DragonCon Picture Show

You have to see DragonCon to fully appreciate it, so...

I had a good time, hanging out with old friends and making new ones. I met Matt Rotundo for the first time, - really nice guy whose subtle but powerful novella, "The Frankenstein Diaries," will appear in issues 8 and 9 of InterGalactic Medicine Show.

I also hung out a bit with an old friend, James Maxey. James' story "Silent As Dust" will appear in issue 7 of IGMS, more than likely as the cover story. It's an exceptional story - not that that is any surprise to folks familiar with James' writing; he is an immensely talented writer and his new novel, Bitterwood, is getting talked about and reviewed well everywhere. For details about the book check out John Joseph Adams recent write-up on SciFi Wire:

http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=5&id=43530


Speaking of Solaris Books (the publisher's of Bitterwood), I enjoyed meeting Mark Newton and Christian ___(?), two editors of that line, as well as Gail Martin, one of their other authors, whose novel, The Summoner, is doing tremendously well, too. Interestingly enough, James, Gail, and I all live in North Carolina. There are quite a lot of writers in NC. I wonder why that is.



I spent some time with an old Boot Camp buddy (Orson Scott Card's Boot Camp, not the Army's), Gray Rinehart. Gray is working for Baen now and I sat in on talk he gave to A.C. Crispin's advanced writing class. He's a natural and I enjoyed listening to him. And he lives in NC, too. Hmm...

Speaking of various editors, I was on a couple of panels about editing, which was something new at DragonCon (at least in my experience). Usually those panels are mostly populated with writers, but the two editing-related panels were very well attended - pretty much filled the room. I hope DragonCon noticed the strong attendance and keeps doing them.

After one of those panels I hung out a bit with Claire Eddy and Paul Stevens, two editors at Tor. Claire and I had a good time because we are both Mets fans and talked as much baseball as anything else.

And speaking of baseball (it's just one segue after another here), I also snuck off to Turner Field on Sunday and saw the Mets beat the Braves. Given how many times the Braves have beaten the Mets in previous years, it was glorious to finally get a little payback. I met an amazing woman at the game, but that's an entire blog entry unto itself, so I'll save that tale for next time.



And - of course - I spend as much time as possible with one of my favorite people in the world, Alethea Kontis. If you've ever met Alethea, you know what I mean; everybody loves Lee and she's the queen of every con she goes to. We played hooky Monday morning and explored Atlanta's new aquarium. But that's a picture show for yet another day...