I attended two great talks on Sunday. The first one was on Urban Fantasy, and with a panel of Patricia Briggs, Rhiannon Held, Devon Monk, Anne Bishop, and Jennifer Brozek, it was bound to be worth the time. A common theme in this and many of the panels, was if you write well, you can can get away with anything-even unicorns.

I then went to Dale Ivan Smith’s reading. This was a completely random stop, and it was cool to be there because he opened with an explanation of how his story, co-written with K.C. Ball, came to exist. It was started at a Ken Scholes workshop at Cascade Writers. I was at that workshop this summer, and remembered the creation of that story! It was exciting to see how a little nugget of thought can turn into something currently under consideration by Analog.

The last panel I attended resulted in some great discussion and advice. Cate Campbell and Irene Radford took time after the session to give me tips about web presence-quite generous.

I was impressed with the kind and generous nature of many people I met at the conference. This was the first scifi convention I’ve attended, and the Portland scifi community is a welcoming place to be. I’m quite lucky to live here.