Thoughts on ConFusion 2023

John Winkelman

My badge and ribbons from ConFusion 2023

Last weekend I attended ConFusion 2023 with my partner Zyra, from Thursday morning through Sunday afternoon. This was my ninth ConFusion, and Zyra’s second. Her first experience was last year, still in the middle of the pandemic. 2022 was not, through no fault of their own, the best year in ConFusion’s history by a long shot. Fortunately 2023 was much improved, and though still small by the standards of many of the previous years, it was a lot of fun and felt like the ConFusions of old.

This year I volunteered as part of the Operations team and as a general dogsbody, taking care of those things which needed taking care of and lifting heavy things, as well as sitting at the Ops table in the early morning hours of Saturday and Sunday. I am used to waking up at 5:00 to feed the cats, work out, and write, so waking up at 5:00 to sit at a table in a mostly-empty hallway was not difficult, except when it came to staying awake.

I participated on two panels this year, “What do Trends in Artificial Intelligence Generated Art and Writing Mean for Artists and Authors?” on  Saturday with Jason Sanford, Rick Lieder, and Bill Higgins, and “Creativity in the Age of AI” on Sunday with Jason Sanford, Rick Lieder, and John Scalzi. I moderated the first, and Jason moderated the second. I had a great time on these panels, and will be posting about the content therein over the next couple of weeks.

The best part of conferences, of course, is the people. I spent most of my non-panel, non-Ops time hanging out in the bar area, talking to many wonderful people, and this experience filled my heart to near-bursting! Over the course of the long weekend, I spent time talking to, among others, Dave Palmer, Kathe Koja, Jason Sanford, Patrick Tomlinson, Maurice Broaddus, Rick Lieder, Jordan Klepper, ZigZag Claybourne, Saladin Ahmad, Catherine Stein, Rami Ungar, and Storm Michael Humbert. Many of these people I already knew, and the rest I met for the first time this past weekend. In both cases, my life was enriched by their presence.

I also spent a lot of time hanging out with the members of the ConFusion ConCom, talking about the history of ConFusion, the day-to-day tasks, the unexpected issues when working with hotels and bars, and the scores of other details which must be dealt with as they arise. These were fascinating discussions and only increased my respect for the volunteers who run fan conventions of all sorts.

So what’s next? At the moment I plan to be more involved with the next ConFusion in January 2024. That means that, after a few weeks off for rest and recovery, I will be sitting in on meetings with the ConCom and figuring out where I may be of the most assistance. And I am very much looking forward to this experience. ConFusion is one of my favorite events of the year, and I am happy – nay, eager – to contribute to its continued success in any way I can.

And before I forget, I treated myself to a new fountain pen, courtesy of Brad, the Pen Guy. It is beautiful to see, and a joy to write with.

The Books of ConFusion 2023

John Winkelman

Books signed at ConFusion 2023

The above is the collection of books which I was fortunate enough to have signed by their respective authors at ConFusion 2023.

First up are Zoe’s Tale, The End of All Things, and The Last Colony by John Scalzi. I picked these books up over the past several years, and finally brought them with me to ConFusion to be signed.

I picked up The Pure World Comes by Rami Ungar when a dapper gentleman in a top hat asked me “Do you like horror?” as I was browsing the tables in Artist’s Alley during some down time. Rami and I talked for a hot minute about self publishing and horror, and I walked away with a new book.

Dark Factory and Velocities by Kathe Koja, I picked up back in December, expressly to get them signed during the convention.

On Saturday afternoon, and I stopped in to Catherine Stein‘s “Author Meet and Greet” event, and ended up purchasing Eden’s Voice and The Courtesan and Mr. Hyde, which are period romances in the steampunk and gas-lamp fantasy genres. I generally don’t read romance novels, but I love the myriad *punk subgenres so this might be an inroad into a genre in which I am woefully uninformed. And we discovered that we have a friend in common, in West Michigan author Jean Davis, who Catherine knows through the self-publishing and local/regional book event scenes.

On the bottom right is The Librarian, an anthology published by Air and Nothingness Press, which was funded through a 2022 Kickstarter campaign. One of the authors, Storm Michael Humbert, was in one of the author meet-and-greets, with a table of anthologies in which he has stories.

All in all, ConFusion 2023 was an excellent venue for picking up new books, and I am proud that I kept it to only four books purchased throughout the long weekend, as I have a shelf full of books which have been signed at ConFusions past, which I have not yet read. New books shall be my reward for reading old books.

One of these years it will be me sitting at a table behind a pile of books on which are printed the words “By John Winkelman.”

IWSG, January 2023: The Word of the Year

John Winkelman

Poe (left) and Pepper eyeballing each other

The week before Christmas I was struck down by the flu. I worked from home for that week, and just when I started to feel better the Great Christmas Blizzard of 2022 covered West Michigan with a ridiculous amount of snow. Throughout these two weeks of isolation, Poe and Pepper (pictured above) were a wonderful source of amusement and affection for Zyra and I.

The Insecure Writer’s Support Group question for January 2023 is:

Do you have a word of the year? Is there one word that sums up what you need to work on or change in the coming year?

For this year, I think my word will be Attentiveness. That point where attention meets engagement. I had little enough of either over the past (checks notes) five years, since I went on hiatus from Caffeinated Press at the beginning of 2018. The last three years have been a fugue of reacting to or recovering from outside world events. Now that we are through the holidays and already the daylight hours are growing noticeably longer, I feel a renewed energy.

Attentiveness, to me, means not just noticing the parts of my life which need attention, but then doing something about it. Whether it be my relationship with my partner, my health, the martial arts class, my family, my writing, our house, or anything else in my life, I think I am ready to re-enter the world and take care of the things which need taking care of.

 

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Happy New Year, etc.

John Winkelman

New arrivals in the week of December 25, 2022

Welcome to 2023! 2022 was overall a good year, but also exhausting, and so I am kind of happy to see it in the rearview mirror.

Two book arrived here at the house in the last week of the year. On the left is the January 2023 issue of Poetry, which  came as something of a surprise, as I thought my subscription ended with the previous issue. I guess I was mistaken.

On the right is Apex Magazine 2021, the printed collection of the stories which appeared in the electronic editions of Apex Magazine, from their successful Kickstarter. This book has the honor of being the last book to enter the Library at Winkelman Abbey in 2022, in that it arrived in the afternoon of December 31. Excellent timing!

In reading news, I made some progress through the first issue of the new incarnation of Dreamforge, but my brain is so fried from *gestures at everything* that I couldn’t motivate myself to do much more than watch The Blacklist and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and play Stardew Valley.

In writing news, there is no writing news.

Starting in the new year, I will combine the “books I acquired” weekly posts with the “stuff I read” monthly posts, so now everything will be monthly. I plan to still do weekly (-ish) posts, but they will be both general and topical, and no longer exclusively about book stuff.

Happy New Year, everyone!

December 2022 Reading List

John Winkelman

What I Read in December 2022

This was another great month for reading, though the list is short. But such is necessarily the case for Dostoevsky December.

And this rounds out the list for the year. 120 books or journals, and 252 pieces of short prose. Not bad at all.

Books and Journals

  1. Fyodor Dostoevsky (Larissa Volokhonsky and Richard Pevear, translators), Crime and Punishment [2022.12.18]
  2. Poetry #221.3 [2022.12.19]
  3. The Paris Review #242 [2022.12.21]

Short Prose

  1. Avigayl Sharp, “Uncontrollable, Irrelevant”, The Paris Review #242 [2022.12.19]
  2. Addie E. Citchens, “A Good Samaritan”, The Paris Review #242 [2022.12.19]
  3. Mieko Kanai (Polly Barton, translator), “Tap Water”, The Paris Review #242 [2022.12.20]
  4. Sophie Madeline Dess, “Zalmanovs”, The Paris Review #242 [2022.12.21]
  5. Tom Drury, “Where Does This Live?”, The Paris Review #242 [2022.12.21]
  6. Isabella Hammad, “Gertrude”, The Paris Review #242 [2022.12.21]
  7. Lauren C. Teffeau, “Sing! & Remember”, Dreamforge #1 [2022.12.24]
  8. Jane Lindskold, “Born From Memory”, Dreamforge #1 [2022.12.24]
  9. Jean Martin, “I Am Not As Young As I Was”, Dreamforge #1 [2022.12.29]
  10. Paul Dellinger, “Con Man”, Dreamforge #1 [2022.12.29]
  11. Chris Sumberg, “Anthropomorphile”, Dreamforge #1 [2022.12.29]
  12. Scot Noel, “Walker in Leaves”, Dreamforge #1 [2022.12.29]
  13. Dr. Eric Leif Davin, “The Prophetic Vision of Stephen Vincent Benet”, Dreamforge #1 [2022.12.30]
  14. Tom Sheehan, “The Old Man Who Hid Music”, Dreamforge #1 [2022.12.30]

2022 In Review

John Winkelman

Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here to lay 2022 to rest. It was a decent year, as years go. Certainly it was better than 2020 and 2021. Here is a brief rundown of how the year went.

Life

This past November Zyra and I celebrated five years together, of which more than half has been during the COVID pandemic (which is still ongoing, by the way). This has been a big change for both of us but we are settling into the routine of it, which gives us the stability to start planning for the longer term. And we are both still very, very happy.

Last week included two important anniversaries – three years since we brought Poe into our house, and two since the arrival of her cousin/niece Pepper. They are nonstop sources of comfort, entertainment and joy, and now that we have them, I can’t imagine our household without our two little ginger maniacs.

But 2022 was also a rough year for the people in my life. During the past year I said a final farewell to Zort, Steve, Jessica, Neil, Bob, Sam, Ryan, De, and my cousin Teresa. Some of these folks were dear friends, others I had not seen or spoken to in decades. But even when pass the people we have relegated to the past, they are still part of our lives, and over time the loss of those small parts adds up. 2022 was not as terrible in this regard as was 2021, only because I lost no immediate family members, but I have resigned myself to being in the part of my life when my contemporaries begin to die of the things I once believed only took old people.

Martial Arts

The biggest news of the year was that, after 36 months of virtual classes, practicing at Wilcox Park, and crowding into the studio at From the Heart Yoga, Master Lee’s School of Tai Chi Praying Mantis Kung Fu and Tai Chi Jeung is back at the West Michigan YWCA in downtown Grand Rapids. Almost all of our students have returned (At least, the ones who did not move away), and we are making up for two and a half years of being unable to practice to the extent that we did pre-pandemic. We are back into our routine again, and me and the other instructors are figuring out what the next few years will look like.

Reading

2022 was a stellar year for reading. I made it through just over 120 books and literary journals, and over 250 pieces of short prose. I have not read at this pace in a very long time. Probably not since my first couple of years working at the bookstore. The combination of lockdown, a steady and predictable project, and a re-assertion of my daily morning routine made this possible. I don’t expect to keep up this pace in 2023, as I need some of that time for writing.

Writing

I didn’t accomplish much writing this year until NaNoWriMo in November, when I completed about 75% of a story which has been bouncing around in my head since November of 2021. As of this week i am still plugging away at the last few chapters, in the slight hope that I will have the first draft done by the time I head to ConFusion 2023.

Work

My job didn’t change much over the past year. For most of that time I was on a project which started in April of 2021, so it was steady and mostly predictable, and I picked up some significant new skills. And a brief, week-long project at the end of December gave me an overview of a new platform in which I will be working for almost all of 2023, so again, more predictable work. I got some very nice bonuses and a good raise which means I can now afford to do the work on my house and property which has been nagging at me for about the past decade.

Looking Forward

Immediate appearances aside, we are still in the middle of a pandemic, so outside of any black swan events I don’t see 2023 being radically different from 2022. Which means next year will probably be wild.

 

Merry Christmas, and All That

John Winkelman

New books for the week of December 18, 2022

I am typing this on my new Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 3 Chromebook, which I purchased to replace my aging ASUS Chromebook, which was good while it was good, but now is old enough that Google stopped pushing updates, and every month it was noticeably slower. Like with any new technology upgrade, it is fun and exciting for the moment, but at the end of the day it is a Chromebook, and I will use it mostly for writing, either creative work or blog posts like this one.

I picked up a couple of new books, VeloCities: Stories, and Dark Factory, both by Kathe Koja, who will be the Creative Guest of Honor at ConFusion 2023 in a few weeks.

In reading news, with Crime and Punishment completed I next finished the remaining volumes from my now-cancelled subscriptions to Poetry Magazine and The Paris Review. Now I am meandering my way through my backlog of issues of Pulphouse and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.

Not much to report on the writing front. My brain is mush from end-of-year burnout and also from a case of The Crud, which hit me a little over a week ago. I just bought a new fountain pen from Dryden Designs, with a fine nib. So far, I like it. We will see how the writing goes throughout the next few days.

The Last Week of Autumn

John Winkelman

Pepper giving Poe a bath.

The last week of Autumn has brought with it a case of the creeping crud, which fortunately is not COVID, but is also not much fun. I don’t feel overly terrible; just exhaustion, some sinus issues, and a scratchy throat. So of the many viruses colonizing the population right now, I have one of them.

No new books arrived this week, so here is a photo of some domestic tranquility.

After three weeks of intense concentration, I have finished Crime and Punishment, which I really should have read about 30 years ago. Better late than never, I suppose.

And in writing news, there is nothing to report. My brain is sprained.

Bottom of the Top #50

John Winkelman

Welcome to the last “Bottom of the Top” post. It was a fun run, but nostalgia mining can quickly become pathological, and I felt it was best to stop before that point was reached.

Here in the middle of December in each of these years I would have been anticipating or dreading the upcoming holidays, sometimes both in equal measure.

1977: Dan Hill, “Sometimes When We Touch”

Approaching Christmas at the end of the second marking period of third grade in Parma. Living in an apartment and probably anticipating spending some of the holidays with Dad, playing with the electric train set which would keep our attention for another couple of years, and looking forward to a new Micronaut or two. This song would have hit me right in the feels even back then, at eight years old. And possibly singing along with it when in a car going to a family event, which were usually fun as I was too young at the time to notice all of the toxicity.

1982: Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, “Shame on the Moon”

I do not believe I have heard this one before. It’s much more, er, quiet, than most of Seger’s more well-known songs, but good for all that.

1987: Men Without Hats, “Pop Goes the World”

I may have heard this one before. It’s fun and the video is most excellent, and is quite a different sound than “Safety Dance”, which is refreshing.

1992: Jon Secada, “Just Another Day”

I must have heard this song at least once a week throughout 1992 and 1993. Or maybe songs which sounded a lot like it. In any event this was what most of the second half of my college experience sounded like.

1997: Shawn Colvin, “Sunny Came Home”

Yeah, I heard this one a lot while I was working at the bookstore. Both in-store, and on the radio driving to and from work, practice, visiting the family, etc. It’s really good and wow, can Colvin sing!

The Year is Winding Down

John Winkelman

New books for the week of December 4, 2022

As we reach the midpoint of December I feel, for the 22nd year in a row, a profound sense of relief that I no longer work in retail. When the owners of a store yowl, from their expensive house in an expensive neighborhood, that the workers making barely more than minimum wage need to work both smarter AND harder, I begin to understand why the plans for home-made guillotines are proliferating across the internet.

Anyway.

Two new journal arrived at the house this week. On the left is the latest issue of The Boston Review. On the right is the latest issue of The Paris Review. Both are the last issues I will see of these publications, as I have let both subscriptions lapse. Despite my earlier misgivings I am sticking to my guns, and from now on will only purchase books intentionally, rather than subscribing to a dozen periodicals and catalogs and letting the arrivals sit unread for years at a time.

It’s also cheaper that way, which is always a concern.

In reading news, I am well over halfway through Crime and Punishment, and still expect to complete it before Christmas.

In writing news, other than journaling, I haven’t written anything since the end of November. Too many things going on all at once.

I think I am about due for another Great Simplification, the first since January of 2013. Ten years is probably slightly too long to go between Simplifications, but for the past several years I have been both happy and content, and haven’t felt the need to change things significantly. I am still happy and content, but entropy is making itself felt in several areas of my life, and in order to focus on those areas I need to let some other things in my life recede into the background.

So it goes, as always.