con_or_bust

Originally published at Con or Bust by Kate Nepveu. Please comment there ( comment(s)).

Nominations for the Con or Bust Face-Off, to be held tomorrow at WisCon’s Gathering and Carl Brandon Society party, are still being taken through 11:59 p.m. Eastern tonight! Name your favorite character of color from an SFF work in the form below. The characters with the most nominations will face off against each other in a bracket challenge that takes the classic geek pastime of arguing over which fictional character would win in a fight and melds it with fantasy sports. The Face-Off also introduces people who may not have encountered your favorites to new characters of color to explore.

(LJ users, click through to the original post or go straight to the Google Docs form.)

You can also browse the current nominations, but remember that the field will be narrowed based on total number of nominations—so if you haven’t nominated yet, be sure to even if your favorite characters are already on the list!

Originally published at Con or Bust by Kate Nepveu. Please comment there ( comment(s)).

Con or Bust, which helps fans of color/non-white fans attend SFF cons, is accepting requests for assistance to attend cons in July, August, and September 2013 from now until Saturday, May 25.

These cons include Readercon (July 11-14, 2013, Burlington, MA, USA), which has donated three memberships to Con or Bust. Readercon is “devoted to “imaginative literature” — literary science fiction, fantasy, horror, and the unclassifiable works often called ‘slipstream’”; its guests of honor are Maureen F. McHugh & Patricia A. McKillip, and its memorial guest of honor is Roger Zelazny. (Your humble Con or Bust administrator is also planning to be there.)

Edit: they also include Diversicon (August 2-4, 2013, Saint Paul, MN, USA), for which a kind individual has donated a membership. “Diversicon is a serious, nerdy SF/Fantasy convention” that aims for cultural diversity, diversity of fan groups, and diversity in media. Its guest of honor is Jack McDevitt; special guests are Catherine Lundoff and Roy C. Booth; posthumous guests are Cordwainer Smith and Peter Cushing.

Here’s how to request assistance. Please spread the word!

Originally published at Con or Bust by Kate Nepveu. Please comment there ( comment(s)).

Edit May 16: characters from SFF are eligible, not just fantasy works! (“Fantasy” in the original phrasing referred to fantasy sports.) I have edited the subject line to be less ambiguous.

Posted on behalf of Lizbet, coordinator extraordinaire of Con or Bust’s fun at Wiscon:

It is time again for Wiscon, and that means it’s time for another Con or Bust Fantasy Face-Off! The Fantasy Face-Off takes the classic geek pastime of arguing over which fictional character would win in a fight and melds it with fantasy sports. Because it is sponsored by Con or Bust, all characters in the Face-Off are characters of color. Even though the final rounds of the game get played at Wiscon’s Gathering and the Carl Brandon Society party, everyone is invited to submit their nominations! Nominate as many badass characters of color as you like; the characters with the most nominations will be slotted into a bracket and the face-off will be determined by votes received at the Gathering and CBS party until only one winner remains! This game both encourages geeks to fiercely debate the merits of their favorites — always a bonus — while introducing people who may not have encountered them to new characters of color to explore.

Enter the name and fandom of the character you’d like to nominate below. (You can nominate more than one, there’ll be a link once you submit the form to start over.) If it would be helpful, add whether the fandom is a movie, book, etc.

(If you’re viewing the LJ crosspost, you’ll have to click through to the WordPress post or go straight to the Google Docs form, because LJ won’t allow this kind of embedding.)

We welcome your nominations! Nominations continue through Thursday, May 23, 11:59 p.m. Eastern time. After that, Lizbet will count up the nominations and prepare the bracket for the Friday Gathering. If you’re going to be at Wiscon, please come see us at the Gathering each hour to cast your votes and encourage your friends to do the same; the final two rounds will be held at the Carl Brandon Society party on Friday night, after which this year’s winner will be announced.

Edit: check out how your favorite characters are doing at the nomination list! (But remember, the field will be narrowed based on number of nominations, so use this for inspiration and recruiting only.)

Questions should be directed to popelizbet@gmail.com; questions left in comments may not be answered quickly as Lizbet has only phone access to the Internet for most of this week, but she will try. Thanks so much for your participation, and GAME ON!

Originally published at Con or Bust by Kate Nepveu. Please comment there ( comment(s)).

Fans of color/non-white fans, are you going to be in the mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. in May and are you interested in going to a con for free?

If so: I have available two free memberships to Balticon (May 24-27, Hunt Valley, Maryland, USA) and a whopping twenty to the Steampunk World’s Fair (May 17-19, Piscataway, New Jersey, USA). Please don’t be shy about requesting them! I hate to see free memberships go unused, and especially for the Steampunk World’s Fair, there is no reasonable possibility that you will be depriving someone else of a chance to go.

In addition, if anyone is interested in attending ConTemporal, June 28-30, 2013, Raleigh, NC, USA, a steampunk con whose guests of honor include Ursula Vernon, Thomas Willeford and Sarah Hunter, and Tom Smith, please contact me at knepveu@steelypips.org, as there is a possibility of a membership to that con as well.

Request the free memberships to Balticon and the Steampunk World’s Fair through this Google Docs form, or read more about the cons below:

• Balticon, the Maryland Regional Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention, has donated two memberships to Con or Bust. Balticon takes place from May 24-27, 2013 in Hunt Valley, Maryland. Its guests are: Joe Haldeman (Guest of Honor); Rick Sternbach (Artist Guest of Honor); Nnedi Okorafor (Special Guest); Ada Palmer (Music/Filk Guest of Honor); and Sassafrass (Featured Filkers). Balticon will have sign language interpreters at all major events and on call as needed.
• The Steampunk World’s Fair, has donated twenty (20) memberships to Con or Bust. The Steampunk World’s Fair takes place from May 17-19, 2013, in Piscataway, New Jersey. It is the world’s largest steampunk event and welcomes steampunk veterans or total curious bystanders, “no matter how you’re dressed, no matter what your background is, and no matter how much or little you’ve ever played with Steampunk!”

Please spread the word!

Originally published at Con or Bust by Kate Nepveu. Please comment there ( comment(s)).

Con or Bust, which helps fans of color/non-white fans attend SFF cons (about), will be accepting requests for assistance to attend cons beginning in July, August, or September 2013 from May 15-25, 2013.

These cons include Readercon (July 11-14, 2013, Burlington, MA, USA), which has donated three memberships to Con or Bust. Readercon is “devoted to “imaginative literature” — literary science fiction, fantasy, horror, and the unclassifiable works often called ‘slipstream’”; its guests of honor are Maureen F. McHugh & Patricia A. McKillip, and its memorial guest of honor is Roger Zelazny. (Your humble Con or Bust administrator is also planning to be there.)

Here’s how to request assistance. Please spread the word!

Originally published at Con or Bust by Kate Nepveu. Please comment there ( comment(s)).

Some news for fans of color/non-white fans interested in attending SFF Cons:

First, I still have free memberships available to Balticon (May 24-27, 2013, Hunt Valley, Maryland) and The Steampunk World’s Fair (May 17-19, 2013, Piscataway, New Jersey, USA). If you’d like to go, request one first-come first-served through this Google Docs form.

Second, requests for assistance to attend cons in July, August, and September will be taken from May 15-25, 2013. For more information on the procedure, see the request assistance page. If you are associated with a con that takes place during those months and would like to support Con or Bust by donating a membership or other support, please email me at knepveu@steelypips.org. Or you can help by simply spreading the word that assistance will be available!

(Also: I’ve closed comments on all the old auction offer posts so that you won’t have to be bothered by email notifications of spam comments. Any problems or questions about auction items, please feel free to email me.)

Originally published at Con or Bust by Kate Nepveu. Please comment there ( comment(s)).

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all your help and enthusiasm with the auction. The total pledged bids stand at $8,078.32; additional donations bring the total for the coming twelve months to about $10,000. This is a bit less than last year, but I’m pleased with it considering that the auction was at a new site and I didn’t contact as many past donors as I should have. In any event, I’m working on ideas for additional fundraising during the year and will keep you all posted. (Of course, you can support Con or Bust at any time with T-shirt purchases or simple donations!)

More than half of the items have already been paid for, which is wonderful, thank you so much. If you haven’t paid yet, please see my previous post, “The auction’s over, now what?” for instructions. (In a day or two I will start emailing winners who haven’t paid yet, but it would be a tremendous help if I didn’t have to do that, frankly, because matching up sellers and buyers for 160 auction items is already enough email to be going on with.)

Once again, thank you for your participation and interest. I hope to have some announcements soon about upcoming cool things.

Edit: and if anyone has unused memberships to WisCon, I’m looking for two to be transferred to Con or Bust. Email me at knepveu@steelypips.org.

Originally published at Con or Bust by Kate Nepveu. Please comment there ( comment(s)).

Three reminders for fans of color/non-white fans interested in attending SFF cons:

First: today, February 25, is your last day to request assistance from Con or Bust to attend cons in April, May, and June.

Second: Balticon (May 24-27, 2013, Hunt Valley, Maryland) and The Steampunk World’s Fair (May 17-19, 2013, Piscataway, New Jersey, USA) have donated free memberships to Con or Bust; request them through the above link.

Third: last-minute memberships are still available to Emerald City Comicon (March 1-3, 2013, Seattle, WA, USA) and EightSquaredCon, The 2013 Eastercon (March 29-April 1, Bradford, UK). For these memberships only, use this Google Docs form, first-come first-served.

Please spread the word!

Originally published at Con or Bust by Kate Nepveu. Please comment there ( comment(s)).

Bidding is now CLOSED on Con or Bust’s auction! (This is set to auto-publish at 12:00 a.m. on February 25.) The high bid that shows as posted on February 24 wins; if there are two bids for the same amount, the first that was posted will win. If there’s any doubt as to who the winner was (or winners were), please leave a comment and I will respond.

(Edit: a provision from prior years that I forgot to mention: a seller may, where practical and in their sole discretion, offer multiple copies of an item to higher bids that were technically late (or to losing bids, for that matter). This would be an act of extreme generosity on their part and is, again, entirely optional; don’t make me frown disapprovingly at anyone over the Internet.)

If you’ve won, congratulations and thank you! You can pay with either a credit card or a PayPal account by clicking on this button:

On the “review your donation” screen, please click “Add special instructions to the seller,” indicate that this is payment for an auction item or items, and specify which. (It’s fine to lump things together.) When I receive notification of your payment, I will email your seller and tell them you’ve paid, with a cc to you.

Important: if your item needs to be shipped and you do NOT want the seller to use the address that PayPal has for you, please say so! Otherwise I will simply forward the address in the PayPal email to the seller.

(Edit: in response to a question: if your PayPal email address is different from the one you used to comment, it would make my life easier if you’d also include that in the “special instructions”; if you run out of room, just tell me you’re going to email me with the details.)

If you don’t quite remember what you bid on, you can use the search field over in the sidebar to search the comments for your name, which will return all the posts you commented on. If that doesn’t work, you can leave a comment here, using the same email address that you bid with, and I will email you once I’ve got my spreadsheet sorted out.

Eventually I will be closing comments on the old posts to deter spammers and avoid confusion in future auctions, but you can always leave comments here or email knepveu@steelypips.org with questions or problems.

Thank you all again!

Originally published at Con or Bust by Kate Nepveu. Please comment there ( comment(s)).

There’s less than thirty-six hours to go in Con or Bust’s annual auction to help fans of color/non-white fans attend SFF cons (more about Con or Bust). Bidding ends Sunday, February 24th, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern (GMT -5).

Here are just some of the cool things that are still bargains (a.k.a., how many things I can type up before this toddler sleeping on my left arm wakes up)! You can always check the Google Docs index to see everything quickly, show only things with a low number of bids, sort by price, etc. Do check the “up-to-date as of” in the top corner, please, as I manually update it.

Books:

• Signed Jonathan Lethem first editions (currently no bids).
• ARCs of The Lost by Vicki Pettersson–read it early and potentially at a bargain price! (Five available, currently only one $10 bid).
• The Hollows Insider by Kim Harrison–signed, in hardcover, and also potentially a bargain! (Four available, curently only one $10 bid).
• ARC of Handbook for Dragon Slayers by Merrie Haskell, plus The Princess Curse–plus an actual parchment bookmark (or vegan alternative).
• A box of nine Small Beer Press books.

Other:

• All the critiques are being offered by incredibly qualified individuals and have very few bids–excellent value there.
• Assorted BPAL bottles, eight of them, to be specific, some of which are limited editions.
• Jo Walton novel covers run through the Pulp-O-Mizer and put on mugs or posters! Not available anywhere else.
• It’s a Galaxy Quest Vox Communicator & Ion Nebulizer, new in its box!
• Custom printed cards, leaflets, or invitations, up to 500 of them, on an actual hand-fed letterpress–how cool is that?
• Two vintage fountain pens, bargains at the current price.
• Amazing Farscape memorabilia, direct from one of the producers.
• Not a lot of jewelry this year, but all of it is beautiful and still excellent value.
• Ditto the food–save me from doing something unwise like bidding on truffles I shouldn’t be eating!
• Stunningly gorgeous, custom-made, handspun, handwoven scarf.
• The Wood-Gnome Book, a handmade blank book by Rosemary Kirstein, inspired by her Steerswoman series; includes a copy of the British edition of The Steerswoman.

There’s more, but unfortunately this toddler is waking up. Post your own favorite overlooked items in the comments, or on Twitter/Tumblr/Facebook, and tell people to come bid!