From NECON to Norwich!

by Dana

One of the thing I love about living in this neck of the woods (New England), is that there always seems like there's an opportunity to go to a fun, unique literary event. Last month, for example, I attended my first NECON (Northeastern Writers Conference), which takes place in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Devoted to speculative fiction—especially horror—NECON (also known as Camp NECON) celebrated its thirty-fifth year in July. The community is smart, caustic, and funny; the panels were thoughtful; the evening fun was, in a word, raucous. I took an honorable mention for the Hawaiian shirt contest (*dusts nails*). And it also happened to be my birthday; it was quite a (happy!) shock to have 200 folks suddenly singing to me. And cake! Here you can see this past year's writer guests of honor Seanan McGuire, Paul Tremblay, and Chuck Wendig. You can sign up for next year here.

 

This past Monday took me down to Norwich, Connecticut, where I was honored to be the guest speaker for this year's Jim Lafayette Memorial Series of Writers of Science Fiction and Fantasy, hosted by Otis Library. This program honors the memory of local science fiction and fantasy fan and writer Jim Lafayette with appearances by authors of the genre. Even before my interview with the wonderful Faye Ringel started, I was chatting with the audience, and in about fifteen minutes, we covered archaeology (there were two of us, there!), mystery, comic books, Jackie Chan (and his influence on me finding my voice in writing), feminism, urban fantasy, and about seventy other things! The audience was interesting and engaged, and I would have found it easy to chat with them all night. It was the kind of evening where you hope I'd given as much as I'd received from the mystery readers and fantasy readers there.

I'm very excited, because with any luck, I'll get to see Faye and others from the Norwich event at Boskone.  I'll get to see a bunch of the NECON campers there, too, as well as the special event October 3 to celebrate the Halloween season AND celebrate the launch of Seize the Night: New Tales of Vampiric Terror, edited by Christopher Golden (with stories from Femme Toni in her guise as Leigh Perry, from Femme Charlaine, and from me)!

What's a local literary event you love?

Comments

[Elaine Viets]

What cool conferences, Dana.
I like Bouchercon, a worldwide mystery event, as well as Malice Domestic, which focuses on traditional mysteries. Bouchercon tends to be livelier than Malice. I remember celebrating in a bar after one Malice, which my publisher's PR person taught me hula moves and taught her the words to "In Heaven There Is No Beer." Dennis Lehane (*sound of name dropping*)bumped into me and I spilled my drink. He offered to buy me another, but I said I'd had quite enough.

[Dana]

Those are two cool stories, Elaine! "Hula and Lehane" sounds like a new cop show...