. It was too steep to go over it with the pram, and in the end the attendant helped me over the edge onto the ramp that I am not meant to use.

So we set off down the ramp and it’s that moment that a bleep bus decides to overtake us. Because clearly the bleeps could not wait the one bleep minute it would take the woman with the pram and the toddler to clear the road. It goes past and then, no, it has a bleep trailor on the back. It nearly hits us again.

At this point I’m literally shouting obscenities. Pearl probably can’t hear me as she is screaming in terror.

Bleep the hotel. Do they have no bleep guests who need to enter and can’t walk? Do they just not want my money?

Both this morning and this afternoon it took about an hour to calm down after the horror and stress of physically getting into the damn building.

Saw very little of the con itself as was too busy recovering from the stress of entering the bleep building.