Guests of honour this year were Jim Minz of Baen Books, Marc McBride (illustrator of Deltora Quest) and Emily Rodda (author of Deltora Quest).

There were some external complicating factors, but I had a great time and got to catch up with old friends, make new ones and transact some bookplate business (of which more once the file is signed and sent).

I ended up being on three panels – Short Story Writing (the one I was meant to be on) with Cat Sparks, Simon Petrie, Mark Farrugia and Yaritji Green, Dealing with Writer’s Block (as an ersatz-Karen Herkes) with Jack Dann and Richard Harland, and one of two extras on Australian Comic Writers and Artists with Mik Bennet, Liz Kenneally and Jon Sommariva. The differing dynamics of panels are fascinating, but I learned a lot on all of them (and discovered that the ultimate power of being a panellist lies in people taking your book recommendations seriously). Also, I have a dream panel which would put artists, authors and publishers together talking about book covers.

And of course we dressed up. It was 1880s style for the banquet, although in my case that was a tiered green cotton skirt, a sofa cushion and my year 12 formal dress (!) with a number of safety pins. The masquerade was a prelude to a concert, so we didn’t have many attendees, but I was there (with the heavy black plastic frames from a pair of 3d glasses, a cute white blouse half-unbuttoned and a Superman t-shirt) and in one of those unexpected twists of the universe shared the dancing prize with Richard Harland (just be careful mixing bouncy soles with Footloose).

Outside of the convention, I managed to drive my older sister’s car rather hi-tech car (you know that scene from Independence Day – “Oops – oops? What do you mean oops?!”). I caught up with an old friend I haven’t seen for 9 years, and today I went to Floriade with my older sister and nephews before flying back to Brisbane.

My story “The Splendour Falls” is in this issue It’s about wishes and dreams, and getting them and giving them up, and possums and housemates and Kismet and literary references from Shakespeare to A. A. Milne. 

Conflux is going very well and we ate a great deal at the historical banquet last night (1883 Louisana, this year) and I know photos were taken of costumes, so I am sure they will show up the internet at some point.

On Wednesday last week I went to the Ekka (Brisbane Exhibition = Queensland Show = State Fair), and on Friday morning Aimee and I flew to Melbourne for Continuum 5 (had to get up incredibly early – I booked my tickets when I lived closer to the airport).

The loop train which runs to the exhibition grounds was a steam train! Also, I love the boat at top left – it is always moored near the city botanic gardens and looks like the wooden shoe from ‘Winkun, Blinkun & Nod’.

They are redeveloping the RNA Showgrounds and this is the chairlift’s last year. I took it and it was a wonderful slow ride over the halls and the stalls and the rides.

Sheepdogs are difficult to draw. If you blink, they are suddenly in the same pose but a different position.

Lots of dogs! I almost lost my heart to a greyhound. The tiny little dog at the bottom right is from Pompeii. That is Aimee getting stuck into the icecream.

The Pompeii exhibition at the Melbourne Museum had a number of the plaster casts. The most affecting part of the exhibition for me was looking at a display on the history of the archaeology, and seeing drawings of Victorian (era, not state) children looking at some of the same casts we had just seen. We also saw Phar Lap and the mechanical chicken, from Cole’s Book Arcade, which – according to the caption – “boasted 5 mechanical hens to enliven the shopping experience”. Cole seems to have been the Willy Wonka of bookstores.

If you want to sketch fast, sketch fencers! These are mid-battle-between-airships. Chelsea Quinn Yarbro was the international guest of honour. Those backs at the bottom right belong to Marilyn Pride and Lewis Morley.

Maskobalo! I am still twinging from dancing all night (except, obviously, for when I was sketching). I wore the dress I wore to the Regency banquet in Canberra a few years ago and will post photos when I track some down.

Juggling. Too early. Too much chasing things across the floor. Lucy Sussex has edited a book of Australian travellers’ diaries which should be out later this year and sounds fascinating. Jack Dann set up the direction of the panel to allow Gillian Polack to lower the tone of the panel on history :) Later, Gillian, Aimee, Julia and I saw an exhibition of Regency dresses at the art gallery. Most were of their era, but Aimee swooned when Julia pointed out Colin Firth’s costume from the BBC P&P.

Rachel Holkner was c0-chair of the convention. On Monday, Aimee went to see a Star Wars exhibition. I went to St Kilda by tram, then back to the city.

There was a Dali exhibition at one of the galleries, but I didn’t go in. I looked at the collections and found the little Madonna Joan Lindsay wrote about her husband (who was director) acquiring under the Felton Bequest. There were some excellent exhibitions on at the State Library (also, a churros cafe nearby!) including Changing Faces of Victoria, where I saw Ned Kelly’s armour, and Independent Type which had an incredible array not only of Australian books and early editions and paintings of authors, but manuscripts: Peter Carey, Manning Clarke, Ned Kelly, dozens of others, and even one of the “original” Ern Malley poems with the telegram indicating it might be a hoax.

I completely forgot that I’d forwarded Emilly links to some of my older sketches (posted for Illustration Friday back in May last year) and so was pleasantly surprised to see them in the con program book!

Also, as Gillian mentioned, I am working up ideas for a small-scale project for her (elegant but with whimsy, boldness and feminity, which will be fun).

A convention never seems like it’s over until it’s blogged. I have decided against a blow-by-blow account, mostly because I did not keep notes, but there are at least plenty of pictures, although as usual they are selected by the method of choosing what stood still long enough. So if you read this and are disappointed you are not in any of them, that is obviously because you were moving too fast.

Early Friday and south-east Queensland was covered with fog. I hoped it would lift and we would find ourselves in a Wyndham novel, but it was a very prosaic fog and the plane was only delayed by an hour.

On the flight I amused myself creating small scenes of maritime tragedy on my fold-down tray. I think there are few English phrases more comforting than, “There is a whistle and a light for attracting attention”.

On arriving, I noted my knees were experiencing a wind chill factor, and checked into my possibly-haunted hotel. I had been worried that I would be lonely, in a nice hotel room all by myself, but then I realised this meant I could have all the hot showers I wanted to! I unpacked and felt very grown up, then went out for a milkshake.

Before the convention, there were free tours of Haigh’s chocolate factory, with samples. As registration started, I caught up with lots of old and medium and new-ish and brand-new friends and did not draw anything until the next day but that does not mean nothing happened. The convention bags had tiny little matchboxes in them with real matches which actually worked (Kate Eltham tested them). Here are Peter M Ball and Karen Miller being mildy snarky at a panel on Urban Fantasy, which is a name for a moving-target of a genre. What I write is not urban fantasy anymore but no-one knows what it is. My characters do not wear low-slung leather trousers, but then that might be what’s missing.

A rather heated steampunk panel, followed (I dimly recall) by lots of food and chocolate and talking and lacing of Emilly’s corset (corset-lacing forms a small but vital undercurrent of convention activities), and then the Maskobalo. I did in fact dance, but the lights were very bright and I was all in black, and also Sean Williams was DJing which meant I knew the words to most of the songs and therefore could dance to them and overheated and had to sit down. Catherine Scholz of the green dress, and Steve Scholz of the steampunk backpack were the fan guests of honour. Julie E. Czerneda was the international guest of honour but I did not get her in my sights long enough to draw.

Conventions have a higher incidence of public knitting than almost anywhere else I know. Here is my costume (same as last weekend) and a sovereign remedy for the Perils Of Insisting On Authenticity, ie a gin martini. Most of the cleaning products in my hotel had exactly the same smell.

We had the most awesome kids’ program, and almost everyone I spoke to wanted to go. They had marshmallow guns and pinatas and made ornithopters and TARDIS cookies. That is a TARDIS cookie at the top right. It had a little white marshmallow on it, but I ate that, and the icing was much bluer than this. The frightened looking object beneath it is a frog cake, which every South Australian says is an icon but none of them remember having eaten since they were 8 and I am not surprised. The top was very nice although it was a bit like eating frog-cake-brains because it is icing over mock-cream, but the cake underneath was just too sickly sweet.

I had coffee and lunch and dinner with lots of people (but not breakfast because my hotel had a pancake machine and I was not passing that up for any sort of society) but most of our time we spent in and around the bar, traumatising the bar staff and drinking far too much English Breakfast Tea.

It was very sad to say goodbye to everyone at the end, but ends drag on and when I left Liz & Nigel’s room where we were having more tea after dinner, there were still plenty of people still sitting in the bar. I went back to my hotel and overheard some men asking to change rooms because of a creepy feeling, and then the hotel staff discussing other people who had asked to leave that room because of cold patches and vibrating beds, etc.

I stayed an extra day to see more of Adelaide than a foyer. Occasionally it rained and I would duck into a bookshop which, in retrospect, is possibly not as cost-effective as just buying an umbrella. I drew things and bought some patterned rubber rollers in a shop that recycles old building elements and wandered the streets on what I thought was a rather boring recommended walk, until I worked out that it was a busline and my instincts were correct.

I bought chocolate and looked into arcades and went to the gallery again to see what it was like without the evil influence of Jason Fischer and Dirk Flinthart, but still all I could see in the renaissance paintings were saints with stigmata lasers. But it is a proper gallery, with high arched ceilings and green trim and very worth gold-lettered labels on the rooms and the museum had, as it ought, a room full of stuffed mammals which is always disconcerting. The best part was the Mawson exhibit, with real ice and a replica of the hut.

I had a wonderful time, and made new friends and caught up with old ones and talked until my voice went and drank a great deal of tea and ate too much and hardly slept and went for dinners with odd collections of people and formed the conclusion – as always happens at conventions in strange cities – that the city is populated mostly with people I know, and met artists and writers and raconteurs and bought too many books and wore my favourite shoes and wandered around a new city and can’t wait for the next one.

I’ll upload con sketches when I get back. In the meantime, here’s a page from the last batch (and next in the sequence of tv sketches):

The main highlight of this year was the people – the difficulties of knowing screen-names and real names and some faces and not being able to put any together were overcome sooner than usual for me, and it was fun to crash in the foyer with people, make up random dinner parties, and simply fall into friendships and conversations. I keep missing people. Jason, Peter, Adam, Julia, Shauna, Emma, John, Liz, Rachel, Gillian – and everyone else whose names escaped my tenuous grasp! All fabulous, generous, talented people with apalling senses of humour.

Lewis Morley was demonstrating modelling techniques, so I sat at his table and learned to soften Super Sculpy with a pasta maker, and the uses of metho and turps, and that in the absence of an oven you can find a kettle in a hotel room and pour boiling water into a cup of models which hardens them up enough to transport them. I made a miniature sleepy pink wombat leafy mask (as you do):

The 1921 banquet was exquisite, and I particularly commend the icecream to you. Recipes are on Gillian’s food history blog. Costumes were striking and fun. I found that my green satin was very slippery when worn over stockings – the drop waist rapidly descended further than expected. Angela had made a dress from a genuine 1925 1-hour dress pattern, and looked much more of the era than I did. I think the dress looked much better in person than it did between the dim hotel lights and a harsh flash on satin.

On Sunday night, after a lively dinner expedition (on which I in a rarely precedented fit of having eaten far too much couldn’t finish my lemon meringue pie) we went to the open mic night. I hope they have more of these – poems, stories, tributes and unexpected physical comedy. I read the first half of Ella and the Flame and people were very kind about it. (One of the girls came up the next day and asked what happened, so I let her read the rest).

Monday morning, I was sitting listening to a panel and Karen H snuck in and whispered, “Come see me after this!”. I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong, so (I thought) it must be something good. It turned out they were down a gender for the panel on The Curse of Gender: Do Men and Women Write Differently?. So I sat up with … and … and tried to sound sane and intelligent and had a great time, which means I probably failed. It helped that it’s a subject that interests me, although given the grand total of my published works I did feel like I was putting myself forward.

Book launches. Lots of book launches! It is odd and fun to realise that these people I know, or who at least get a funny look when they see me, are real writers, signing things!

On Monday, Liz and I were eating lunch in the foyer and she was advising me on comic cons and swag and preparing portfolios when a man walked over and said, “Are you Liz who works in comics?” It turned out to be Gary Erskine, an artist for DC, Vertigo, Dark Horse, etc, who was about to check in when he asked what was going on and was told it was the last day of a con. He and his wife Mhairi had just come from the comic con in Singapore, and on disclosing this he was sent to Liz. So he and Mhairi sat and talked with Liz and I and a gathering circle for almost three hours before checking in – advice and anecdotes and general conversation. He looked at Liz’s material and at my sketchbook (since it was out for Liz to look at) and said mine was better suited to magazine illustration (which is exactly what I am interested in), or possibly Vertigo. He also drew Dan Dare in my sketchbook:

• I had a horrible moment on Saturday night in which I actually found cultural-studies-speak useful for explaining something. Took me a while to get over.

Some less confronting but still disconcerting moments of the week

• A friend telling me, “I am in ur bed, nibbling ur toes”. Seriously, what the? Is there anyway I can *not* misinterpret that?
• Considering costuming choices for next year’s Supanova. Aimee may go as Rose and/or Howl as both require the same hair. I can’t remember who I am going as.
• A line-up of people telling me my story was wonderful. I’d find it easier to accept if someone would criticise it.
• My carefully honed ability to become ill when confronted with pet scatology letting me down at the moment of truth.
• Realising my answers to Woman’s World’s questions ran over 5000 words (though, to be fair, they asked an awful lot of questions). So, yeah, there’s a lot of context surrounding that article.
• Finding scrawled in my notebook the question “Was Men in Black a reworking of Horton Hears a Who?” Discuss.

Not so terrible but still somewhat disturbing:

• Kidnapping, Cannibalism and Singing Telegrams: Darkhorse Presents presents an 8 page Wondermark comic. Always odd.
• ‘Mama’s little darlin’ loves‘…: A short story from Martin Livings which has changed the way I think about presents (from his series of Tuesday short stories).

And not disturbing at all (in a negative way – in a positive way it has ruffled my equilibrium delightfully) but relevant because the title of this post is from one of his books:

• A new Shaun Tan book is coming out! Tales from Outer Suburbia! If the scattered pictures I have seen are from it, it promises to be beautiful in a way only a book in which a waterbuffalo giving directions captures perfectly a certain suburban serenity can be. And I was right – I did see his name in the Horton credits. He was involved “at an early stage” so I won’t hold the movie against him.

Knitting at the Con

Originally uploaded by tanaudel
Quick sketch of an attendee knitting at Conflux 4. This is a biro sketch from the border of a page of notes in my sketchbook.

I was thinking of Illustration Friday while I made this series of sketches. Ballpoint pens have been the tool for many of my drawings – mostly thanks to 7 years in uni drawing in the margins of my lecture notes.  So, this is my Illustration Friday contribution for the theme “Blue”.

Originally uploaded by tanaudel
Biro sketches from Conflux 4 – two from life and two from photos on my phone. These border a page of notes in

my sketchbook.

A wide range of what would otherwise be eccentric behaviour is tolerated and even expected at conventions. Knitting and sketching other attendees is fairly tame.

blue