Reports from Conflux

Day One of Conflux passed in a blur of carrying boxes, emptying boxes on tables, identifying the provenance and purpose of the contents of mysterious boxes, and searching for missing boxes.

So many boxes

I did manage to tear myself away from the convention dealer room long enough for a few writery moments though. As usual I am terrible at remembering that I have a camera in my phone, but I snapped a couple of shots for the record.

Dave Wolverton

I caught a couple of presentations by Dave Wolverton (who also writes as David Farland, or is it the other way around?), who is the international guest for this year’s convention. Here he was talking about the secret formula for writing a bestselling novel. (From the notes I took, it appears likely that my current approach to writing will not, in fact, produce a bestselling novel any time soon).

I managed to find a spot to sit in for the opening ceremony that completely prevented me photographing or even seeing Master of Ceremonies Sean Williams (will try again later). So when Sean cautioned us to take our physical wellbeing seriously and introduced science fiction tai chi (or Sci Chi, as he coined it), I had to learn the moves by osmosis.

I do recall that it begins with a full Rimmer salute and ends with a mimed head-punch on Jar Jar Binks. If someone filmed it I will find a link!

However I did catch the Prosperous Mountain lion dancers in action as they sniffed out and chased off all the bad luck at the Novotel. They were terrific in action, and launched the convention with an energy not typically associated with writers!

Making a cautious entrance

Bad luck triumphantly eliminated!

More from Day Two of the con later.