DragonCon 2013 Tolkien and Legend of the Seeker

I am returning to Dragon*Con 2013 as an Attending Pro for the first time in several years. And I have been invited to participate in the Saturday, August 31, 4:00 PM “Middle-earth and Harry Potter” (aka “Middle-earth and Hogwarts” when you check the pocket program) panel (in the Mariott, rooms L401-403).

Although that is my only Tolkien-related activity (it would have been fun, I think, to sit on one of the dragon panels but oh well) I will be sitting with Legend of the Seeker fans throughout the weekend. You can see my Dragon*Con 2013 itinerary in the SF-Fandom forums.

As for this blog, yes, I do intend to start writing for it again. After all, the next “Hobbit” movie comes out in December. I am sure it will spark tons of questions and I may (or may not) be able to provide some interesting responses to them.

Maybe something along the lines of “did Beorn wear boots?” (believe it or not, someone once asked a question about whether Beorn would wear leather or animal-skin clothes — Tolkien never said).

And I have a little anecdote to share. As I was picking up my VIP badge for the convention Sylvestor McCoy’s representative was picking up his badge just ahead of me. Despite some apparent paperwork confusion they quickly sorted things out and The “Radagast” Doctor himself is appropriately credentialed.

Finally, if you have been wondering what happened to “Middle-earth Talk Radio” it has transformed itself into “Middle-earth Talk” on Google+. Hawke has been recording Google Hangouts and he invited me to participate in a couple. I really don’t like Google+ but have done some Hangouts with people. Anyway, I’m not sure where the old podcasts are. I think Hawke might be thinking about uploading them to YouTube. All the recorded Hangouts (and some video from past MERPcons and Tolkien moots) can be found there.

Check the Tolkien Moot YouTube Channel for convention-related videos.

And check the Middle-earth Radio YouTube Channel for the “Middle-earth Talk” episodes. The format is still rough. It’s not really like the podcasts (which I preferred when they were edited — we tended to sound better, but editing the podcasts takes a lot of time).

So, enough rambling. If you’re at Dragon*Con and you can drop by the Legend of the Seeker fan table, please do. It’s near the OneRing.Net’s fan table so it won’t be hard to find. I’ll be sitting there on Saturday and Sunday.