LTUE 2013 Recap

So this is like the fifth or sixth year I've gone to this science fiction/fantasy writers conference put on by the  local university, which we call LTUE for short, Life the Universe and Everything for long. It's been going on for years and years, even back into the dark ages I think when I went to the school! I only discovered it a few years ago when Orson Scott Card came and I went for him and then found out there was an event too!

Every year I go wondering why I'm killing myself to arrange my life so that it's possible, and every year I realize that it is just too much fun to miss. (Let me just say, life this year was against me, but I still went!) Every year I think I don't fit in, and then every year I realize that I fit in just perfectly fine. I need to own up to my nerdiness and also agree to the fact that it doesn't matter what KIND of writing I'm doing, I AM writing! Every single day!

Anyway, here's the list of classes, presentations and panels I found myself at this go around:

The First Day:

The Hobbit movie: Discussion from those in love with the book about how the movie did the job. Was it good? Was it bad? What are your quibbles with it? Most of them loved it and had very few quibbles. The quote I came out of this one with was to enjoy the journey and not worry about the apparent slowness of the beginning.

Drawing Out The Dragons: This one was a repeat of  the keynote from the year before by James Owen. I missed it, but heard it was amazing. So I was excited they had a repeat. Basically, it's this guy telling his story of overcoming great odds in order to do what he wanted to do with his life. It's quite inspiring and brings you to tears in parts. And makes you want to jump up and life your dreams.

Lloyd Alexander: a very scholarly presentation about the life and works of this author. He sounded like a very interesting and eccentric man!

Teen Romance: a panel of some of my favorite local authors discussing what should or shouldn't be in teen romance books.

Adapting Classics to Modern Settings: for some reason, this one fell short of my expectations. Maybe because the room was about 100 degrees.

Accessing the Subconscious: a presentation on how to get your subconsciousness active in the writing (and creating in general) process.

Structuring Your Life to Make Room for Creativity: probably my favorite presentation which gave some very concrete ideas on how to fit creative pursuits into a busy life. Very practical and smart. Thanks go to Sandra Taylor for this one!

Classic SF and F You Should be Reading: the presenter passed out a list of 100 books that he came up with, which was cool, and then read the list to us, which wasn't cool. He needed to book talk his favorite ten or something!

The Second Day:

50 Years of Dr. Who: Oh my, geek out galore! But fun to be a part of it, though I have yet to watch season six and there were a few spoilers discussed. Oh, well. Anyway, these people take their Dr. Who VERY seriously!

Reviewing Novels: So, this one was interesting! While I didn't learn anything much, I had fun hearing what authors and publishers thought about the subject  I have a  blog post in mind for later this week about something that was said that made me crazy. So stay tuned. Anyway, one of the panelists was Elitist Book Reviews. Take a look. What do you think? He was an interesting guy to listen to at least!

Podcasting: I keep going to these panels because the idea of having a podcast seems so fun. I have no idea why. I think Jenny and I should do one because we could do some good arguing over books I think. Would anyone find that interesting/funny/entertaining? Ha.

(This looks like a short day, but I had to work in the morning and I had to go home to be a mom in the evening, but we came back for the mass signing later. In actuality, it was a crazy insane day.)

Mass Signing where I took some really crappy pictures as usual:

Megan Whalen Turner,
signing books for ton of people.

The mass crowd at the mass signing.
I would say about 50 authors?
Something like that.

I just found out that Kasie West is friends with my cousin.
That was a fun connection!

And my The Thief copy!
I had all four signed though. Cool.
She told me she has two more books planned. :)
And the line wasn't hard at all because I had
Shanda to talk to!

The Third Day:

Social Media: I always go to these wondering if I will learn something I don't yet know. Sandra was again on this panel and she said she thought Google + is worthwhile and wishes more people would use it. So I've looked over there again, and joined a community! We'll see I guess.

Projecting the Future: This one was okay, but there was a guy on the panel that was just too, I don't know.. weird. It was making me crazy and besides I was anxious to get to the keynote speech and make sure I had a seat! So I left early....

Keynote by Megan Whalen Turner: Wow! TONS of people! She was awesome, and down to earth and straight forward. She talked about an article that bugged her that said YA books were getting too dark and that perhaps we should put warning labels on them. She shot that to pieces and said all sorts of quotabe quotes about censorship, teaching our kids to figure it out on their own, letting them have horrible reading experiences and etc. It was great.

Writing Descriptions: Hmmm... more of the same with this one, also I was getting very very tired.

The Structure of Epic Fantasy: An awesome presentations by local favorite Tracy Hickman. Very well done. I love listening to this guy.

MG vs. YA: I couldn't figure where to go to go this hour so I just stayed put and this was the discussion, the one I've heard a gazillion times. And then once that was over, I was too tired to stay put any longer, so I went home!

Whew!

So much fun!

But I'm so bad at these things... mingling-wise. I did talk to people a bit at the mass signing, so that was fun, but for the most part, I'm just hanging on the edges and observing things. I did tweet a lot though. You may have noticed.

Anyway, I'm glad I went. I learned stuff and felt part the community and that's a good cool thing.

But WAIT!

The day wasn't over yet. There was also the Breathless Reads Tour that came to the local Barnes and Noble. I debated even going. I was so tired. And the authors involved weren't ones that I get excited very about. But Ally Condie was "guest appearing" and even though I have all her books already, I thought, what the heck. I'll go. I actually found three books in my collection that could be signed by the other authors. Who knew. So we went, and listened to them answer questions for a bit. And then the line formed, and I found myself at the back, and decided that I didn't care enough, and so we went home without talking to them or getting anything at all signed!

I felt like such a slacker blogger!

But yes, I went home and crashed.

And that was my crazy bookish weekend! I feel book-evented out! It's time to just stay HOME and READ now!