the owl and the olive tree

Thursday is the first "real" day of the conference--it's when most attendees arrive, and the first keynote is that evening. We spent the day doing some setup and then welcoming attendees in the Creekside Room, which had doors leading to the back porch are (which in turn had a beautiful view of the creek—hence the name—and the aspen-covered slopes beyond).

Unfortunately, the skies produced 'wintry mix,' which IMHO is a far prettier word for 'a mushy combination of icy rain and soft snow' than the phenomenon deserves. Not so much fun to go hang around in. But that was all right: everyone hung out inside instead, playing games and having tea and desserts.

I wasn't able to participate in the games (I was doing presenter and volunteer check-in), but I got to watch, and it looked like people were having a blast. First there was a homemade pictionary-ish game, but with fantasy keywords like 'witch' and 'Beka Cooper' and 'legion' instead of the usual. Then, after that, was Books to Books--a modification of the game Apples to Apples, but with a bunch of fantasy characters and concepts mixed in. jmpava went to play that, and seemed to be having a good time despite not knowing a lot of the characters. (He reads a lot of SFF, but not quite the same set as was common among Sirens attendees.) In fact, the whole group seemed to be having a good time. They played straight through the dinner break, and kept breaking into uproarious laughter.

Then to dessert, where my friends had saved me a seat, and we talked about the best book we'd read all year. (My choice was When You Reach Me, by Rebecca Stead.) The Thursday keynote speaker was Justine Larbalestier, who gave an interesting (and very funny) talk about monsters, YA lit, Elvis, cultures and cultural appropriation, music, terrible music, camp (in the sense of "that movie was pure camp" rather than the sense of "summer camp"), and travel.

I didn't get a lot of photos at Sirens this year (I was busy and kept forgetting to take my camera places with me), but here's a pic from Vail of the aspens, which were in full glorious color while we were there:

From Sirens 2011

Next: Day 2: Books and Breakfast (including my review of my B&B book, Nightshade), a ton of presentations, Laini Taylor's keynote, and Bedtime Stories!