LTUE The first two days

A good rule to know about conventions is that they take a lot of energy out of you. It isn’t noticed until you decide to relax. A friend compared it to going into the red zone in Baghdad, your adrenaline and hyper vigilance is doing great, but as soon as you walk onto the green zone your mind sort of drops. You have struggles staying awake, and feel dizzy.

I did two conventions, with a week to separate them. While home, I spent a lot of time trying to recover my mind. In fact, this retelling of the events is a bit late because of it. Even scarier, I was working on the idea of using my next paycheck to help with the conventions. So I would go in with what I had, and then hope my paycheck was enough to help me get back.

Life the Universe and Everything, or LTUE for short, is a sci-fi and fantasy convention for Mormon writers. It was started at BYU Provo to help English majors find a way into the industry. More and more people attended so that it now covers a small convention area in a motel, plus some rooms in the convention center.

The entire convention for me was a way to figure out how to sell myself. I have a lot of projects, and I am making zero dollars from them. The perks are nice, but come with work. Not only that, I am getting tired of paying for everything from a job that does about 20 hours a week if I am lucky. So, I needed a way to sell my work, and thus pay rent and for trips using the work I was doing already.

My friend Max told me about the convention in October, so it had been planned on for several months. I should have bought tickets early, but had created a money buffer for the trip just in case. Good thing too, the tickets cost $55, as opposed to $25 early bird.

I don’t live in Provo, so I had to take the long trip from Spokane, through a mountain range, around Montana, back into Idaho, and into Utah. The views were nice, but kind of boring. While in Butte, I noticed a sign of the future at the gas station.

It’s a bigger gas station with multiple restaurants and even a small casino. My parents discovered it by nearly running out of gas. This stop is the second one after Missoula. But the idea that debit and credit are now the de facto currency at a Montana truck stop really tells you something.

I was trying to beat the sunset through a particular bad spot. After dark it freezes over, and turns into a ice rink. Every few miles judges give you scores based on your turns. Also, the drivers in that area drive in erratic and scary ways, so daylight was precious to me.

It was evening when I got past Idaho Falls, and decided to pick up gas. My car basically has a two hour gas/time limit on freeways, so I stopped a lot more than the van I used to drive. I stopped in Missoula, Butte, IF, and I think I kept going to Provo after that.

The big discovery was that my car would quit cruise control on some steep hills. It would slow down, and then quit. I could keep driving it, but had to beware the sudden loss cruising until I got over the hill. There are a lot of hills like that in this drive. I went from 2,000 feet to 5,000 feet and several up and down steps in between.

Honestly, I got bored, and discovered some of the songs on my playlist made it worse. I love Johnny Cash’s Hurt, but it does not mix well with a boring drive. I kept going, and enjoying my trip, but have to admit there wasn’t anything to see past IF. It was dark, and all I could see was reflectors.

When I arrived in Provo, the first thing I did was buy some food. It had been a long trip, and I was sort of hungry. The first big thing I noticed was how much cheaper gas was. In Washington it is nearly $3, while in Utah it was just a little above $2. Not only that, milk and other items were cheaper. I bought shampoo and body soap for the trip, because I didn’t know the state of the bachelor house I would be staying in.

There was a brief visit to see my sister, and then I went off to find Max’s place. My phone didn’t quite give me the right directions, so it took a couple tries to get there. Eventually though, I was sitting down, and chatting with him.

My new bed was a beanbag. They are weird to fall asleep on, but wonderful once you are. The biggest problem is my feet stuck way out and into the living room. People arriving late at night were stymied by the legs, and spent some time trying to not wake me up as they stepped over. As you can guess, I was already awake at the time, but they didn’t realize it.

I dreamed that people kept getting more and more geekier. We had papercrafts, and made clothes. This caused a papercraft clothes ball, and we all went in dressed as various characters we loved. I have to say, the medieval klingon armor was the coolest.

It was cold, but not that cold outside. Where my house still had snow all over, the only snow I saw was up in the nearby mountains of Provo. I walked into the motel lobby area, and found a place to get in line for tickets. The person ahead of me seemed nice, and I ended up talking to her. It turns out she was from Hawaii. It turns out she was from my part of Hawaii. We talked and tried to recognize each other.

While walking to my first panel, I realized she was the one who though Scotland and Fiji are the same island. It makes sense when you realize people in the Pacific are only told about Pacific ocean stuff. The Atlantic is only talked about in theory.

The first panel was about propaganda and how it worked. My friend Mari led it with Chem as the speaker. They were expecting more speakers, so it was a light speaker visit. Although it was a small panel, I enjoyed it. There were problems, but that’s to be expected.

We are filled with propaganda these days. I am writing books on the matter, and I don’t think I will scratch the surface on how weird it gets. A small panel on how to understand propaganda would in fact have people who didn’t realize how much of what they believed was that same thing. It gets weird, and then even weirder.

This led to a conversation about what is real after the panel. I enjoyed it. I think it annoyed the panelist slightly.

The basic conversation and panel was about how propaganda creates cultural markers, and then says you aren’t within the culture unless you have them. Because of this, every Navajo I know has the movie Windtalkers, but doesn’t watch it. The Navajos were speaking in a coded form of their own language, so it makes no sense when you watch the movie. Still though, we have to recognize the markers, and show that we have them to be part of the inside group.

There were two panel areas. The first was the Parks area, and they were quite big, with a lot of big name writers. Larry Correia appeared in these panels. The smaller areas were about trees. So you had maple, and pine. The propaganda panel was in a much smaller room marked maple. However, there were nice sofa things, and power areas to charge a phone.

After the panel, I went out to eat. That doesn’t sound like a major thing, but it was the only meal I would eat that day. I chose out a sandwich shop. Everyone was dressed in flanel, and there were funny things all over the walls. It felt like Seattle, only without the sarcasm. The sandwich was pretty good as well.

My phone was dying, so I decided to charge it at the hallway near the first panel. It was upstairs a bit, and in a nice quiet spot. While I was charging my phone, I discovered I was next to the panelist green room, and the interview area for various publishing houses.

I chatted with some of the editors, and enjoyed my time. One of the panelists had his daughter with him, and she was dressed as a Starfleet Captain. Imagine a one year old with TNG pips. It was very cute.

Many of the panelists, and even editors and writers pointed out I was in the perfect spot to promote my book. I didn’t know how to do this, so I just chatted. It turns out one of the editors is from Beaverton. So we made Portland jokes.

I met a woman who told me about her Dungeons and Dragons group. I am not a fan of these kinds of board games, but I can fully understand why my friends enjoy them. What she had was something I would actually get into. She had 30 + players in an open world type scenario, and included LARP at random times. So if someone was a bard, instead of rolling a dice, they had to sing a song, and everyone would judge it. I was really impressed by this, and decided to go check out her panel in the gaming area.

The motel had all of the panels, and conference except the gaming area. It is across the street, and at the Provo Convention Center. The PCC, -not to be confused with Portland Community College or Polynesian Cultural Center- was hitting a hard time. There had been some weird politics, and the city of Provo has no real control over, nor makes money from the PCC. It is a district or county run item. Because of this, the parking lot that was used for the convention center was being turned into another building by Provo.

It actually offends me slights, because I thought the PCC seemed like a great place. If you know Convention Centers, this one was smaller but went up about 3 stories. I thought about having a gaming convention in Provo because of all the geek culture around it, and the PCC seemed like the perfect spot. With the politics, it meant the possibility was not doing well.

The gaming panel was on the third floor, with an amazing view of the mountains, and the construction site. I had time before the panel, so I sat down at the VR area to try it out. There was a line for the single head set, which meant chatting with folks. It turned out the guy before me was a photographer just like me. So we chatted about it, and I showed what I had done.

The display was a walk around the room type of game. So a big empty room with a head set, and chairs along the walls. I thought it was weird for the chairs. They had a rock back feature, and the walls were made of glass. Just imagine the clunk feeling, and you cringe.

My new friend tried an art program. He drew around a sculpture and added and took away as quickly as he could. He was really good at it.

I decided to try out the one Goro Fujita uses to make great art. It was a great program that I was absolutely awful at. The first thing the guy displaying it did for me was to check out someone else’s work. I think that was the most fascinating. I was walking in art. Every turn of my head showed more around me. If I moved, there was art behind the other art. It was simply amazing to see, and experience.

About that time my headset fell off my hair. I had long wavy hair that felt silky and smooth. It’s terrible in the morning, but looks great when properly formed. It also means the headset had no real grip on my head. If I tilted my head one way, the strap went loose.

I drew, but I didn’t make anything amazing. It was a cool thing to see how my art formed in 3D, and I could walk around it. This type of art needs teachers, and new ideas for how to do it. My biggest problem was filling in things and then placing other parts properly.

As I was doing this Larry Correia walked in and chatted with folks. The display guy asked who he was, since he had a panelist badge, but Larry declined to say. I felt like saying something, but was dealing with a slipping headset, and my inabilities with 3D art.

The games panel area was small, and lacking. Keep in mind, I work at conventions where gaming is a major part of the show. I honestly felt the lack of videogames in the area. No arcades blaring. Just a boardgame room and some tables. The VR room and panel room were pretty spartan as well.

As for the panel, it was sadly not interesting. I honestly want to find that woman and see if I can get more details from her. That was an awesome idea, and I do something like that with my cub scouts. I set a theme, and then tell them they have to do things to achieve their desires. By coincidence, it fulfills the needs for badges.

After the walk back to the hotel, I went into another panel. It was about Urban Fantasy and Horror.  The first thing I noticed was how business like the women were all dressed. Even the women in the crowd were dressed up, and made sure to be businesslike. The men had a slovenly look, and many had beards. I don’t think I saw a single woman with a beard. It made me realize the two were trying to promote themselves differently. The slovenly look was purposeful, as was the business look.

Also, the videogame writer had a Dr. Pepper and loved talking comics. She is also married.

The actual panel was about characters. The big premise was to make a character not dumb. If you want the story to go in a direction, and it would mean a stupid decision, don’t do it. It doesn’t matter how the character feels, the person reading the story wants to feel smart. It was fun, and a lot more full than the previous panels.

They discussed how to sell your book. The big push was for Hooks at the beginning to grab people’s attention. Something cool happens in the first page, and the people reading it want to know more. Make a one line hook for your book, and try to sell it to others that way. If the hook isn’t good, a reader may have a better line.

You should sell to both the reader, and the guardian. If the parent or grandparent likes the story, they will buy the book for their child. If the child or kid likes it, they will ask for more. So it should grab both, but not for the same reasons. For example, Gravity Falls has a ton of comments and humor that a child won’t get. A parent would love the show because of that. The kid on the other hand will enjoy the funny story and animated characters.

A hook can be as simple as Such and Such meets Da Da Da. You can’t be too vague or big, like Star Wars meets Harry Potter. That is just Star Wars. However, Godzilla meets Spiderman created a franchise in Japan. That same show got re-edited so it was Saved by the Bell meets Voltron. The big statement was that there were 600,000 authors in 2016 on kindle. To stand out from that crowd, you needed a good hook and quality story.

I worked on my own hooks after that.

• Lawyer of the gods.
• Viking goes to time traveler school
• What happens to humanity after the Matrix when the robots have left.
• Steampunk engineer works with elf to battle monsters.
• What if Romans had arcade games?

The next panel was by my friend Mari but it honestly had my interest anyway. They were talking about screenwriting and comics writing. I had a ton of questions. The best part of the entire thing, was how they answered every single one of them without me asking.

Dark Horse has a design guide for comics writers. They also included what details are a good idea to have in the descriptions. Comics are a big thing for Hollywood because the entire movie is storyboarded out already. This means a cheaper preproduction and planning.

The best idea is to start indie, and go from there. Once you have proven yourself, the big guys will want to talk to you. And then they gave the biggest most solid gold advice I ever heard, new good artists are cheap. I nearly cried at that statement. I had some ideas for stories, but never got into them because I was worried about cost. But the price was actually something I could afford. I realized my ticket in, and how to try it out. My Roman Arcades book had some parts I couldn’t draw, but if an artist only charged $10-$20, I had that money ready.

At that very moment, I realized I knew how to get into the industry. My entire trip was worth it right there.

I was on cloud nine when I walked into the next panel. It was on medieval warfare. The people there were mostly masters at the least in their studies, and knew a ton on the subject. One of them studied medieval metallurgy. Another was a professor of Technological history, and then others with various degrees on the subject as well.

Bronze was harder, but easier to forge and less likely to break from iron. Then they discovered carbon -like blood or charcoal- could harden the iron did the iron age begin. Whole forests were destroyed as the making of Iron came along. They had to be careful with impurities of the swords because a bit of dross could shatter the sword in half. Samurai swords had a thousand folds to make the irregularities very small.

By a thousand folds, they did not bend it a thousand times. Instead, they folded it about ten  times in half, which compounded to the giant number.

Each sword was based on the type of battle and armor being used. A rapier was useless to earlier armor, but great for the armor and style of its time. Usually though, they used poles, and horses to stop the masses, and then hack them to pieces in close quarters. The average soldier was not armored. Instead, it was the nobility. However, the armor was heavy, and could knock a knight down easily. If they fell into a lake, or small stream, they would drown.

Near the end we were told about sources like Wiktenauer.com which is a medieval war resource website. They have tons of information on the types of weapons from a given era, and how they were used. Even drawings to help understand things.

Then for more hands on there was true edge academy which taught and practiced the various styles. They have a chapter in Spokane, so suddenly I have a hobby or something to check out.

After that I drove Max back to his place and chatted with one of this roommates. During this time, I described what it was like to go to the Hugo awards. I got a lot of sympathy when I told editors about it. But for the roommate, it was the first time someone had explained what had been happening that he could understand. After a while he pointed out how late it was.

I explained to him that my mind is trained for suddenly needing to be awake and talking. My sister would get sick, and wake me up at night. So I would sit up, and chat until she got tired. I could talk to anyone for hours if needed. Some of my friends will point out this is a problem, since I can be pretty engaging.

After a few yawns, I went to bed, and slept.