Triple F

So as I was saying, I had a lot of fun at Conestoga on the panels I had with the Triple F (Fangs, Fur, & Fey) folks. The urban fiction writers appeared on several of the main Conestoga panels, but they also had their own dedicated track of programming. I only attended one of their events, their last panel on Sunday. And in some ways, I regret that, because I wonder now if it would have been a better use of my time. Not that I didn't enjoy the panels I attended, but after a while, there's a sameness to them all. The same writers talking about the same subjetcs in the same ways.

But the Triple F's don't come from the same fandom. They aren't stuck repeating the same tropes so often that they don't even recognize them as tropes anymore. The Triple F's come, often, from a romance background. It's genre literature. Like science fiction, it's often formulaic, has a devoted fan base and a professional literary organization dedicated to writing it.

But those formulas and fans and professionals are different from science fiction community's, and I wonder if it wouldn't have been valuable to learn more from them while they were there. The romance writers aren't just fluffy bunnies, after all. From my brief exposure to them, they are as professional, as dedicated to their craft and to the sales and marketing of their writing, as any SF writer I've met. And they do sell. Boy, do they.

Oh well, maybe next year.

I'm going to WorldCon in Denver next week. I wasn't sure if I would make it, but decided to take the plunge and bought my membership last week. I thought I had a place to stay, but that now appears to be in jeopardy, so I may need to find a room on short notice. But I'm looking forward to meeting some people I've only met via email, and I'm hoping to join SFWA while I'm there.