GenCon Australia: Day 3

Today I get to upload some images from GenCon Australia 2009. Hoperfully pictures will tell a different story of my experiences from the previous two posts.

The first is an up high shot of the traders hall, just to give some perspective on what the venue was like. Around the corners there were role-playing, board games, card games and computer game arenas, so the space was much bigger than this picture depicts.

The second photograph is of me with four of Australia's leading speculative fiction novellests, from left to right Karen Miller, Kylie Chan, Rowena Cory Daniells and Marianne De Pierres with myself tacked on at the end where we were at the Pulp Fiction Bookstore stand. All four women gave me excellent advise on the world of writing and publishing and I thank them all for their time. They were also all very popular on all the seminars they attended.

The Dark Space and Nylon Angel posters are for Marianne's books. I picked up her Dark Space novel (which she generously signed for me) and started reading it on the flight back from Brisbane to Adelaide that night and really got into it.

The next image is of me with upcoming dark fantasy author (and GenCon event organiser) Peter M. Ball who has written the excellent urban fantasy novella Horn which is selling really well from Twelfth Planet Press. I highly recommend this book and find it to be one of the most original short fiction pieces from an Australian author in years. Peter also is a very generous and cool individual.

Here are some examples of the very cool costumes people have made for GenCon, including some Star Wars outfits that look like they've come straight out of Lucusville's production studios, they are that good. I had to include an image of Boba Fett as he's one of my favorite sci-fi villians. I wish I'd taken more photographs of people dressed up, and that I could have posted others didn't come out so blury.

GenCon was lots of fun all round and I got to meet some great people, including Matt Farrer, Ryan Naylor and Donna Hanson amongst many others. Special thanks also to all the GenCon volunteer players of the Saturday night session of "The Burning Stars", which was heaps of fun to run with such a great bunch of individuals, and sorry to everyone who missed out.

GenCon Australia: Day 2

After a good night's sleep I was back at GenCon Australia. Today was busier, with many more people and many more costumes (or CosPlay as they call it). I was on two forums leaving me plenty of time to wander the stalls, gaming areas and displays. I caught up with Ron Serdiuk of Pulp Fiction Press who also owns a very impressive science fiction, fantasy and crime bookshop in Brisbane, Pulp Fiction Books. Also meet up with Ian Houlihan, GenCon Director and Show Manager.

During my spare time Rowena Cory Daniels and I discussed role-playing games and how to becoime a profession game writer. Peter M. Ball and I talked about his novella Horn from Twelfth Planet Press, which incidentially is selling very well from what I've heard, and definitely worth a read. And I picked the brains of Marianne de Pierres, Kylie Chan and Rowena on their thoughts on agents and publishers, and strategies to get my novel picked up when it is written (yes, I'm a writer, so like all writers I'm progressing througha novel).

That evening I ran a demonstration game for several fo the GenCon volunteers of my Call of Cthulhu scenario "The Burning Stars" from Terrors from Beyond, which went down really well and lots of fun all round. I had to rush it a bit as we were working to a fixed timeline, but I got all the important clues in there, and the secret surprise when revealled went down well, even though many of the players had guessed what was going on early on.

I'll have a more detailed convention report tomorrow when I return home to Adelaide.

GenCon Australia: Day 1

After a 4am wakeup and 6am flight from Adelaide to Brisbane, and then checking into my hotel I turned up at GenCon Australia feeling rather tired. However, excited to be there, I soon explored all the trade showrooms to be amazed at the number of gaming stores still selling role-playing games in Australia, despite my impression that the genre had been dying in Australia. Talking to store owners I soon discovered that games like Dungeons & Dragons selll well, and games like Call of Cthulhu don't, although this is not the trend in the United States. There were some Call of Cthulhu products, mostly Ken Hite's Trail of Cthulhu line from Pelgrane Press, which has excellent production values. I couldn't find any of my books, including Chaosium's most recent release, Terrors from Beyond featuring my scenario "The Burning Stars". In fact there was almost no representation of Chaosium products at all.

I'll freely admit I haven't been to a gaming convention like this one before. What first struck me was the number of people dressed as characters from their favorite science fiction and fantasy movies and television shows. I saw the Tenth Doctor, Stormtroopers (with excellent production values on their costumes), a transformer, wizards, fairies, elves and a whole host of Anime characters I couldn't even begin to identify. Star Wars characters by far were the most popular costumes, and far less Star Trek than I would have expected.

There are some impressive looking computer games, but not being a computer gamer myself, I just watched others play them (my time on the computer is spent writing).

I met several of Australia's leading speculative fiction writers including Karen Miller, Marianne De Pierres, Kylie Chan, Rowena Cory-Daneils, Peter M. Ball and Warhammer 40K author Matt Farrer, who are amongst the nicest people you could meet. I'll say that the Australian speculative fiction community is very friendly and encouraging when you get to meet them face to face. We sat on several panels talking on the business of writing speculative fiction, and attendance was much higher than I had expected.