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I had a good time. This convention had very active tracks for Costumers, Gamers and Writers. They don't have any filking, or movies, or even late night parties. I ended up going to bed before midnight each night, unlike my usual habit of being up til 2 or 3.
Despite this, I spent a lot of time chatting with folks and meeting new folks. Since this convention isn't part of my usual routine, I didn't know many of the attendees. But a couple folks I knew when I worked outside of Akron in 1986 came to the convention and found me to say "Hi. " It was cool to chat with folks I hadn't seen in almost 40 years.
I played a game called "New York Pizza Delivery" with the game's creator. It's a fun game, and I bought a copy for my monthly board-gaming group to try.
It's a little silly, but has a well balanced set of events, extra-powers, and things to work with.
I also talked with him about how he developed the game (he has a local board-gaming group that was happy to play-test and critique), how he financed it (a kick-starter), and how he produced it (he used to work for a toy company, so he had contacts with medium-run production facilities).
The gaming community has a subculture very much like the literary and music subcultures. I wonder how many creative subcultures there are out there?
Before I moved to Ann Arbor, I owned an offset press and one of local print-shops would throw some small-jobs at me. One of the things I used to print was a Punk Rock fanzine. I wasn't in to Punk Rock (still not into it), but I learned a bunch because I had to reformat the articles so often. I can understand things like Sing-Out and other folk music magazine. Modern folk music was big in intellectual circles like Greenwich Village and Berkeley.
But punk is like, anti-intellectual. But there were amateur magazines with serious critiques of the music, the serious practitioners and the poseurs.
Back to Concoction, I was on a couple panels and listened to a few more. I did my presentations on psycholinguistics and putting songs and poetry into your work to very small audiences. I didn't outnumber the audience, but it was close. The people who came were very complimentary.
This weekend was the first test-run for my custom-built wooden book racks.
They worked!
Now I just need my novel to put into them.
According to Amazon, it will be available on March 21'st.