Reconstruction 2010

While in Boston (for Readercon), I ended up meeting someone from Raleigh that turned us on to Reconstruction, which was conveniently going to be held... in Raleigh. I was a little leary about going for the whole conference (mostly due to requesting that much more time out of work). And for most of the next couple of weeks, I vascillated between go/don't go, right up until a few days before the event. Instead of going for the whole event, I only went for the Saturday (seriously considered going for Sunday as well, but after a cost/session analysis,there wasn't enough scheduled for Sunday to warrant the extra day's fee.

Even though there were a couple of sessions that happened before Saturday that would have been good, I was still able to get a few things accomplished that would not have otherwise happened had I NOT gone. For example:

Kaffeklatched with Mary Robinette Kowal, where either the group was small enough or I was confortable enough now to ask about SFWA [note: I have been considering various memberships for a while, but no one that I had tried asking could/would really address the issue of guild-like memberships].

Went by the SFWA table in the dealer's room and picked up a couple of the recent bulletin/magazines. When readingone of them, I discovered a possible market [call for stories for an anthology] for a story that I wrote a couple of years ago. I'm in the process now of going back over it and preparing it for submission.

While in the Dealer's room, I discovered that there is a local market (based in Durham): BullSpec. Looks to be a good publication (nice rates, if I can sell to them). And they, in turn, let me know about another event (coming in September): a reading/book tour stop by William Gibson.

Other tables in the Dealer's room that I made sure to stop by were those for the next few cities bidding to host WorldCon. I'm thinking about trying to go, but we shall see how the future unfolds.