It was the best of cons, it was the worst of cons … Well, maybe not, but it definitely had its ups and downs. Lynda’s suitcase, full of copies of Throne Price and the Rustycon edition of Mekan’stan, failed to make the 20 minute tranfer in Vancouver between a delayed flight from Prince George and the on-time flight to Seattle. Lynda’s end of the telephone inquisition required to connect her (not yet found) luggage to her gave her roommate (me) some morbid entertainment. The joys of Explaining Oneself to Officialdom – particularly when said officialdom don’t have it together. Luggage reappeared mid Saturday morning, and Lynda undertook to divest herself of the contents in as many deserving directions as possible, on the premise that if it went awol on the return flight there would be nothing to lose!

Lynda started out on Friday with “Making Characters Die” and “Writing a Sex Scene in SF”, which was where I tracked her down after I rolled in at 9:30 pm or thereabouts, having taken the 506 from SeaTac, and not having lost my luggage. Though I discovered that while having carry on baggage searched was irksome, having to walk the length of Vancouver airport, retrieve my luggage from within a glassed-in carosel, prove it’s mine, lug it through US Customs and Immigration, reload it onto a conveyer belt etc, was enough to convert me to the principle of carry on and only carry on until they develop Transporters.

My first panel was “Make those Characters Speak Up!” with: Lynda, Kevin Radthorne, who was showing off (cool plastic stand!) his novel The Road to Kotaishi, published by Windstorm press. He did the cover himself using Bryce, and if he is not being utterly disingenuous about his lack of artistic talent, I gotta have that program! Susan Matthews, who has finally produced another installment of her Judiciary series (so I get to [a] read about how Andrej Kosciusko finally gets to make his break with Fleet and his damnable – and I mean it literally – job as chief surgeon and inquisitor … and lands up in even more trouble and [b] update my Medicine and Science Fiction page). After I went through my recitation of various subtleties of dialogue, learned largely from Bernard Grebanier’s book Playwriting and my love of drama, she said cheerfully “I cheat,” tossed off an example of the shorthand that the writer can use, taking advantage of modern cultures and assumptions, and then took the high road and described the intricacies of her polyglot, multicultural Judiciary universe.

The next panel we spectated at, “Contracts: your rights as an artist, author, or musician”, a one-woman show by Jennifer DiMarco of Windstorm Creative, followed by “To POD or not POD”, featuring Jennifer (“Pods are evil!”) DiMarco, Kevin (“Born of a POD”) Radthorne, Dave (“Multipod”) Duncan, and Jack Beslanwitch (whose alignment I am afraid I cannot recall). Though until I see one of those infamous machines in action, I’m not going to believe all the descriptions I get of it lining and binding without getting glue over everything! After that Lynda, Kevin and myself did “Developing your Creativity” with an abundance of writers in the audience, so we wandered cheerfully between rituals, angst, and works in progress, as well as Where Ideas Come From. (I’m in favour of Pratchett’s cosmic ray theory myself: in Wyrd Sisters he explains creativity as a sleet of particles of inspiration constantly bombarding the human brain – which every so often stops one or two. Certain unfortunate people – like the Dwarf playwright Hwel – have such high stopping power that they have difficulty finishing a sentence without having another idea.)

(Two entries merged into one, September 30, 2007; original first date preserved).