World Fantasy postmortem 1

World Fantasy proved to be an interesting experience this year. Not as productive businessly-speaking as I'd hopes, mainly because my Wetsilver novel project jumped the tracks a while back, but a positive four days overall.



To tell the truth, I have no idea which day the above photo was taken. Thursday? Friday? In any event, it was quite chilly on the smokers' terrace, but that was the best place to catch World Fantasy Award nominated Chris Roberson (left) and his wife Allison Baker, co-owners of Monkeybrain Books. That guy on the right is the groovy John Picacio. Allison works for a firm that I'm going to say specializes in political consultation, even though that's probably off the mark. What's cool is that she'd just finished up working on Chet Edwards' campaign. Chet is the absolute best U.S. Rep working today. Seriously. He's become infamous for overcoming every dirty trick the Republicans have thrown at him to boot him from office. Crawford is in his district, which means he is Dubya's rep, which I find far too amusing. Allison and I had a great big ol' sloppy Chet Love Fest, and lamented the fact that the environment wasn't one that was conducive to Chet seeking higher or statewide office, because given the proper resources, he could win going away. He's that great.

Because of various circumstance, I didn't spend Thursday night in Austin. That's right--I drove back to New Braunfels. So I'm pretty ragged out and ready for bed, but about this time Orion wakes up with nasty congestion, so we break out the Vick's Vapo Rub and I get to walk him 'til 3 a.m. And then get up bright and early to take the girls to school. Ouch.



Suffice to say, more than one person asked if I was doing okay at the con on Friday, since I looked somewhat worse for the wear. No matter, I had a good time anyway. Around noon I connected with Patrick O'Leary, Rodger Turner and Victoria Strauss (pictured above) for Rodger's annual SFSite lunch. Great conversation and fun. We walked over to Serrano's, a local Tex-Mex chain, and we all ate to our heart's content, although service was very, very slow.



I was zoning out in the hotel lobby due to sleep deprivation in the afternoon, and Peter Beagle saw me and came over. I'd sent his interview off to Brutariana while back and we talked about that briefly until the conversation turned to beer. I mentioned that I'd brewed up three cases of nut brown ale for Mark Finn's book release party that night, and Peter was quite interested. We talked about beer for two hours, as I've mentioned. One of the things that's fun about talking with Peter Beagle for two hours is all the interesting folks that stop by to join the conversation, such as editor David Hartwell above...



...or Bill Crider, Neal Barrett, Jr. and the lovely Ruth Barrett. What really give a schmuck like me a good jolt of egoboo is being able to introduce those good folks above to Beagle, and vice versa. About this time, the conversation veered away from beer and became more about strange and silly songs. I enlightened them all to the existence of "Sneaky Pete" Rizzo and his classic tunes such as "Booger On My Beer Mug" and "Tie Me Tallywack Down"...



...Michael and Linda Moorcock were already well-acquainted with Beagle and didn't need my introductory services. They also didn't need me to enlighten them about questionable musical entertainment. I do believe I attended a panel or two during the day, but for the life of me can't remember what the topics were.

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