01:31 pm - Who's cool?
I built Midnight Never Come partly on the principle of "list everything awesome in that time period, then cram in as much of it as you can." Which isn't a bad method. So I'm going to repeat it again, and ask: who and what is cool in the seventeenth century?
I already know I'll be using the Great Fire, the Civil War, execution of Charles I, Cromwell's Commonwealth, and Restoration of Charles II. Maybe the Battle of Worcester, too. Other things springing to mind include Samuel Pepys, John Evelyn, John Milton, the Earl of Rochester, Aphra Behn, Restoration theatre, and the Dutch wars.
What else?
People, events, neat places, whatever. The broader a range of things I'm steeping in my head, the better this book will be.
07:55 pm - ICFA
(There are too many potential icons for this post, so you just get the swan.)
Attention anybody going to ICFA! I'll be there, of course -- proud attendee since 2003; I can advance both sides of my professional life by flying to Florida every spring, so what's not to like? -- and it turns out I'm going to be doing more than I thought.
At 10:30 a.m. on Thursday I'll be donning my academic hat (and my legal name) and participating in an interdisciplinary panel about fan studies -- a panel of the discussion type, not the "we all read our at best tangentially related papers" sort.
Also, at some point -- I don't know my time slot yet -- I'll be switching to writer-hat and writer-name, and reading in the creative track. I've been squeaked on to it due to other peoples' cancellations, so I suspect I won't be listed in the program, but they always post the errata next to the reg desk, so look for me there. (Yes, in my sixth year, the worst has finally happened: I'm on the program twice, under two different names.) I will, as you might expect, be reading from Midnight Never Come.
And lastly, I'll be bringing some small number of ARCs with me, to sell in the book room. My ego loves the mental image of a slugfest over the last copy between a rabid fan and a dusty old academic in the narrow, book-strewn aisles, but since the universe is unlikely to oblige me with such a scenario, you can probably guarantee your receipt of one simply by looking early in the con.
Hope to see some of you there!