Four words: The Best Convention Ever.

Five more words: Jenn Reese is freaking awesome.

Six more words: Mike Jasper is hilarious when drunk. [I just realized you can take this phrase a couple of ways, but I'm sure you understand I mean when he is intoxicated, not when he is imbibed by someone else. Though that would also be quite funny.]

I had such an amazing time at the convention. It was totally worth all the hype I've heard over the years and was the only place I have ever been that singularly gathered almost all the people I'd ever want to meet in this business. (The notable exceptions being Tim Pratt, Heather Shaw, and Greg van Eekhout, who would have made the weekend absolutely unable to top.) I am so so so glad I went. A mammoth report follows, with pictures in a couple days once film is developed. I apologize if I leave anyone out, but I got to see a lot of people in four days, and my head is still swimming.

Thursday, October 30

Around 11:00 a.m., my dad dropped me off at the Amtrak station in Raleigh, and I met up with Mike. I gave him a copy of Four Seasons in One Day, and he gave me a copy of Flytrap, which looks amazing. (Money was exchanged later.) We saw Dan Reid, who runs Trinoc*con (except for last year) and was also heading to World Fantasy. The train was slightly delayed, but we left around 11:35. Space was crowded, so we didn't get to sit together, though I went up to chat with Mike a couple of times. The legroom was much better than an airplane, and I managed to get all the critiques of my Clarion classmates done on the ride up. I tried reading Billy Budd, but only got three chapters into it before putting it down.

We arrived in D.C. around 6:00 p.m., got Mike's suitcase from baggage claim, and walked the three blocks to the Hyatt Rygency, along which path we got a great view of the Capital building all lit up. We passed Jay Lake (my and Mike's other roommate) in the lobby on his way to participate in a reading at a nearby Borders, then we got checked in. Dropped the luggage off in the 10th floor room, saw Jay's collection of colorfully loud Hawai'ian shirts hanging in the closet, then went down to the ballroom sublevel to register and get a 9000 pound bag of free books (worth nearly $200). Went back upstairs to drop off said bags of tonnage, then downstairs to hunt for food; neither of us had eaten since early on in the train voyage. We stopped briefly in the bar where Mike ordered a $6 pint of beer, then we decided to try the hotel restaurant since we didn't know the area. Luckily, waiting in line were Kristin Livdahl and Alan DeNiro, and we got to eat overpriced soup and salad with them, while looking at their recent wedding pictures.

After dinner, in the lobby we ran into Jenn (who gave me a big hug), Ted Chiang (who gave me a smile and polite handshake), and John Sullivan (who did the same, with a slightly larger smile), and we hung out for a while, talking. Soon, Celia Marsh showed up too, and Ben Rosenbaum, who was doing a reading soon. So the group of us wandered into the reading room, and Ben read from a few of his stories in Other Cities, as well as one about an orange who ruled the entire world. We then headed up to the con suite (which they called the hospitality suite, but who are we kidding here?) for the incredibly crowded and noisy Interstitial Arts party. I got to talk to the glowing and tired Dora Goss, the very natty Delia Sherman, the newly-blonde Leslie What, the darkly-dressed and regal Ellen Datlow, and the very cool and much-slimmed-down Jeff VanderMeer. I thanked Jeff for quite a few things, and talked to his wife Ann Kennedy about the spy museum they had visited earlier that day.

Around that point, it got a bit too claustrophobic for comfort, so some of us went down to the bar where we wouldn't have to scream at each other to be heard. Holding court in one corner and wearing an orange tie-dyed shirt was the young John Kessel, who introduced me to Gwenda Bond and Christopher Rowe, and told them my most recent story "Don't Blink" was the best thing he'd seen by me, which is always good to hear announced to strangers. I also got to see Jay again, and meet cool Strange Horizons editor Susan Groppi, as well as Frank Wu (whose illustration for "Enlightenment" can only be found on the Intracities t-shirt, so go buy one!), Diana Sherman (whom I met at ICFA), and the very smiley Simran Khalsa (all three appear in this picture). En masse, my Clarion crowd came in a bit later, and it was great talking to Dan Braum, Rudi Dornemann, Sharon Woods, and Cathy Holm again. Celia introduced me to Tempest Bradford, who is also cool. Lots of cool people. We sat down, and I chewed Rudi's ear off until 1:00 a.m. We agreed to meet up the next morning for breakfast.

Friday, October 31

Somehow I dragged my ass out of bed in time to meet the Clarion group and Tempest at 9:00 a.m., and we walked over to Union Station for cheap food, ending up at a cool self-serve French pastry place. Much needed coffee was consumed. Then back to the hotel for the Kelly Link reading; she read from "The Hortlak", which appears in the new anthology The Dark (ed. Ellen Datlow), and it was excellent, as expected. After that was the Best of the Year panel with Kelly, Jay, Alan Beatts from Borderlands Books, Paul Witcover, and Paula Guran. It was a pretty decent panel, and Jay gave some props to our own David Moles). Speaking of Daves (now I have the Kids in the Hall song "These are the Daves I Know" in my head), I also got to see Dave Kirtley, whom I met at ICFA and who went to Clarion with Jenn and Tim.

The dealer's room was open after that, so I headed in, already prepared to restrain myself, and man oh man, you cannot imagine a more comprehensive and beautiful dealer's room. I hit the Prime table (where I was allowed a slot to sell the chapbooks), and got City of Saints and Madmen and The Day Dali Died, both in trade paperback by Jeff VanderMeer, and The Book/The Writer in TP by Zoran Zivkovic. I then headed to the Small Beer Press table and was handed the new issue of Lady Churchill's (which saved Gavin the postage of having to mail it to me thru my subscription), and I bought both Ratbastards chapbooks, Bittersweet Creek by Chris Rowe, Other Cities by Ben, and the new issue of Say... All sort of zine goodness at one table.

I headed out into the hallway with my stack and talked with Mike, Jenn, and John S., and we were soon joined by Susan Groppi and the newest editor at Strange Horizons, Karen Meisner. We chatted for a bit, and they told me there was a cool kinetic carousel in the art show, which could only have been created by Lisa Snellings Clark (whose life-sized harlequin sculpture "If Love's a Fine Game, Hell's a Good Joke" inspired my story "Wicked Game"). So I went in to say hi to Lisa and see what new goodies she brought this year; it was cool to see some pieces in three dimensions she had emailed to me as scans.

Went back upstairs to drop off the pile of books, then we hung out in the lobby until it was time for beer-n-wings. A big group of us walked over to the Capital City Brewing Company for lunch; I got root beer and chicken fingers, which was close enough to the beer-n-wings theme. Then I had to leave so that I could join up with the Clarion group for our big critique, and since the others weren't done yet, Jenn said they'd cover me, which was nice. I hauled ass back to the hotel, went up to the room, grabbed the critiques, went down to the lobby and up another elevator to get to Dan and Rudi's room in the other tower of the hotel, and arrived out of breath. We critiqued Brendan Day's story first, though I hadn't read it yet (sorry, Brendan!), then went downstairs to the con suite to poke our heads into the Clarion/Clarion West/Odyssey reunion party thing, which was kind of lame. So we went back upstairs and critiqued the rest of the stories. There was a mixup in information on when Lena DeTar was showing up, so we did the critiques without her. They had some really good things to say about "Don't Blink" (though I'm no longer sure if I want to keep that title), and came at the story from a different way than the people in my fiction class, from the genre-writer's perspective as well as those who had seen a previous version of the story. But they gave me some useful information, and I think it'll be a bang-up story when I finish it. It took us four and a half hours to get through all the crits. Whew.

At that point, I headed down to the enormous unorganized autograph party. I passed Celia and Lena on the escalator, and lurched up the stairs the wrong way so that I could give her a hug. She'd just arrived at 8:00, after getting out of class at 6:00 (she's at Johns Hopkins). I went down to the autograph room, waded through a few hundred people and got my VanderBooks signed. I looked for KJ Bishop so that I could get her to sign The Etched City but never saw her down there, nor for the rest of the con. I talked to Kij Johnson for a little while, and made arrangements to meet with John Kessel the following morning to go over my story a little more. I caught up with Lena, Celia, Ted, and Gavin out in the hallway away from the cacophony and sweatiness, then went upstairs to the seventh floor for the Mythic Journeys Celtic evening with Heather Dale (who was very good). I talked for a while with Lena and Simran, and got to meet the very funny Nicholas Kaufmann. I also talked to Ellen Kushner about the whole Interstitial Arts movement and the gathering momentum of slipstream literature. Around 12:30, I left to get some sleep.

Saturday, November 1
The day of ever-escalating parties

I met John K. downstairs at 10 a.m. (wearing my groovy green GMR shirt) and we talked a bit more about my story. He repeated what he said two nights before, about it being the best thing he'd yet seen from me, and really dug the references to Beowulf and Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown". To my surprise, he said he thought it would be an excellent candidate for F&SF, and offered to introduce me to Gordon van Gelder, though an opportunity to do that never occurred. (Which is okay; I met Gordon a few years ago at World Horror Con in Atlanta, and was so intimidated I could barely speak.) We chatted a little more about classes and visa stuff, then went into the reading room to hear Jeff VanderMeer read three pieces (a VanderMedley). I gave him a copy of the chapbook in exchange for him giving me a deluxe edition of his chapbook The Exchange a while back. Went out to the lobby and chatted for a bit with Jenn, Ted, and Gwenda, learning some interesting things about Tor's business practices and how those practices influenced the ugly TP cover of Ted's collection. After a bit, we were joined by Dave Kirtley, then Lena (who'd just gotten back with the other Clarions from critting her story at Union Station).

At noon, I went to the packed Myth, Fable, and Folklore panel, mostly to hear what Kij and Jane Yolen had to say. There wasn't much I hadn't heard before, but it was fairly interesting. After the panel, I headed back into the dealer's room for another quick pass, and was convinced by the woman working the Borderlands table to buy the premiere issue of Argosy, which looks damn beautiful, and has ads from Gap and Lexus. I also got Neil Gaiman's spoken-word CD Telling Tales. And I found a really great Christmas present for my lady, which I think she'll flip for.

At 2:00 was the slipstream panel, with Chris Barzak, Greg Frost, Kathy Goonan, Ben, and Dora. This panel was also packed with people, and it was interesting to see the different definitions of slipstream, and how they differed from this essay to how the term is used now. Ben did a great job moderating, and everyone listed some great books that they thought exemplified slipstream (Kelly Link's Stranger Things Happen was one, as was Tithe by Holly Black).

Then it was upstairs to the last half of the Night Shade party, where I got to talk for a bit to Forrest Aguirre, and where Lena won a fuzzy plush microbe in the drawing at the end. Jeff V. went downstairs to watch the Florida football game, and about that time, things started shifting around to get ready for the Strange Horizons tea party, which was very cool. English breakfast and Pepperidge Farm cookies, yum. I left at 5:00 to meet up with the Clarions and Pat Wrede for dinner. We went to this slow-ass bar-and-grille, though the grilled chicken caeser salad was pretty good. It took so long to get our food that I had to haul ass (again) back to the hotel, and was late in helping Mike to set up the small press party. But I got there, went to the room, gathered up the chapbooks and easel, and went down to the party.

I set up on a table with Intracities, Flytrap, and volumes of Polyphony, and managed to sell some copies. Mike did a fantastic job organizing everything, and announcing little mini-readings for those selling zines or chapbooks. Jay read "Iron Heaven" from Intracities, Chris Rowe read from Bittersweet Creek, and I read "Night Off". The crowd was nice and attentive, and it was fun to read the story again. The party was extremely crowded at first, with most people there for the free booze (Stephen Jones had had a birthday party in there directly before, and left several bottles of champagne, along with this weird cranberry juice and vodka rotgut mix that will be forever after referred to as "the pink shit"). Jay and Frank managed to sell out of his copies of Greetings From Lake Wu (which isn't surprising, considering the amount of promotional material he brought with him), and several other zines sold fairly well. It turned out to be more of an awareness-of-the-small-press party than anything else, which is fine. I'd like to see if we can't do something like it for Trinoc*con next year as well.

At 9:00, John K. did a reading, and soon after, the big-ass Tor party started, so many people left. Mike, Jenn, and I dipped into the pink shit, and things started to loosen up a bit. Graham Joyce wandered in, and I introduced myself, told him that The Tooth Fairy was bloody brilliant. We spoke a little Greek (he's fluent, though I am not), and he told me that Lou Anders (of Argosy) just went through the same visa crap with his Chinese wife that I'm going through with Janet, and suggested I hook up with him. I hung around and manned the tables as Mike and Jenn went down to check out the Tor party. I met Darja Clarke, who went to the Strange Horizons workshop in Oregon. I got to meet Mike Dringenberg, who inked the first two years' run of The Sandman and who painted the gorgeous cover of Kij's new novel Fudoki. We talked about art and comics and certain-people-at-DC-comics-who-shall-remain-nameless who drove Sam Keith literally insane, causing the man's nervous breakdown, and leading to Mike D. leaving later.

Mike and Jenn came back up, and Jay was back from his reading downstairs, so I went with Mike and Jenn to the Tor party. By this time, I was buzzing pretty hard. It took me two hours to get through one glass of the pink shit (that stuff was harsh), but I also did a big shot of vodka (poured by Jenn), and then had a beer at the Tor party. Everyone was suddenly funnier and more attractive, and my slight disappointment at not selling out the copies of the chapbook bled away into alcoholic vapor. I talked to Susan Groppi for long time about long-distance relationships and living with someone for the first time after living by yourself for so long. It was nice knowing that I and Janet are not the only ones experiencing this. Susan was very cool. After there was some bed jumping and nigh-breakage of lamps, a few of us decided the party was a bit too noisy and went down to the hotel bar. Ted was down there talking to some people, and being the friendly (and by this point very loose) guy that I am, I jokingly hit on him. (I apologized later.) Brett Cox joined us, and we talked a little about Crossroads finally coming out next year, among other things. Mike and Jenn went over to talk to Jay, Jae Brim, and Nick K. at the bar, and I soon joined them, having just missed Mike signing Nick's chest. We talked and threatened to throw chairs around and start a bar fight (but didn't) until 3 a.m., when I gave up and went to bed. I was asleep two seconds after shutting off the light.

Sunday, November 2

Sunday morning, I awoke to Jay's wake-up call at 9 a.m., and eventually rolled out of bed to get cleaned up. Mike came in around 10 (he'd slept in the suite where we'd held the small press party), and gathered all his stuff together. I packed all my stuff up, then we went downstairs to check out. We checked our bags into the holding room the hotel had, and met up with Jenn for some breakfast. I was meeting with the Clarions at 10:00 to say goodbye, so we just ate at the buffet in the hotel bar. And it was actually pretty good; not worth $15, but still good. Charles de Lint and his wife MaryAnn Harris were in the restaurant as well, and I gave them a copy of the chapbook to enjoy. (All told, I gave away five copies: to Charles and MaryAnn, Jeff V, Kelly Link, John Kessel, and Lisa Snellings.)

I met up with the Clarion group at 10, and we all hugged and said our goodbyes (though Celia and Cathy were staying for a bit longer). It was so great getting to see them and hang out with them this weekend; it really made me realize what a close fun group we had. I took a quick trip back down to the dealer's room to collect the chapbooks that hadn't sold at the Prime table (five out of ten, not bad), and forced myself to walk quickly to the exit before I bought anything else. I went into the art show and said goodbye to Lisa, then took the escalator back upstairs to sit in the lobby. I talked to Celia for a bit, then sold a chapbook to Dave Kirtley, and was joined by Diane Sherman, Mike, and Jenn.

Around 2:00, we went downstairs to sit in the back of the banquet hall for the World Fantasy Awards (I couldn't see paying $59 dollars for the banquet lunch). Toastmaster Douglas Winter took way too long with his speech, trying too hard to be Connie Willis, and then the awards were announced and the big ugly Lovecraft heads were given to the winners. I have to say big congratulations to Graham (for The Facts of Life), Zoran (for "The Library"), Jeff and Forrest (for Leviathan 3), Gordon van Gelder (for editing), and the folks at Night Shade. I was really rooting for Small Beer Press and JeffV's City of Saints and Madmen, but on the whole, I was fairly pleased with the results. As soon as the novel winners gave their speeches, Mike, Jenn and I booked out of the room and upstairs to get our luggage. It was 3:15 by this point, and our train was scheduled to leave at 4:30. We got our bags, gave Jenn big hugs, and walked to Union Station.

It was much more work with all those books in my bags, but we arrived panting and sweating with plenty of time to spare. I checked my suitcase this time, and went down to the really cool food court to grab a bite of lunch; I got a giant gyro at a neat Greek place called, simply, Acropolis. There were lots of other places down there (Thai, Chinese, etc.), but I was in the mood for Greek food. I finished up, and was getting ready to go back upstairs to the gate, when I passed the Small Beer posse. I got to say goodbye, and get a hug from Kelly Link, which was nice since we'd rushed out of the awards ceremony. Went upstairs, sat down, and within five minutes was boarding the train with Mike and Dan Reid. They assigned seats this time, and I was in a totally separate car from the other guys. I sat next to a high-school senior who had gone up to D.C. to visit his girlfriend (under the pretense of going to Asheville to see friends), and had his van break down, making him have to leave it at a body shop overnight and buy a train ticket home to Greenville.

I had an unbelievable amount of legroom this time, and by leaning my seat back, I was close to horizontal. Exhausted from the lack of sleep and general craziness of the con, I dozed for most of the trip. I did manage to get a large chunk of Billy Budd read as well, and walked around every so often to stretch my legs. We arrived in Raleigh at 10:10 p.m., and Mike was nice enough to drive me home. There was a message from my mom waiting, so I called her, told her how much I'd enjoyed the convention, then hung up and read the rest of Melville's short novel. I turned off the light at 12:30, and a nuclear explosion couldn't have woken me up.

If we can swing it next year, I'd like to go to WFC in Tempe, so I can share my great experiences with Janet. It was fantastic to see my Clarion friends again (and see how much their writing has grown since last summer), as well as folks I've met online and people whose fiction I admire. I was able to sell nearly half the copies of the chapbook I took up there, which was pretty damn good. The convention was totally worth it, and I'd have to say that although I had a great time with the Clarion folks, the highlight was getting to hang out with Mike and Jenn. If you ever go to a convention with them, you'll know why.

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Now Reading:
The Day Dali Died by Jeff VanderMeer

Stories Out to Publishers:
4

Books Read This Year:
48

Zines/Fiction Mags Read This Year:
35