Conestoga 12

So another Conestoga is over. As usual, I had a lot of fun and forgot to take any pictures of it.

Fridays always present a slow ramp-up. I attended one panel about future trends in science fiction, then wandered around the not-fully-set-up dealers' and art rooms before running into Paula and Rick of Baen's Universe. Even though I haven't published with them in almost a year, they treated me like family, bought me dinner and a beer (thanks, guys). I never thought when I submitted "Astromonkeys!" to them a couple of years ago that it would yield such great personal dividends. I vaguely hoped to get a check; I didn't imagine friends would come with the deal.

Friday night was the Yard Dog Press party, which featured Hurling Monkeys and entertainment by Bradley "Bland Lemon" Denton and David Lee Anderson. Brad has written some of the most violent stuff imaginable, but personally, he seems like the nicest guy around. He spent the weekend carrying around a huge-ass Get Well card for Howard Waldrop, which he was having everyone at the con sign.

Saturday was when most of the action occurred. I started the day with a reading. Here's the deal: like last year, this year's Conestoga had another mini-convention piggy-backed onto it. Last year, it was 1632 fans, and I ended up attending a lot of their events, because 1632 is a Baen thing, and I really like the Baen folks (as I may have mentioned above).

This year, the con-within-a-con was a group called "Fangs, Fur and Fey," a group of urban fantasy authors. The books mostly seem to be by and for females, and usually seem to center around vampires-werewolves-witches in the modern world. One branch is mostly suspense, private eyes and like that, and the other branch is chick lit--funny, sassy books in the Sex and the City vein, only with, you know, vampires-werewolves-witches.

I'm glad they were there. Science fiction as a genre seems to be aging, and not entirely well, and the urban fantasy contingent have brought fresh life. Plus a bunch of the authors and their fans are hot. I had a great time on panels and readings with Shanna Swendson, Michele Bardsley and Dakota Cassidy. Dakota is a sultry-voiced natural beauty who had great fun purring into the microphone on our panel and teasing the audience. She sort of reminded me of those guys in the dunk tank at the fair, trying to taunt people into hitting the target, only, you know, hot. Later, Renee George took an awful picture of me, but in my defense, her flash thing took forever to go off and I got bored waiting... twice.

More later...