Aggiecon recap the fourth

Surprisingly, I didn't have much trouble getting up Saturday morning. I wandered the dealers room and art show for a bit before meeting Rick Klaw for an interview. In a twist, I was the one being interviewed. It was an interesting experience, and Rick came up with some truly interesting questions, which I managed to mangle in my own fashion. I sounded suitably dorky, as expected, but we'll cover that up in the editing process to make me sound suitably erudite instead.

After that, I caught the Michael Moorcock Q&A, conducted by Klaw, and then there's a couple of hours of blur, where I really can't remember what I did (although I managed to skip lunch in there somewhere). Must be that lack of sleep thing again. I caught the Heroic Endeavours panel with Joe Lansdale and Martha Wells, which was more of a wide ranging discussion of characters in fiction rather than simply a meditation on heroes, as you might expect. Immediately after that, Joe and I went into the Intro to Editing panel, with Jeff Turner. Somehow, I managed to end up as moderator, which probably doomed things from the start. But apart from one little wobbly part about 20 minutes in where the panelists looked at each other with that dreaded "What do we say next?" look, things stayed lively and entertaining. We discussed the different types of editorial jobs, what makes a good editor, what makes a bad editor, and all the approaches and styles in between. It turned into a good panel, and the audience (another strong turnout) seemed to be happy with the discussion.

I ended up going out to dinner with the Lansdales, Moorcocks, Klaw and Finn and their wives, plus a number of other folks I'm blanking on names right now. We ate at Cenare, an Italian restaurant I hadn't eaten at in 15 years. By a striking coincidence, it took almost that long for us to be served, so by the time we returned to campus, the costume contest, masquerade ball and Miss Aggiecon contest were all over and done with, and Rocky Horror was starting. I crossed paths with Trigger, an old Cepheid and former Aggiecon Director in his own right, and he gave me a Green Arrow Heroclix as he knew my obsession with the character. I gave him one of my few remaining Voices of Vision homebrew collector's beverages. Then we found an empty couch off the beaten path and chatted with Joe for an hour or so before everyone got tired and headed off to bed. Well, Trigger and I did make a detour into Rocky Horror, just so he could see how the heckling has changed since back in the day when we were involved in such silliness. He agreed that the experience was indeed different. Then I went to my room and crashed. It was only as I was drifting off to dreamland that I remembered that I'd promised people I'd visit the Monkeyhouse. Friday and Saturday had both come and gone, and I'd not made it out there. Crap.

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