Well, folks, Ozark BookCon 2019 has come and gone, and much to my and everyone in OBA’s relief, it was a big success. We were incredibly organized, we had plenty of volunteers, and the planning that the folks in OBA did months in advance helped make the con feel like it was a much more mature event than it was — we had a dozen or more people, including our guests of honor, ask us how long we’d been having this con. The fact that this was our first surprised everyone in a good way, and it made me super proud of what the OBA folks were able to achieve.
To my knowledge, we didn’t have any trouble makers, and all of the feedback was incredibly positive, both from the attendees and from our guests. Our guests were all extremely lovely, awesome people, and I feel incredibly lucky to have been involved in the event.
I didn’t get to see many of the panels, but seeing the authors play What The Film was a huge highlight. It’s a silly game where you get a random setting, plot, and character, and you have to try to pitch a film in 30 seconds. Mallory, I assume especially because of her skills as a movie producer, took to it like a duck to water. Of course, the rest all did great, too — I was impressed with Tobias’s ability to write down a coherent pitch in just a few seconds and be able to read it back. Jackson turned hers into a series of sequels, and it was great to watch her incorporate the new idea cards while still building on her previous ideas. And Mur did one of the funniest voices to emulate one her characters that I’ve heard in some time.
From a personal note, it was crazy to meet so many people that I have followed and admired for so long, as I mentioned in a previous post. I think I did okay with talking to everyone? I don’t think I was too terribly awkward, although I think I had a tendency to basically run away from Tobias every time I spent more than a few minutes with him. I have this policy that I adopted several years ago where if I hang out with people and I feel the conversation lull or it starts to feel awkward, I start bail out of the conversation for fear of overstaying my welcome.
A highlight for me was the ongoing mystery of chocolate gravy and biscuits. Mallory had researched Arkansas cuisine before the trip because she wanted to experience something local and learned about chocolate gravy and biscuits. She brought this up to the others, and none of them had any idea what it was. We tried to described it — most of us grew up eating it — but they could not fathom the concept. To be fair, it sounds really weird if you’ve never been exposed to it. I was half tempted to try to whip some up before the weekend was over, but I didn’t have time and honestly? If they hadn’t liked it? That would’ve been a lot of pressure to put on them. Best to just let it be a mystery unless or until they come across some in the wild, ha ha.
I felt very fortunate that I got to have dinner with these fine folks the night before the event, and then joined them the evening after because Mallory was enchanted by a nearby dive bar. At the bar, I learned Tobias is a highly skilled pool player. He played against a (very drunk) local dude at one point where I watched him jump the cue ball over one ball to get to another. After Tobias smoked basically most of OBA, I played an amazing game of pool with Mur in which neither of us sank a ball for the first several turns. It was a fantastic time, and I felt very honored to lose to a fellow Pool Master. Get on our level, people!
I met a ton of great people at the event, and as I’ve mentioned, had a wonderful time. I am incredibly proud of what we were able to do, and I think that Scott, Brooke, and Stephanie, the OBA board, were able to put together and put on a phenomenal event. OBA took the rest of November off, and I think the plan is to take December off as well and regroup in January to start planning for 2020, but I can’t wait to see what they and we do in the new year. It’s going to be fantastic.
(Also, I foolishly didn’t really take any good pictures during the event, but Mallory did, so I’m just going to link to her tweet with pictures here. Here’s our guests of honor having fun the evening after the Con.)
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsI have kidnapped all the Guests of Honor from @OzarkBookCon and forced them to go to a dive bar with me pic.twitter.com/NIxTjDMexD
— Mallory O’Meara (@malloryomeara) November 10, 2019
Whirling Nerdish 