Sunday, I went to readings. There is a lesson I seem to have to relearn every WorldCon: panels frequently disappoint, readings almost never do. Go to as many readings as possible.

I started today with Neil Gaiman's reading. Neil was as wonderful as he usually is. He read his forthcoming (very short) children's book, Crazy Hair, and a Cthulhu/Sherlock Holmes crossover story called "A Study in Emerald". Good stuff. Some poor convention volunteer tried to call time on him just as he was ready to get to the solution of the mystery in the latter story. Neil said, "You know, these people will kill you if I stop now," and read until the mystery was solved, though there were two pages of the story left. Very fun story. I believe the anthology in which it's coming out is entitled Shadows over Baker Street. I'll be looking for it.

After that I had lunch with Daniel, and then sat in the convention center coffee shop and typed away at this con report and engaged in a little gratuitous pro watching: oh look, there's Charlie Stross, there's China Mieville. One of the charming folks I'd originally met in the departure lounge at SFO - a community college English professor from the Bay Area named, I think, Barbara - sat with me for a bit, and we chatted.

Then I went off to Joe Haldeman's reading. Joe read from Sea Change, the novel he's just finished, and Old 20th, the novel he's working on now. I'm really looking forward to Sea Change, which will be coming ou next August - I heard Joe read from it last summer, when it was the book he was working on, and it intrigued me then and intrigues me now. Shapechangers are cool. Shapechangers written by Joe are cooler.

After the reading, I went over to the Strange Horizons tea party. It was crowded, but crowded with neat people. And it had the best refreshments of any party I'd been to - I made myself a cup of sweet milky tea and had a cucumber sandwich. Chelsea, one of the Ideomancer editors, was reading people's tea leaves, but I didn't get mine read.

Once I couldn't handle any more party, I went down and sat outside the internet lounge, and hung around with Diana, and then ended up chatting with the guy who ran the internet lounge. He asked me my opinion of the California recall. We traded odd poliical jokes, and we talked about Canadian politics - a conversation in which I think I managed to give the impression of having more knowledge than I actually possessed.

Diana and Daniel and I went off in search of Greek food, and found instead a closed Greek restaurant, so we ended up eating at Shopsy's, which served Jewish Deli food. I had macaroni and cheese. This may actually have been the first time I've ever ordered mac'n'cheese in a restaurant. It was good.

Back at the Fairmont, we went to the Iron Poet event. There were three Iron Poets: Geoffrey Landis (Heroic Couplet), Joe Haldeman (sonnet), and Darrell Schweitzer (Limerick). The poets would be given twenty minutes to write a poem containing the secret ingredient (on a large piece of paper tacked to the wall, in full view of the audience). Audience members could write poems in one of the three forms (or all of the three forms, if they were really fast), and challenge the relevant Iron Poet by reading their poem aloud.

So, I decided to go for it, and wrote a Petrarchan sonnet. Daniel wrote a Shakespearean sonnet. Sonnets actually proved to be the most popular form with the audience, to my surprise. I'd have thought more people would go for limericks. The general quality of the poetry was pretty high for stuff composed in twenty minutes. I went for humor in my piece, and got a gratifying big laugh from the audience.

The Iron Poets triumphed over all comers, though.

Here's my poem:

A Good Poet Goes Down With the Ship

I have a pen that's running out of ink
And also a boat that's refusing to float
And a pad of paper for writing a note
That I'm trying to finish before we all sink

The shark swimming off the port bow doesn't blink
Salt water is smearing the lines that I wrote
The first mate is lodged in a killer whale's throat
And his screaming is making it harder to think

It's a terrible time to be writing a letter
With a fountain pen that's starting to blot
And "waterproof" ink that's starting to run
To call it a Rorshach test would be better
It's all become just one giant ink spot
But if I could find one more line I'd be done.

After all that was done, I went up to the Baen party, and chatted with some folks - including Catherine Shaffer (we first ran into each other at the Strange Horizons/Ideomancer tea party, and both exclaimed, "Oh, you're the other Shaffer!") and a nice Clarion West 2001 grad whose name I, alas, cannot remember. (I rarely forget a face, but most names have a half-life of minutes in my poor brain. What's funny is that Daniel has the opposite problem. Put me and Daniel together, and we almost make one fully functional social being!)

I looked at a bunch of cover flats for upcoming Baen books, which could best be described as...astonishing. I marvelled at the selection of Canadian candybars on offer. (About half the time when you're in Cananda, you completely forget you're in a foreign country. And then little things like the completely unfamiliar selection of chocolate bars on offer remind you that things are different. Fortunately, I like Canadian chocolate just fine.)

And eventually, I went down to, yes, the bar, and swapped observations on socializing at cons and book recommendations with Blunt and Bonnie. And said hello to Pat Cadigan, whom I'd managed not to run into for the entire con up to that point.

And eventually, they kicked us out of the bar, and I went to sleep, and that was pretty much the end of TorCon for us. The next morning we had breakfast, and checked out of thehotel, and went to the airport, leaving plenty of time to spare just in case customs or anything was hairy. And customs was really uneventful, and I lost my wallet somewhere in the airport, and we chatted with the fabulous Leah Cutter while waiting for her plane to board, and Air Canada found my wallet and paged me. (I was pretty upset about losing my wallet, and not at all looking forward to replacing the credit cards and driver's license and so on, but I did my best to be philosophical about it, figuring that, of all the places in the world to lose your wallet, a Canadian airport probably ranked very high on the probability of your getting it back with its contents intact. And I did.)

A good time was had by all. Can't wait for World Fantasy.