Octocon this Weekend – My Last Con as Chair!
I’ve been talking about Octocon as a convention pretty much since I started writing my newsletter during the pandemic. I think I’ve been part of the team for most of the newsletter’s existence. After the weekend (well, technically after the post-mortem in a few weeks), that’ll all be over.
I have very mixed feelings about it, because I love the convention, but also I’ve had two difficult years personally (just over a year apart, I lost a dream job and my aunt… both during my tenure as Chair) so I think it’s probably the right time to take time for myself and focus on my writing.
Okay, sad part over. Here’s my schedule!
I’ve been teased over how little time I took at the Opening Ceremony last year. I don’t imagine that will change this year. It’s terrifying opening a convention. Terrifying and exciting.
I’m moderating the panel on Making Comics the Irish Way (and personally recruited an additional panellist for it while at DCAF – thank you Kat Foyle for being awesome!) and then taking part in Olympus has Risen: Modern Takes on Ancient Gods. Because, y’know, that’s been my whole deal for a while.
Saturday evening is our charity table quiz. Catherine Sharp is writing most of it. I made one round, and I’ll be hosting it. (Because Catherine can’t attend in person.)
On Sunday, I get to be (as I said on Twitter) a ‘lit crit white boy with a podcast’ for The Relationship Between the Writer and the Reader: Who Owns the Text. After a short break, I’ll be on Into the Woods: Exploring Lesser Known Fairy Tales, which is online, and then almost immediately after that I’ll be running my one-page horror writing workshop, Making a Monster.
When I finally recover from that, I’ll be at the Closing Ceremony, where we’ll draw for our charity raffle, officially close the convention, and maybe get a little bit sad and weepy.
You can access the full schedule here: https://prog.octocon.com
I’m very excited and I will probably be crying next week over it all. Or this weekend. I don’t know.
