I’ll be in Utah this February again this year for the excellent science fiction/fantasy convention Life, the Universe, and Everything. It’s the convention’s 30th anniversary this year. Normally it’s hosted at Brigham Young University, but due to scheduling difficulties it’ll be held this year at neighboring Utah Valley University only a few miles away—and a few miles closer to my greatest restaurant love, a restaurant I have yet to find matched in New York City (seriously), Sakura. Seriously, best deep-fried sushi (sometimes called tempura—not just for shrimp!) that I’ve found anywhere. Particularly the Geisha, Spider, Firecracker, Ninja, and Hawaiian rolls. If you’re in Utah and you haven’t discovered this place yet (and you’re not Jessica Day George) GO. It’s SO GOOD.
But I digress. (Good sushi can do that to me.)
Anyway, my point is that you need to attend LTUE, especially if you live in the Intermountain West. Sure, they’ve started charging a nominal fee (it used to be free), but that fee makes sure this great convention can continue to happen every year, giving them a modest budget for facilities, guests of honor, and so forth. The committee that runs the con are all volunteers.
Speaking of guests of honor, I’m looking forward to meeting a longtime internet but not (yet) real-life friend, James A. Owen. He’ll be talking about both writing and illustration, including a whole seminar on how to draw dragons, so if you’re an illustrator, you want to come to this LTUE.
Also attending will be the Writing Excuses team—not just locals Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler, but also SFWA vice president, puppeteer, and author Mary Robinette Kowal, not to mention a number of locally-based pros, writers and editors like Mette Ivie Harrison, Larry Correia, James Dashner, Bree Despain, J. Scott Savage, Tyler Whitesides, Chris Schoebinger, Robert J. Defendi, Lisa Mangum, and many more.
Check out the full schedule here (where there may be some tweaks to the schedule, so you might want to check back before the con), but here’s my schedule:
Thursday, February 8, 2012
10:00 AM—What Exactly Does an Editor Do, Anyway? (Rick Walton (M), Stacy Whitman, Suzanne Vincent, Lisa Mangum, Kirk Shaw)
11:00 AM—Middle-grade books for boys (Tyler Whitesides, E. J. Patten, Michael Young, Stacy Whitman(M))
2:00 PM—Feeling Fake: What to do about that pervasive feeling that everyone belongs in the publishing world except you. (Sandra Tayler, Jason Alexander, Ami Chopine (M), Stacy Whitman)
7:00 PM—A Vampire is NOT your Boyfriend!: Real Vampires (Mette Ivie Harrison, Michael R. Collings, Dan Lind, Stacy Whitman(M))
Friday, Febrary 10, 2011
No panels for me, though I will be around the convention, so I’m open to individual meet-ups for lunch (particularly at Sakura…). I’m also looking forward to James Owen’s main address this day, and the Writing Excuses live podcast. .
EDIT: I have been added to the below panel to give the editorial side:
6:00 PM—Book Bombs: How to make an Amazon.com bestseller (Randy Tayler (M), Robison Wells, Larry Correia, Stacy L. Whitman, Michaelbrent Collings)
Saturday, February 11, 2012
1:00 PM—Writing Cross-Culturally: Mistakes to Avoid, or, How to Avoid Cultural Misappropriation (Stacy Whitman)
This will be a workshop in which we talk about all the mistakes that even well-meaning authors can make in diversifying our writing, and how to use strong worldbuilding and characterization to prevent that. Also: how making mistakes doesn’t mean we’re racist—it just means we’re willing to learn.
2:00 PM—Plots, Subplots, and Foreshadowing (Bree Despain (M), J. Scott Savage, Brandon Sanderson, James A. Owen, Stacy Whitman)
I’m not on the following workshop, but want to highlight it because both Sandra and Mary are people to learn from, and given that the workshop will be two hours long, you’ll get an opportunity to really go in depth.
3:00-5:00 PM
– The Published (and aspiring) Author’s Toolbox: Learning skills for networking, blogging, social media, and self-promotion. This workshop will teach principles and give you a chance to practice skills to integrate networking, blogging, social media, and self-promotion into your professional life without being the person who annoys and without pulling you out of balance with yourself.
(Sandra Tayler, Mary Robinette Kowal)
I will definitely be attending your cross-cultural workshop and probably hit the panel on plots. I hope I can say hello at some point! I enjoyed the brief conversations we had last year.
These look like some great topics for discussion. I’ve never been to LTUE before so I’m looking forward to it this year.
I will take you out to Sakura any day. I love good sushi! I am excited for this conference, it will be my first time attending. I will definitely be in your writing cross-culturally class.
Yay! I’m so excited for this conference and that you’ll be coming again this year. I’ll definitely be going to your classes and would love to do lunch at Sakura with you and anyone else who goes.
I think we’re going to have to organize it there. It’s always hard for me to know my exact schedule (outside of panels I’m on) until I get there. But I’m definitely free for lunch every day–it’s just the matter of logistics on Thursday (2 hours is not that long for an LTUE get-together lunch!) and who wants to be where Friday—and Saturday will have to be an early or short lunch with a 1:00 presentation.
I almost ate at Sakura once. But it was closed. I do like the tempura rolls. I just love crispy! I had an awesome dragon roll at the place we ate at instead, Asuka. Which is now closed though. I would LOVE to get on this sushi lunch train! Then I could scout the place out for my husband who absolutely adores sushi (he lived in Japan for a while and also served a mission there) and is curious about the restaurant. Anyway, woot!
I wish I’d known about this conference earlier. It sounds like fun. I’ll be in SLC a few weeks later for a reunion, so I’ll miss this one. Darn. Is there a website about it? I’d like to go next year. My own fantasy novel will be out by then, so it will be extra fun.
They changed the date at the last minute and in general I don’t think anyone knew much about it with much time to spare. LTUE.org is the website you’ll want to keep an eye on, and you can join the LTUE facebook group, too (just search for LTUE or Life, the Universe, and Everything).