Readercon is my favorite local con...actually, that makes it my favorite con, because I rarely travel to go to conventions that require travel, and staying at the hotel. I have a limited tolerance for fluorescent-lit, over-air-conditioned hotels and meeting rooms. Readercon tends to happen on a beautiful summer weekend, which this one certainly was. That makes staying inside even more difficult.

On Thursday, I was on a panel called How to Write for a Living When You Can't Live Off Your Fiction created by Barbara Krasnoff. Barbara has hosted this panel topic a number of times, and says she gets very different discussions every time. I got to sit next to my friend Elaine Isaak and talked about my marketing copywriting business. It's not an easy subject--there are a lot of possibilities, but most of them demand a degree of hustle and job search that is too stressful for most people.  I know it is sometimes too stressful for me, satisfying though this way of making a living can be.

Then I went to a reading by my friend John Kessel, from a novel he's working on. It is set in the same Lunar world as some of his recent stories, including "Stories for Men". Afterward, John and I had a beer in the bar, which had hired a singer to entertain on what was supposed to be a slow night. John and I yelled at each other over the noise music. Eric Van later joined us. Unfortunately, that was the last time I talked to John during the con, though I saw him several more times.

On Friday I had a reading.  No one showed up.  I should have mentioned that it was my alien sex story, coming out in F&SF.  It's funny, and I was looking forward to performing it.

I had beers and food with my good friends Paul Di Filippo and Deb Newton, as well as John Crowley and Paul Witcover, and several others.  So, you see, I sometimes travel in exalted circles indeed.

Friday night was the Meet the Prose party, an Readercon tradition.  I caught up with several people, including Judith Berman (warning: she has not posted recently, and her site seems to have been taken over by an Italian journalist of the same name).  I didn't see Judith again either.

On Saturday and Sunday I got together a couple of times with Ann Tonsor Zeddies, Geary Gravel, and Rosemary Kirstein.  Ann and Rosemary I got to see at Boskone earlier this year, but Geary I have not seen in a long time.  We all make up a kind of Coalition of the Unappreciated, and so can commiserate with each other without fear.

Saturday night my neighbor Athena Andreadis had me over to dinner with Joan Slonczewski and Anil Menon, both of whom I enjoyed meeting, along with Athena's partner, Peter.

I also got to see Walter H. Hunt, Greg Feeley (whose great blog has not been updated in quite some time), Vandana Singh, and Madeleine Robins.

If I skipped you or forgot your name, please forgive me.