I have arrived and am rooming with ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sartorias, coraa, and rhinemouse. Vail is at 8100 feet, and is covered with brilliant yellow aspens and evergreens. The aspen leaves are jointed at the stem, so they quiver individually in the wind, like suspended confetti.
The majority of the attendees arrive today, so the convention doesn't really get started till tomorrow. But those of us who showed up early had a nice dinner (my favorite part was the superb berry-apple crumble) and got our programs and an adorable T-shirt with a fairy and a reading girl. Last year was a reading girl and a woman warrior, and next year will be a reading girl and Medusa - the themes being, respectively, fairies, warriors, and monsters.
I got to briefly say hello to Terri Windling, and had a lovely long chat with Delia Sherman, whom I hadn't seen in at least ten years. At dinner, Ellen Kushner said something which intrigued me: we had been asked what books changed our lives (many cited Harry Potter) and Ellen mentioned that she had found, while looking at her own work and sometimes that of others, that sometimes the first books we read over and over and over again - the very first books after we graduated from picture books - crept into our prose style forevermore. (Not the subject matter or themes necessarily, more the rhythms of the sentences themselves.)
I am now trying to figure out who might have left his or her fingerprints on my six-year-old soul and thence my current work. Possibly Kipling's Just So Stories, with their strong rhythms and repetition. "But I am still the Cat Who Walks By Himself, and all places are alike to me."
sartorias, coraa, and rhinemouse. Vail is at 8100 feet, and is covered with brilliant yellow aspens and evergreens. The aspen leaves are jointed at the stem, so they quiver individually in the wind, like suspended confetti.The majority of the attendees arrive today, so the convention doesn't really get started till tomorrow. But those of us who showed up early had a nice dinner (my favorite part was the superb berry-apple crumble) and got our programs and an adorable T-shirt with a fairy and a reading girl. Last year was a reading girl and a woman warrior, and next year will be a reading girl and Medusa - the themes being, respectively, fairies, warriors, and monsters.
I got to briefly say hello to Terri Windling, and had a lovely long chat with Delia Sherman, whom I hadn't seen in at least ten years. At dinner, Ellen Kushner said something which intrigued me: we had been asked what books changed our lives (many cited Harry Potter) and Ellen mentioned that she had found, while looking at her own work and sometimes that of others, that sometimes the first books we read over and over and over again - the very first books after we graduated from picture books - crept into our prose style forevermore. (Not the subject matter or themes necessarily, more the rhythms of the sentences themselves.)
I am now trying to figure out who might have left his or her fingerprints on my six-year-old soul and thence my current work. Possibly Kipling's Just So Stories, with their strong rhythms and repetition. "But I am still the Cat Who Walks By Himself, and all places are alike to me."
Tags: