Back from ReaderCon

Thanks to an offhand comment on Twitter, Jaym Gates and I decided a roadtrip from Raleigh-Durham up to Burlington, MA (northwest Boston) for ReaderCon would be a good idea. Having done it now, and spent about 30 hours in the car round-trip, I have to say it's nowhere near as good an idea as one would think. But it was a fun trip, mostly because of the company. Next year, though, I'm flying.

I attended a handful of panels, which were all interesting. I was sad to miss the Great War Geeks Unite! panel, because the World Cup third place match was on, and Germany was playing. (Stupid Spain.) Though in the 15 minutes I was there, I heard some great book recs and wrote them down. I'm not yet a full-fledged Great War geek, but I'm working on it. (I started reading Stone's World War One: a short history recently; while it's impossible to go into great depth in a 200-page book, it seems so far to be a good overview for anyone who wants to fill in the gaps their high school education left.)

The weird thing I think about it was that I went to the bar to hang with Jaym, and she was hanging with some people, one of whom I later found out is the editor of Realms of Fantasy. Um. (He's a pretty good nerdcore rapper, actually.) And I got a hug from the assistant editor of Lightspeed. It's apparently that sort of con. Which is awesome, in both senses of the word.

I read from "U8: Alexanderplatz (1989)" at the Broad Universe RFR, and I got a lot of compliments on it. I had my Germany jersey on (it was game day!), so I was pretty recognizable, and a couple people came up to me later in the day. I also had a report that someone went to the BU book table and asked specifically about the book I was in! (It isn't out yet, sadly.) So I'm sort of chuffed about that.

I volunteered 8 hours at the con, so I get a free 2011 membership. It's a pretty good way to spend time and meet people, especially if you have a lot of free time between panels you're interested in.

Then after the con, I went with Jaym to have dinner at Bart Leib's house. (Kay was out of town.) They're the co-editors of Crossed Genres. (And they have two adorable kitties!) I met some other fannish folks there, and we may meet up at either NASFIC or Dragon*Con.

All in all, it was a good con, and I look forward to going back next year. By airplane, thank you very much. Hopefully I'll have a different published story to read from!