A Funny Thing Happened at the Centralia Fantasy Festival

So, as you might have read, Esther and I spent the weekend at the Centralia Fantasy Festival. This wasn't our most profitable event, but it wasn't terrible--and it was an absolute blast.

A Quick Overview

So, what is the fantasy festival? It's basically a Rennaissance Faire that gives itself permission to be more than that. It's a Rennaissance Faire that accepts the existence of a fantasy world. Granted, a lot of Ren Faires sort of toe that line anyways, but this one full-on embraces it. There are fairies running around. There's an active LARP involving the various enclaves. The Pirates kidnapped the Queen and stole the holy grail. That sort of thing.

At a con, everything happens at one remove. You're there to talk about fantasy. There are panels. There is cosplay. But it's acknowledged fact that this is a thing you are doing as a tribute to the character.

This girl gave me the plague.

At the CFF, there is no remove. There are no panel discussions, at all. You're not there to talk about the fantasy, You are in the fantasy. Someone dressed up as a rat-girl comes up to you and asks if she can stamp your hand with a little rat stamp. You say yes. She does so, and then informs you that you have the plague now. This is now an accepted fact. Roll with it.

There's a number of ways to deal with this. Maybe you can get one of the many fairies to help you out. I'd bet one of them could wave their wand and deal with the plague, right? Well, you can always ask them.

Bonus points if you get one of the younger fairies to do it. Because there are kids all over this place.

Absolute Mainlining Geekiness with Kids. 10/10, no notes, would eavesdrop again.

I witnessed a conversation between a young fairy--I should say fairy queen, that last bit was very important to her, because tiara--and a peasant girl in which the fairy queen explained at length, and in great detail, why it was super offensive for the peasant girl to call her an elf.

Look at this. Look at what is happening, here. Look at the intense expression on Her Majesty's face. The body language alone lets you know that this is SERIOUS BUSINESS.

This was one of the greatest unadulterated nerdy conversations I have ever seen. Let alone seen presented with such confidence from someone so young. I mean, this was a full-one lecture, people. There were citations. There were references to other material. And the peasant girl? She wasn't pissed at all! She ate it up. She was there to learn. Like, the sheer amount of nerdiness on display from these two girls just absolutely warmed things up.

It's honestly too bad the ogre cut their conversation off short.

Anyways, that's what the Fantasy Festival was, and it was a really amazing thing to just be a part of for two days. It was a bunch of people coming together to play make-believe with each other, and damned if that isn't just some straight-up magical good times.

The Resulting Conundrum, or, Frog Catches Strays

So, this is great. I mean, it's a super-fun experience. And the crowd that goes to this was much more the Ren Faire crowd than the Con crowd. Yes, there's a Venn Diagram with a pretty big chunk of overlap, but this was one more than the other.

With a bizarre result.

See, at a con it's totally normal to see a small press publisher. Everyone understands the game. I'm there to sell books. Fans are there to buy--well, hopefully books. But also, we all know that there's a networking thing happening. As an author and a publisher, I'm at a con to meet and network with other authors, publishers, and fans. And vice versa. We all understand that part of the convention, and it's one of the--if not the largest--reasons to go to a con.

There was a decidedly large slice of the Faire crowd that had no idea about this. None. And within that slice were a lot of aspiring authors and artists.

Here is a basic outline that my conversations followed:

Aspiring Writer (AW): "Wait, so you're a publishing company?" Me: "Yes! Impulsive Walrus Books. We publish books, as you can see before you." AW: "Oh wow. Can I ask you a couple of questions?" Me: "Sure!" AW: "Well, see, I'm a writer, too, and I've (LIST OF THINGS AW HAS WRITTEN. INVARIABLY THIS LIST WILL INVOLVE NO PULBICATION OR ONLY UNSUCCESSFUL SELF-PUBLICATION). I'm really trying to (DO THE NEXT THING TOWARDS GETTING A NOVEL PUBLISHED SUCCESSFULLY). Do you have any advice?" Me: "Have you ever been to one of the LitCons? Norwescon, maybe?" AW: "Those are a thing?" Me: "Ok. So. There are these things called cons, and they're partially for people like you to meet and network with people like me, and you should probably check one out if this is a path that you want to walk." AW: "I HAD NO IDEA THAT EXISTED OH WOW MY MIND IS BLOWN." Me: "Wow, can't believe that happened again. OK. Well, in the meantime, you can jump into the Impulsive Walrus Discord server and ask whatever questions you might have there." AW: "Sweet!"

I cannot count the number of times I had that conversation over the course of this Fantasy Festival. And every time, for the AW, this was a unique experience. Like, OMG A CHANCE TO TALK TO AN ACTUAL PUBLISHER I MUST SEIZE IT. They all had enthusiasm to the nines, and that's not a bad thing, really. And they clearly all loved our genre, because we were in the middle of creating and living in a fantasy world for a weekend. But there's some kind of a disconnect between cons and the people who need to be going to cons, and I'm not sure how that disconnect formed. I'm no SMOF, but I'm thinking some of my SMOF friends might seriously want to look into this. There are aspiring authors who absolutely love fantasy out there, but are going to events like this one instead of cons.

And the downside of the immediacy I talked about is that there is no framework to talk about the industry at CFF. CFF isn't about that--it's about living a weekend in a magical fantasy world, not about the larger industry surrouding speculative fiction.

But these authors were thirsty and starving for the kind of support that is the basic mission of a con. And I'm wondering if there's a way to build a bridge between the two, because right now they were surprised as hell that the litcons even existed.