Sunday, July 24, 2011

Confluence 2011


This weekend was my first time at Confluence, a small-but-mighty SFF convention held in Pittsburgh, PA, but I've vowed to return next year and for the foreseeable future. The answer why is simple: Confluence has a powerful sense of community. At most conventions, the organizers are nebulous figures scarcely glimpsed in the background as they hurry from place to place. At Confluence I ran into the Kevin Hayes and Karen Yun-Lutz several times, and they both made time to just shoot the breeze with me.

The authors invited are very approachable. This year's Guest of Honor was the uber-SF writer Robert J. Sawyer, who was as personable and friendly as he is accomplished (and that's saying something).

I did three panels, a book signing, and a reading, and I think I made a good showing at them all. Still not used to reading out loud in public, but I'm slowly getting more comofortable.

If you live anywhere close to PA, I suggest living Confluence a look next year.

5 comments:

Heidi Ruby Miller said...

It was great catching up with you, Jon!

Here's a link to some photos Mike Arnzen took at Confluence:

http://michaelarnzen.com


See you at Pennwriters in the spring.

:) Heidi

Mike Arnzen said...

It was great meeting you, Jon. I concur with all you say here about the community -- Kevin & Karen were awesome.

Thanks for coming to the 'Many Genres' talk and for the feedback on my poetry. All the best with your books! -- Mike Arnzen, http://gorelets.com

Jon Sprunk said...

Heidi, great to see you, as always.

Mike, nice to meet you. I'm sure we'll bump into each otgher again.

Richard Errington said...

It was a pleasure meeting you at the convention Jon! I'll look forward to talking to you in the future.

Jon Sprunk said...

You, too, Richard. I passed your website info to my agent.

If you want to trade email, you can contact me via messages@jonsprunk.com.