We're home from Worldcon. It was a good weekend. Heather and I had a really great time. I missed the Locus panel on Friday afternoon, because I had a meeting, and potential money trumps panel appearances! (The meeting went quite well, though it's all still vapor at this point. I'll elaborate when and if I can, but, you know, imagine the kind of people I might be meeting with in Los Angeles, and you're probably right. Maybe something cool will happen. We'll see. At the very least, I got a free drink out of it!)

Um... convention report. Hmm. Tricky, that. So some random highlights:.

People: Talking to Bill Shunn and Paul Melko at the Eos party -- and finally meeting Bill's beloved Laura, who is awesome. Also got to chat with Tim Powers, which was wonderful, since I haven't spoken to him in years, really. Scott Westerfeld managed to make losing all his clothing into a hilarious anecdote, which is an impressive skill. Lunch with Jenn Reese at a surprisingly yummy diner. Chilling in the bar with Greg van Eekhout and Dr. Lisa and various other people, including Toby Buckell and briefly Cory Doctorow, who was dressed very much to the nines. (It was a good bar, I thought. Lots of comfy chairs that rolled around.) Talking to Ellen Kushner at the Interstitial Arts Foundation party (which was in a commandeered corner of the bar; very interstitial, I thought). Meeting Steve Eley (and Anna, and Scott Janssens, and Evo Terra, and...) at the Escape Pod party, where I drank wonderful alcoholic substances and had a fine time. Hanging out with Mike Canfield at the same event, and with Erin Cashier Denton at the Podiobooks party in the same room the next night. Conversing with John Scalzi a few times, and admiring his fancy Campbell Award Winner tiara. Telling Chris Roberson how impressed I was with the stuff Monkeybrain Books is publishing. Jonathan Strahan kindly introduced me to Garth Nix (and both gave me some impromptu good advice on fatherhood! when I mentioned that Heather and I were going to try to have a kid sometime in the nearish future) and Simon Brown. Sadly, I never talked to Ben Rosenbaum, though I saw him hurtle past in the lobby at one point. I'm told Jim Minz was saying nice things about Flytrap, and I got the chance to thank him for it.

There were lots of other wonderful people and conversations and jokes and joie de vivre, but I don't want this to turn into an endless namechecking session, so I'll leave it at that. I didn't have any bad interactions all weekend, though.

Events: I missed the Locus panel, which makes me sad. I missed the Hugos, because dinner ran long, and when we got back, the ceremony was well underway, and I didn't feel like standing in the back. (My boss brought the staff up on stage when Locus won, too, so I'm bummed I wasn't there.) I signed a few things at the Asimov's table with Gardner Dozois and Michael Cassutt, which naturally involved lots of yelling and off-color jokes. I didn't go to any panels. The Tor party was actually wonderful, not a hellish pit of molten flesh at all, because there was a big cool balcony outside, with a view of fireworks from Disneyland. Pretty sweet.

Books: on the way there, I read an ARC of D*U*C*K by Poppy Z. Brite. It's awesome. It made me incredibly happy. On the way home, I read Ellen Kushner's The Privilege of the Sword. I love that book with an all-consuming love. I want to dig up my copy of Swordspoint and re-read that again, too. Sooooo good. And, drum roll, I got a copy of my poetry collection, If There Were Wolves, from Sean Wallace! Which means it oughta be available to the general public soon. (Sean also rejected a story I sent him, which is, at least, the personal touch.) Greg's chapbook got lots of admiring oohs and ahhs (and my great thanks go to Deborah Layne at Wheatland and the good people at Borderlands for peddling our wares!). We picked up various other lovely books, too. The dealer's room was nice and big.

The train to airplane to van travel was not notably bad. Lots of time to read, at least, and no fear of our car breaking down, which would have stressed me out if we'd tried to drive down. Wish we could've had a couple more days at the convention, because it felt very much like a swoop-in, swoop-out affair, but I'm glad we got to go. I saw lots of wonderful people. It was good to be among my tribe.