OmegaCon: Look at this Line Up

I've blogged before about OmegaCon, the new convention launching March 14-16, 2008 in Birmingham, Alabama. I remain cautiously optimistic about their prospects and very excited about the possibility of a largish annual convention in the southeastern United States.

Since my last post, they've added Peter Mayhew, Rena Owen and Richard LaParmentier of Star Wars fame to their media track, where they join Richard Hatch and the Ghost Hunters- bringing it to decent levels for a first time effort - and their art track is very respectable with Jael and Brom, but what's impressing me the most is their literary track, which has swollen to what is a very impressive size, with a huge roster of writers in attendance.

I've weeded out about a dozen writers from their guest list, either because they were self-published, published but not in SF&F (so minus one historical author, one children's book author, a Celtic author, a Christian author, and quite a few paranormal nonfiction authors), or not published in venues I am aware of (and which may be vanity press.) I mean no offense to them - but what I want to list here are those who are already on the radar of - or should be of real interest to - science fiction and fantasy literature fans.

And that leaves us with a whoppin' 21 folks, with quite a few bestselling authors among them:

Ann Aguirre - new Ace author (whose novel is SF and very Serenity like too, I'm told.)
Lou Anders - don't know much about this clown
Ben Bova - one of the giants of the history of the SF field
Steven Brust - New York Times bestseller
Julie Cochrane -Baen Books author, frequent John Ringo co-author David Drake - New York Times bestseller
William H. Drinkard - forthcoming Tor author (his Tor editor may attend too!)
Eric Flint - New York Times bestseller
Alan Dean Foster - New York Times bestseller
William Jones - Chaosium author, Dark Wisdom editor
Allen Hammock - former TSR Game designer (D&D)
Kay Kenyon - John W Campbell and Philip K Dick award nominated author
Sherrilyn Kenyon - 10 million books in print
Marilyn Kosmatka - Eric Flint co-author at Baen
Ted Kosmatka - sales to Asimov's, F&SF, reprint forthcoming in Jonathan Strahan's Year's Best
J.F. Lewis - forthcoming Pocket books author
Louise Marley - multiple award winning author (also writes as Toby Bishop)
Jim Minz - Baen Books editor, formerly of Del Rey and Tor
Mike Resnick - one of the most awarded SF authors of all time
Don Sakers - former Baen author, Analog short story writer
David Sherman - the Starfist series from Del Rey, now up to 9 books
David Weber - New York Times bestseller

So that's at least 6 bestsellers. Quite a few award winners. Plus Minz, who is really all you need to ensure that the party gets going. If nothing else, the OmegaCon bar is going to be rockin'.