Alas, all the late night boozin’ and schmoozin’ has caught up with me. I’m sick. As a dog is sick, so I, too, am sick. So I will complete my report here of the goings-on at World Fantasy by summarizing the last two days of the con. Even through my illness I do this for you, the people that read my blog, because I care about you all so much.
The highlights:
Scott Edelman and I bumped into each other several times and shared a plane flight home. As you can see by the photo on the right, the meeting didn’t go so well. (You can see more of Scott’s photos from WFC 2007 on his Flickr photo set.)- I had a long, rambling conversation with the inimitable Hal Duncan, beginning as a summary of his next work, continuing on to a discussion about the subtext of the Epic of Gilgamesh, moving on to Joseph Campbell and primitive mythology, and concluding with the psychology of the animal kingdom. Fookin’ great guy, that Hal Duncan.
- Matt Jarpe and I came up with the brilliant idea of Photoshopping authentic photos so they look like they’ve been badly Photoshopped. He’s going to try to track down a photo of him and George R.R. Martin taken the other night, and make it look like he’s Photoshopped himself into it. Personally, I think we may have started a whole new art form, and I can’t wait to get started myself. (Who knows — perhaps Robert Stanek got there ahead of us?)
- I finally met Patrick Nielsen Hayden, one of the editors at Tor! Patrick said that he didn’t recognize me without my hat, and that he reads my LiveJournal, and that he’s amused about how I boldface the important phrases in my blog posts, just like a Spider-Man comic book. (Eat yer heart out, PNH. ‘Nuff said!)
- My reading of chapter 2 from MultiReal went off swimmingly, despite my horribly sore throat and need to sip water every four seconds. Nick Sagan praised my “excellent word choices,” and Paul Cornell continued to call me his “favorite current SF writer” (which hopefully he also repeats when I’m not in the room).
- At the very classy party put on by UK publishers Orbit, I got a chance to meet the fabulous Scott Lynch (he of The Lies of Locke Lamora). I also had plenty of opportunity to act like a big shot and pretend like I know how to promote books online in conversations with Jon Armstrong (whose Grey came out from Night Shade this year), soon-to-be-published author Daryl Gregory, and also soon-to-be-published author David J. Williams.
- Guest of Honor Kim Newman, Paul Cornell, and I had a great time poring over the SFWriter.com newsletter and catching up on all the Robert Sawyer news fit for Robert Sawyer to print.
Speaking of whom, damn it, Robert Sawyer does appear to be a genuinely nice guy, as I discovered chatting with him at the Tor party. Not only is he very friendly, but he was very generous with his time and advice as well.- Hung out here and there with my copy editor Deanna Hoak and F&SF Slush God John Joseph Adams (see pic to the right).
- Award winning artist John Picacio gave me lots of sage career advice, and related the story of how he brought Graham Joyce home with him from a World Fantasy Con. (Not for those reasons, you sickos.)
- I had dinner with “the Brits,” including Solaris honchos George Mann and Marc Gascoigne, novelist and telly writer Paul Cornell, and Waterstone’s buyer Michael Rowley. As the only American at the table, they obliged me by talking only about cricket, the BBC, fish ‘n chips, and various types of cloudy and rainy weather. (Michael Rowley also set the record straight by telling me that socialized medicine works just great in the UK, thank you very much, although dentistry is a separate issue and quite problematic. So fuck you, Sean Hannity.)
- Jay Lake signed my copy of his Night Shade novel Trial of Flowers, though exactly what he signed I have no clue.
- I had a good time attending the Shimmer Pirate Issue group reading. Stand-out reading honors went to Marissa Lingen for her story “Pirates, by Adeline Thromb Age 8,” which had everyone in the room spitting out their pirate grog in laughter.
- Have I mentioned Jess Nevins and the 1939 British pulp story about the six-gun gorilla? Okay, I have now. Jess, it turns out, is a terrific guy and one of the coolest people I met all weekend. He also knows more about the old pulps than just about any person alive.
Someone asked me the other day why exactly I write these detailed posts of my con experiences where I name-drop everybody I met. It’s simple. I write them mostly for me, so that I can remember later the names of people I met. Of course, I also hope that they’re entertaining for you, whoever you are reading my blog.