Eastercon
You all know, because you read Steph's journal (not because I told you, because I didn't) that we went to Eastercon at the weekend. We had a great time. It's always a bit dangerous naming who you met at a con, because you end up missing out someone you spent five hours talking to one evening, and then they're upset and the next time they have the opportunity to pull you out of burning wreckage, they don't, because you snubbed them on livejournal.
Anyway, cons are about meeting people, and that's pretty much what we did most of the time. (Yes, I know there are rumours that cons are about panels and readings and suchlike, but I try to never listen to rumours.) It was cool to meet people I'd only talked to or seen online before, like ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
aliettedb , splinister and alankria, to catch up with people we've met at cons before, like Martin Owton, Freda Warrington, Geoff Ryman and Gary Couzens, and to meet new people, like ethereal_lad, palecast, Gaie Sebold and many others.
I did actually do a few con things. The panel on mythology with Neil Gaiman, Sarah Singleton, Maura McHugh and Liz Williams (along with a fifth panelist whose name I have, embarrassingly, forgotten) was pretty interesting, although I thought some of the questioners were rather stuck on the idea that there is a single, canonical version of each myth, which of course is nonsense and kind of missed the point. Charlie Stross did a really interesting techy guest of honour talk, which excited me about science fiction for the first time for ages, so much so that I went straight out and bought one of his novels. Neil Gaiman's guest of honour speech was highly entertaining, as always, and I loved the opening of his soon-to-be-released novel that he read. The talk on common physics mistakes in SF was immense fun in a very geeky way that suited me down to the ground. And Mitch Benn's concert was hilarious (check out his latest song on youtube).
The best part, though, was hanging out and chatting with people. When you're a writer, you spend a lot of time working on your own and feeling like what you're doing happens in a vacuum. When you go to a convention and find all those other people who are doing the same, who care about the same things and who have been through the same experiences, it's immensely energising.
Of course, even though it was great fun, we were desperate to get home and save Maya from the kennels where she'd had to stay. She does not like kennels, and we don't like leaving her there. I think she hardly ate or slept over the weekend, and she has pretty much collapsed with exhaustion ever since we picked her up. Right now, she's curled up behind me on the chair, asleep, making me perch right on the edge of the chair while I type this. But she's happy to be home, and we're just as happy to be back with her.
And, if I missed you off the list above, it's just because I'm crap at remembering names and faces, not because I'm snubbing you, so please pull me out of any burning wreckage you might happen to pass.
