Session One: The Writing Hoyts
Sunday we started our day with what we had hoped to do on Thursday evening: See the Hoyts read. Every scheduled time we had seen on the schedule something had come up so they hadn’t been there; we had enjoyed the sessions, but missed the Hoyts.
We had a chance encounter with Sarah on Saturday evening (more in a future post), but the Sunday morning reading by her and Dan was definitely a gem.
I didn’t take enough notes to remember specifics, but the reading by Dan, about the farm boy made administrative assistant to the ruler of their planet in the interplanetary empire, the thoughts from his head rang very true to me as someone from a farming background.
Sarah’s reading was from Guardian, something she is working on jointly in the Monster Hunters International universe. It was an interesting snippet. After she explained the task she had been given to write, it was an even more impressive snippet, what she had made of the parameters.
Session Two: John Ringo
This meet the author session with John Ringo was interesting in different ways. We got to hear about the creations of many of his books, how the collaborations came about and worked.
But we also learned that even the great writers can have dry spells and get stuck. His advice to a starting writer is to write (and finish) the book. But he currently has something like seven books a third to a half complete, and stymied on where to go, or lacking motivation to work further at the moment.
He’s finding it hard at the moment to follow his advice, but assured us we can expect something coming “soon”.
Session Three: Closing Ceremonies
Unlike the brag on us session, and passing the baton to the next site, of the WorldCon closing session we attended last year, the closing session of a LibertyCon is a “Bitch at Brandy” session. I’m not sure of her title, but Brandy is the top person in charge of the LibertyCon organization, and it was very refreshing to see her, and her committee, sit there and listen to people’s feedback, and take notes on things they could do to make future cons better.
They also got a lot of positive comments from people about various things, which helped them know which items are going well and shouldn’t be meddled with.
The big news to come out of this session is the fact that, due to the transformation of the Chattanooga Choo Choo hotel into a residential condo complex, there are not enough rooms for con goers, and LibertyCon will be held elsewhere in the future.
But they don’t know where yet. It is an outside possibility that they might have to skip a year, if they can’t find a location soon enough. But LibertyCon will definitely continue.
At The Rainbow 