BayCon 2009 report part one

BayCon was a blast. Hubby went with this time (as a con virgin). He had a wee bit of culture shock the first night, but he adjusted magnificently. He even took photos for them all weekend.

I had the opportunity to speak with some great writers, old friends and new friends. Photo highlights today. In depth report on Thursday with pics from the great panels I sat on, including one on editing. How can you cover editing in an hour?????


Here I am with Irene Radford, both of us blissfully ignorant of our reflective specs.


Here I am with Jennifer Brozek, this year's Toastmistress. She has a post-apocalyptic anthology. No, it's not coming out after the apocalypse. You can read the review and an interview with her by yours truly when it comes out in August.


This is Tony Todaro. I met him last year. We weren't on any panels together but did find time to chat.


Valerie Frankel, a fellow Broad Universe member. She read from one of her Henry Potty (Harry Potter parody) books for our Rapid Fire Reading on Friday night.


This is "RadCon Bob". He's the programming guy for RadCon in Pasco, WA. Irene tells me Radcon is the second largest sf con on the west coast. I'll be there next year. Bob already has me on the flier. :)

And here's a friend who couldn't make it, but who I managed to get a shot with at the CWC joint meeting in April. Meet Cindy Pavlinac, talented photographer and writer. Notice the hats.



People have come to recognize me by my hat. Sure, why not? I love my hat. It hides my witch hair. ;) So, now Irene decided she needed a signature hat. It's blue with a flower on the other side. Very nice.



I finally remembered about my blogger persona on Sunday. I was in author mode before that. This was the first con since I started doing regular interviews here. But I finally remembered and lined up some great authors for you.

And what a welcome home I received. I sold a reprint of one my stories today to Chaos Theory: Tales Askew. It should be published in a couple of weeks. Woo hoo!

I have a lot of reprints that I need to find homes for, but haven't made the time to shop them around. Wouldn't a nice anthology be nice? >sigh<

My Mug Shot

Here's my mug shot for the book, for better or worse. I'm standing in a vineyard, overlooking the rival wine country (Napa) resort. This is my relaxed, vacation face. :)

I'm still playing catch-up with my back issues of Asimov. I went back to the November and December issues to read the first two parts of a serialized piece by Allen M. Steele, set in his Coyote universe.

I'm enjoying it so far. In fact I think I'll finish it tonight while hubby is off doing his thing (singing in Slavonic). It's so hard to just enjoy a book without wanting to pick it apart when so much of my time is spent picking apart prose for myself and others. I can't turn it off. >sigh<

Oh, the story? It's called Galaxy Blues. I'm sure you'll see it in print on its own eventually, if you don't get the magazine.

Alan Alda on writing

I found this article while blog slogging.

Learning to Write with a Sledgehammer by Alan Alda

It's at The Internet Writing Journal, another great find. And I found that from Writers Write. I thought any writers out there would enjoy these goodies as much as I did. Make sure to look at Alan Alda's photo at the bottom of the article. Doesn't it make you smile back at him? Dan Simmons discusses author photos at length in Installment Seven of his Writing Well.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!