Jeez, it's been a week and I haven't reported on my Readercon experience.  I'll have to be quick before it all fades into the usual obscurity of things that happened more than a couple of days ago.

This year the con started on Thursday, which seemed absurd to me. But it was well-attended from the start, and I'd say the extension was a great success.

As a local, I could fill in the panels on Thursday night and Friday afternoon, and, in fact, most of my work was done by the time the weekend proper rolled around.

My first panel was about "Managing Motivation to Write", ably run by Steve Kelner, who interviewed me years ago for his book Motivate Your Writing! His wife, mystery writer Toni Kelner, and I are frequently on panels together. Also with us were two writers I had not met before, Matthew Kressel and Ben Loory. Everyone else on the panel was more, well, writerly than I am. I am rarely inspired, work to rules so rigid they probably violate some kind of OSHA regulation, and am often savagely mournful enough that I wish I could get to drinking more than my one or two evening glasses of wine--but, regretably, am too disciplined to do it. Everyone else followed their stories where they led and had all sorts of adventures. They did not outline. I always feel I am the inspiration on such panels. I did not grow up as a writer, and only fell into it later in life.

Anyway, a fun panel, and Steve managed it ably.

Immediately after that I was on a panel with the ominous title of "Is Realistic Fiction Useful?" It was a perennial topic, truth and fiction in "truth" and "fiction". The moderator was Liz Gorinsky, of Tor.com, who had clearly thought a lot about how to keep things moving.  Again, there were a couple of writers I had not met before, Nathan Ballingrud and Grant C. Carrington, as well as Daniel Abraham. I had met Daniel and his frioend and collaborator Ty Franck at a writing workshop in Taos, NM a couple of years ago. It was great to see them both, and Daniel was particularly amusing on the panel. He also writes a book every month or so, and so is a bit intimidating to trade "what have you been up to" news with.

OK, enough for tonight. Anyway, you get the idea--it's surprising how much fun writers are, at least SF and fantasy writers.  If you ever get a chance to buy one a drink, I suggest that you take it.