Month: January 2023

Thoughts on ConFusion 2023

John Winkelman

My badge and ribbons from ConFusion 2023

Last weekend I attended ConFusion 2023 with my partner Zyra, from Thursday morning through Sunday afternoon. This was my ninth ConFusion, and Zyra’s second. Her first experience was last year, still in the middle of the pandemic. 2022 was not, through no fault of their own, the best year in ConFusion’s history by a long shot. Fortunately 2023 was much improved, and though still small by the standards of many of the previous years, it was a lot of fun and felt like the ConFusions of old.

This year I volunteered as part of the Operations team and as a general dogsbody, taking care of those things which needed taking care of and lifting heavy things, as well as sitting at the Ops table in the early morning hours of Saturday and Sunday. I am used to waking up at 5:00 to feed the cats, work out, and write, so waking up at 5:00 to sit at a table in a mostly-empty hallway was not difficult, except when it came to staying awake.

I participated on two panels this year, “What do Trends in Artificial Intelligence Generated Art and Writing Mean for Artists and Authors?” on  Saturday with Jason Sanford, Rick Lieder, and Bill Higgins, and “Creativity in the Age of AI” on Sunday with Jason Sanford, Rick Lieder, and John Scalzi. I moderated the first, and Jason moderated the second. I had a great time on these panels, and will be posting about the content therein over the next couple of weeks.

The best part of conferences, of course, is the people. I spent most of my non-panel, non-Ops time hanging out in the bar area, talking to many wonderful people, and this experience filled my heart to near-bursting! Over the course of the long weekend, I spent time talking to, among others, Dave Palmer, Kathe Koja, Jason Sanford, Patrick Tomlinson, Maurice Broaddus, Rick Lieder, Jordan Kurella, ZigZag Claybourne, Saladin Ahmad, Catherine Stein, Rami Ungar, and Storm Michael Humbert. Many of these people I already knew, and the rest I met for the first time this past weekend. In both cases, my life was enriched by their presence.

I also spent a lot of time hanging out with the members of the ConFusion ConCom, talking about the history of ConFusion, the day-to-day tasks, the unexpected issues when working with hotels and bars, and the scores of other details which must be dealt with as they arise. These were fascinating discussions and only increased my respect for the volunteers who run fan conventions of all sorts.

So what’s next? At the moment I plan to be more involved with the next ConFusion in January 2024. That means that, after a few weeks off for rest and recovery, I will be sitting in on meetings with the ConCom and figuring out where I may be of the most assistance. And I am very much looking forward to this experience. ConFusion is one of my favorite events of the year, and I am happy – nay, eager – to contribute to its continued success in any way I can.

And before I forget, I treated myself to a new fountain pen, courtesy of Brad, the Pen Guy. It is beautiful to see, and a joy to write with.

The Books of ConFusion 2023

John Winkelman

Books signed at ConFusion 2023

The above is the collection of books which I was fortunate enough to have signed by their respective authors at ConFusion 2023.

First up are Zoe’s Tale, The End of All Things, and The Last Colony by John Scalzi. I picked these books up over the past several years, and finally brought them with me to ConFusion to be signed.

I picked up The Pure World Comes by Rami Ungar when a dapper gentleman in a top hat asked me “Do you like horror?” as I was browsing the tables in Artist’s Alley during some down time. Rami and I talked for a hot minute about self publishing and horror, and I walked away with a new book.

Dark Factory and Velocities by Kathe Koja, I picked up back in December, expressly to get them signed during the convention.

On Saturday afternoon, and I stopped in to Catherine Stein‘s “Author Meet and Greet” event, and ended up purchasing Eden’s Voice and The Courtesan and Mr. Hyde, which are period romances in the steampunk and gas-lamp fantasy genres. I generally don’t read romance novels, but I love the myriad *punk subgenres so this might be an inroad into a genre in which I am woefully uninformed. And we discovered that we have a friend in common, in West Michigan author Jean Davis, who Catherine knows through the self-publishing and local/regional book event scenes.

On the bottom right is The Librarian, an anthology published by Air and Nothingness Press, which was funded through a 2022 Kickstarter campaign. One of the authors, Storm Michael Humbert, was in one of the author meet-and-greets, with a table of anthologies in which he has stories.

All in all, ConFusion 2023 was an excellent venue for picking up new books, and I am proud that I kept it to only four books purchased throughout the long weekend, as I have a shelf full of books which have been signed at ConFusions past, which I have not yet read. New books shall be my reward for reading old books.

One of these years it will be me sitting at a table behind a pile of books on which are printed the words “By John Winkelman.”

IWSG, January 2023: The Word of the Year

John Winkelman

Poe (left) and Pepper eyeballing each other

The week before Christmas I was struck down by the flu. I worked from home for that week, and just when I started to feel better the Great Christmas Blizzard of 2022 covered West Michigan with a ridiculous amount of snow. Throughout these two weeks of isolation, Poe and Pepper (pictured above) were a wonderful source of amusement and affection for Zyra and I.

The Insecure Writer’s Support Group question for January 2023 is:

Do you have a word of the year? Is there one word that sums up what you need to work on or change in the coming year?

For this year, I think my word will be Attentiveness. That point where attention meets engagement. I had little enough of either over the past (checks notes) five years, since I went on hiatus from Caffeinated Press at the beginning of 2018. The last three years have been a fugue of reacting to or recovering from outside world events. Now that we are through the holidays and already the daylight hours are growing noticeably longer, I feel a renewed energy.

Attentiveness, to me, means not just noticing the parts of my life which need attention, but then doing something about it. Whether it be my relationship with my partner, my health, the martial arts class, my family, my writing, our house, or anything else in my life, I think I am ready to re-enter the world and take care of the things which need taking care of.

 

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Happy New Year, etc.

John Winkelman

New arrivals in the week of December 25, 2022

Welcome to 2023! 2022 was overall a good year, but also exhausting, and so I am kind of happy to see it in the rearview mirror.

Two book arrived here at the house in the last week of the year. On the left is the January 2023 issue of Poetry, which  came as something of a surprise, as I thought my subscription ended with the previous issue. I guess I was mistaken.

On the right is Apex Magazine 2021, the printed collection of the stories which appeared in the electronic editions of Apex Magazine, from their successful Kickstarter. This book has the honor of being the last book to enter the Library at Winkelman Abbey in 2022, in that it arrived in the afternoon of December 31. Excellent timing!

In reading news, I made some progress through the first issue of the new incarnation of Dreamforge, but my brain is so fried from *gestures at everything* that I couldn’t motivate myself to do much more than watch The Blacklist and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and play Stardew Valley.

In writing news, there is no writing news.

Starting in the new year, I will combine the “books I acquired” weekly posts with the “stuff I read” monthly posts, so now everything will be monthly. I plan to still do weekly (-ish) posts, but they will be both general and topical, and no longer exclusively about book stuff.

Happy New Year, everyone!

December 2022 Reading List

John Winkelman

What I Read in December 2022

This was another great month for reading, though the list is short. But such is necessarily the case for Dostoevsky December.

And this rounds out the list for the year. 120 books or journals, and 252 pieces of short prose. Not bad at all.

Books and Journals

  1. Fyodor Dostoevsky (Larissa Volokhonsky and Richard Pevear, translators), Crime and Punishment [2022.12.18]
  2. Poetry #221.3 [2022.12.19]
  3. The Paris Review #242 [2022.12.21]

Short Prose

  1. Avigayl Sharp, “Uncontrollable, Irrelevant”, The Paris Review #242 [2022.12.19]
  2. Addie E. Citchens, “A Good Samaritan”, The Paris Review #242 [2022.12.19]
  3. Mieko Kanai (Polly Barton, translator), “Tap Water”, The Paris Review #242 [2022.12.20]
  4. Sophie Madeline Dess, “Zalmanovs”, The Paris Review #242 [2022.12.21]
  5. Tom Drury, “Where Does This Live?”, The Paris Review #242 [2022.12.21]
  6. Isabella Hammad, “Gertrude”, The Paris Review #242 [2022.12.21]
  7. Lauren C. Teffeau, “Sing! & Remember”, Dreamforge #1 [2022.12.24]
  8. Jane Lindskold, “Born From Memory”, Dreamforge #1 [2022.12.24]
  9. Jean Martin, “I Am Not As Young As I Was”, Dreamforge #1 [2022.12.29]
  10. Paul Dellinger, “Con Man”, Dreamforge #1 [2022.12.29]
  11. Chris Sumberg, “Anthropomorphile”, Dreamforge #1 [2022.12.29]
  12. Scot Noel, “Walker in Leaves”, Dreamforge #1 [2022.12.29]
  13. Dr. Eric Leif Davin, “The Prophetic Vision of Stephen Vincent Benet”, Dreamforge #1 [2022.12.30]
  14. Tom Sheehan, “The Old Man Who Hid Music”, Dreamforge #1 [2022.12.30]