World Fantasy Con

Is on.  Not that I have a membership; I am not that cool (or is it that I am too cool?  I can never decide which; probably the former).  But I will be there, in the hotel, with friend and Clarion classmate Greg Bossert, attending the Bar Con and buying drinks for interesting people.  I figure I’ll know enough people there to get started, and a friend of mine who’s an editor and has been in the biz end of things for years has promised to make Useful Introductions.  I’m looking forward to it, not only for the hobbing of nobs and working of nets, but also because I’ll get to see some friends I don’t get to see much (hi Jessica!), revisit Mysterious Galaxy, and maybe even catch a few rays by the pool.

I’m not a big con-goer (or seeker of crowds in any situation), but I’m excited to go to this one, as I’m told it tends to be denser with writers and other industry folks, and a little lighter on fans.  Not that I don’t have love for the fans–they are my people, after all–but the crush of daily life has been much upon me these last weeks, and I have neglected both my writing practice and regularly socializing with other writers, which deficits’ catching-up-with I hope to jump-start at WFC.

It can be easy to get sidetracked in one’s creative endeavors.  For a good long while I was able to put aside the quotidian and focus on my writing practice.  Now that that halcyon time’s come to an end, and I’m working again (at a job that’s opened whole new realms of creativity for me to explore), and all the other slings and arrows of life and all its big and little cycles have started falling upon me as they will from time to time, it’s been difficult to make myself make the time to write.  Time to remind myself of what my avocation is, and hanging out for a weekend with a few hundred people who are on the same path, many of them much further along it than I, sounds like a great way to get myself walking down it again.

Also, apparently, Neil Gaiman will be there.