Was up in Montreal for the World Fantasy Convention this past weekend. I thought the organizers did a fabulous job managing a hybrid convention. We had in-person panels, virtual panels, and hybrid ones (some panelists present and some remote). It all worked. They had a nurse come to the hotel on the next-to-last day to do swabs for folks who had to catch planes. I do have to note that the in-person attendance was way down from World Fantasy Conventions in the past, a not-surprising consequence of COVID-19. Will attendance ever return to what it used to be? Obviously, the biggest factor in that is COVID, and whether we will be able to, eventually, put the pandemic behind us. Even if we do, there are certain advantages to attending remotely – no plane tickets, hotel rooms, and restaurant meals. I do miss the energy, though, of having a large group together and the chance to meet new folks. I’ll be at Boskone in Boston in February and we’ll see how things evolve from there.
Post-convention, PRINCESS OF SHADOWS: The Girl Who Would Be King is now available on Amazon in ebook and paperback formats. An audiobook will follow in the spring, but the narrator isn’t settled yet. With PRINCESS out, I can focus more on the next Leif the Lucky story. That draft had been progressing at the same time as the PRINCESS edits, and having one story in a swords and castles society with another in an interstellar ramjet society was creating some real mental whiplash. Time to give Leif his due.