I've got a quick ten-minute window here to give an update of the con so far, and let you know of all the ... interesting people you're missing here in San Jose.

Of course, it wouldn't be a trip for me without mishap. My flights all went really smoothly, and I enjoyed having some excellent Neil Gaiman stories to pass the time. He's a master. All of the stories were really good, but I especially liked the one about the old woman who finds the Holy Grail at a pawn shop, and the really nifty story about the writer working on the screen adaptation of his novel out in Hollywood and the different stories that come and go inside that story ("The Goldfish Pool"). I also liked the Troll story. Very good stuff. I also read my two stories for the workshop today, and had some good comments for them, I hope. And then I arrived in San Jose.

I was in a bit of a rush, excited by the prospect of meeting Tim and Greg at the bar in the Fairmont, so I thought I'd be smart and get a shuttle from the airport to the Crowne Plaza, where I'm staying. The shuttle shows up, and after a 20-minute drive -- it's coming up on 3 p.m., when we agreed to meet -- we get to the hotel. But it's the Crowne Plaza in Milipitas. Damn! I went to the wrong hotel! The guy at the Info desk at the airport totally hosed me! So I ended up paying $26 for a cab from one Crowne Plaza to another, and I was fuming. Why do I always do stupid shit like that?

So not only did I miss beers with my writing buds, I also missed half of Samantha Ling's reading in the Sff.net suite. But I did get my badge, got signed in, and made it to the suite at 4:15, in time for Ling's reading of her excellent story "Mah-Mei", followed by Heather Shaw's nifty reading of a story about a woman trying to lose weight while on her honeymoon, with a (typical) Heather Shaw twisted ending. Very fun.

It was great hanging out with all the writers I've known through the Internet, and getting to meet people whose stuff I've read and liked, like Greg and Benjamin Rosenbaum and Sean Klein, as well as editors who I think highly of, like Susan Groppi and Jed Hartman and Mary Anne Mohanraj (though I'd met Jed and Mary Anne last year).

Then I got to read "Goddamn Redneck Surfer Zombies." I had a ball doing it, getting into the action and doing different voices. I think it went well. Jay Lake and Deborah Layne showed up as well, which was cool of them. Then we went to dinner and then saw Patrick Stewart, pitching some movies, and then went in search of the elusive party zone. More on that later...

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