I had so much fun at DemiCon 36 earlier this month! It’s been a while since a whole convention felt quite so easy and joyous to me as it did at this year’s edition of the long-running Des Moines science fiction convention. It was an especially welcome experience because so many other things so far this year have seemed hard and unhappy. I’ve noted this before, in some of the few blog posts I’ve been able to produce in the…
No two ways about it: change is hard. It’s inevitable, but that doesn’t make it any easier to manage. And when innovation butts heads with tradition, change is really hard. SoonerCon 32 offers a sometimes-painful, sometimes-cautiously hopeful, case in point. I remember decades ago when my husband and I witnessed another painful transition. We were assistant directors of a summer camp unit that had seen a complete change of staff from one summer to the next. The camp organization was…
Now it’s time for the “New Year Dragon Gentlemen” whose dragon-themed artwork I want to highlight. I Introduced two “New Year Dragon Ladies” in last week’s post, figuring it’s hard to go wrong with “ladies first.” But I didn’t want to leave the guys hanging for too long. When I found out that 2024 is the Year of the Dragon, I knew I wanted to feature dragon-themed artwork in my social media. I know a lot of excellent artists who…
By Jan S. Gephardt Let me tell you about creating a cover with Chaz Kemp. My official title is Chief Cat Herder and Manager of Weirdness (it’s even on my business card). But among all the things I do for Weird Sisters Publishing, one of my favorite roles is Art Director. Book and magazine design have remained key interests of mine since well before college (remember I used to make books by hand, back in ancient days). Nowadays, it’s my…