WORLD HORROR CONVENTION 2005: The Overview

I survived the World Horror Convention 2005 held in New York City. I’m exhausted. It’s my own fault really: I stayed up until 3 am Sunday night knowing that I had to get up at 4:30 am to make it to the airport to come home.

I got a lot of work done, stuff I’ll be sharing as the projects start seeing fruition. Overall, the con was fun, but a different kind of fun. Since it was held in New York City, home of the publishing industry, a lot more pros, read: editors and agents, showed up. Everyone was rushing around to do pitches or network. With the business, business, business atmosphere, the vibe was definitely more professional. We all felt the weight of it being a professional con, keeping to our lists of stuff to do and people we had to make contact with. So no one got buck wild. There was little excessive drinking. There were no random displays of nudity.

People ask me what kind of things get done at these things. I had pitch meetings with agents and editors. I had old friends I wanted to spend time with. I had new friends to make. Even if you have no books to pitch or push--if nothing else--you get a lot of “soft networking” done. There are three things you always want to be doing: Developing relationships, intentional though they may be, you develop them for the sake of the relationship, because you can never have too many friends; keeping people aware of your name; and celebrating (participating) being part of the community.

In the mean time, I will post a few other things that I observed during the convention.