Friday Night Videos

These past couple of days, I've become thoroughly fascinated by A Year of Billy Joel, a blog started by a self-professed Billy Joel hater who decided to listen to Joel's entire catalog and critique the music he's so long despised. But an interesting thing happened--the fellow based most of his dislike on some broad assumptions that he soon discovered were unfounded. As he works through each album, his commentary is fresh and insightful (and funny--he's very, very funny). He doesn't like everything, but is quite enthusiastic when he comes across something that speaks to him. In the process, he's grudgingly become a Billy Joel fan. I, myself, am a huge Billy Joel fan--not obsessive or anything--but he's my second-favorite musical act behind only the Kinks. His blog has prompted me to revisit my Joel collection--bootlegs and all--and reexamine some of the deep album tracks and rarities. Alas, most of those intriguing songs don't have videos, so for today's Friday Night Video I'll go with the super-fun Sometimes A Fantasy. Love the creepy, sleazy alter-ego Billy in this one, plus the twist ending. Aerosmith cribbed the whole concept nearly a decade later when they cut a new video for "Sweet Emotion" to mark the release of Pandora's Box, and while that later video is more polished and sophisticated in technical terms, you have to credit Joel's video for pushing the envelope back when MTV was still in its infancy.

Previously on Friday Night Videos... Dire Straits.

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Chicken Ranch report no. 27

Hey howdy hey buckaroos and buckarettes! As I press along with the second draft revisions of the Chicken Ranch book I cannot express my appreciation enough for all the encouragement I've been getting from the bleachers. Seriously, folks. I feel like one of those guys in a marathon who thought they'd trained themselves up enough, but hadn't, so they're struggling like hell by mile 10 yet folks keep bringing him water and urging him on. Not like I've ever run a marathon. I many be crazy, but I'm not nuts.

In any event, it very much does feel like I've run a marathon and am now hitting the final mile (in a metaphorical sense, of course. After extensive on-site testing, I've discovered that I'm not one of those people who experiences the euphoric "runner's high." I'm more of the "runner's agony" kind of fellow--and yes, that metaphor does indeed extend to writing). Since last I posted an update, I have completed second draft revisions on Chapters 9, 10, 11 and 12. I have Chapter 13, "Hell to Pay," open right now, which by interesting coincidence is the very first chapter I wrote, more than 18 months ago to serve as a sample in my futile efforts to land an agent. It's undergone some significant changes since then, mainly because the rest of the book got written, thereby rendering some of 13 redundant and other parts of it needing expansion. That's the nature of writing chapters out of sequence, but other than one or two small additions, I don't expect 13 to require much in the way of revisions at all in this go-round.

Chapter 9, on the other hand, was a bitch and a half. In all honesty, I knew it would be before I ever wrote a single word in the book. The chapter's title, "The Wagon Wheel," tells you all you need to know. The brothel in Sealy shut down by Marvin Zindler at the same time as the Chicken Ranch played a significant role in how events unfolded, but received very little media attention at the time and almost nobody remembers it today. So I was faced with the dilemma of a very, very lean chapter. My solution was to lean heavily on tangential biographical material for Austin County Sheriff Truman Maddox. Among Texas law enforcement circles, Sheriff Maddox was almost as big a legend as Sheriff Jim Flournoy over in La Grange. The reason Sheriff Maddox isn't as famous is because he never beat up Marvin Zindler. But Sheriff Maddox was a fascinating figure, and the great historian Thad Sitton has published two books with some amazing stuff about Sheriff Maddox--as well at other lawmen in the state--and even used a fantastic photo of Sheriff Maddox as the cover to The Texas Sheriff: Lord of the County Line (see above. Isn't it great?).

The trouble was, fascinating as Sheriff Maddox's life was, I relied way too heavily on Sitton's earlier interviews, which unfortunately, never so much as touched on the Wagon Wheel and Marvin Zindler (I know this for a fact, as Sitton was kind enough to chat with me on the subject for a couple hours early on in this project. Very helpful and encouraging fellow. If you haven't read his books, I highly recommend them). I have a good story from retired Texas Ranger Ray Martinez as well, but the bulk of the material comes from Sitton. And then there's the fact that almost all of the Sheriff Maddox stuff amounts to hand-waving on my part, distracting the reader from the fact I had so little information on the Wagon Wheel itself.

Well, I mentioned that I lucked into a trove of information on the Wagon Wheel not too long ago, after I completed the chapter. Which meant that Chapter 9 underwent a huge second draft rewrite when it's time came. The chapter is much better for it, I assure you. The downside (which is also the upside) is that much of the Sheriff Maddox material is superfluous now. It takes up too much space and distracts from the important stuff (whereas before it distracted from the fact there wasn't much important stuff). It had to go. It pained me to cut it, because I really, really grew to like Sheriff Maddox and wanted to give him his due. But the quality of a book is dependent as much on what the author leaves out as it is what he puts in.

Not one to waste anything, I now present some of the choice bits of Sheriff Maddox's story--as interpreted by myself--for your reading pleasure. This gives you a glimpse of what my book almost was.

SHERIFF TRUMAN MADDOX

With the meat market doing good, solid business, Maddox had no reason to go looking for other opportunities. But other opportunities came looking for him in 1949. Marcus Steck had won election as sheriff the previous year and needed a dependable deputy for Sealy. Austin County had no police radios and the county commissioners frowned on even the 10 cent cost of a long distance phone call from Bellville, the county seat, to Sealy. The 15 miles separating the two sizeable towns meant unacceptably long response times for Sealy, so Sheriff Steck needed a deputy who could manage the southern half of the county on his own without depending on backup or even regular direction. Maddox’s outstanding service record from World War II made him an easy choice for Sheriff Steck, but Maddox wasn’t so easily convinced.

“I’ve been running from the law for 30 years,” Maddox said in classic form, “why should I change and start running with ‘em now?”

After a good laugh, Sheriff Steck persisted, more convinced than ever he’d found his man. Maddox, on the other hand, saw the huge responsibility the job and judged himself inadequate.

“I got more serious in deciding I didn’t want to take it because I didn’t know enough about the law,” Maddox recalled years later. “I thought that a man should know more than the average man on the street to become an officer, to tell someone else what to do. I said if they found that it was possible for me to go to some kind of school, then I would consider it.”

As fate would have it, the Texas Department of Public Safety held a program at Camp Mabry at the time known as the School for Texas Sheriffs, which Sheriff Steck promptly signed Maddox up for. A quick as that, Deputy Maddox found himself part of the Austin County Sheriff’s Department, making the grand salary of $150 a month. Although technically a full-time deputy, Maddox worked most days in his meat market to pay the bills, and Sealy residents quickly learned to telephone him there if they needed the law. That proved to be the most effective arrangement, because in addition to having to use his own car--a 1949 Oldmobile Rocket 88--for official police business, Maddox discovered the miserly county commissioners provided only a $25 monthly mileage allowance, which effectively ruled out regular patrolling.

---

In 1953, worn down by the stress of the job, Sheriff Steck announced he wouldn’t run again. Maddox threw his hat into the ring, but he had an uphill climb ahead of him--he hadn’t grown up in the county, didn’t have a Czech or German surname, seemed too young for some and to top it off, he didn’t live in Bellville, the county seat. No previous sheriff had won the election without those prerequisites, but Maddox’s reputation carried a lot of weight. Many of the county’s power brokers lined up behind him, and Maddox campaigned hard, becoming a regular fixture at all 18 of the county’s public dance halls whenever they held an event. The effort paid off--Maddox beat the odds and won.

---

In the late 1960s, Interstate 10 supplanted U.S. 90, running right through the center of Sealy and bringing more than enough trouble into Austin County to keep Sheriff Maddox busy full-time. Once, a man pulled over and murdered his wife right there on the side of the highway. The suspected killer had an arrest record, indicating he lived in Sutton, Texas, so when Sheriff Maddox received a tip the killer was hiding out in Anahuac, Mexico, he contacted the local police chief there to make the arrest. Once the killer was in custody, the Mexican police chief made arrangements to turn him over to Sheriff Maddox on the International Bridge in Laredo.

“The sheriff flew into Laredo with one of his constables,” said Texas Ranger Ramiro Martinez, who accompanied Sheriff Maddox to the rendezvous. “We went to the bridge at the designated time, but no prisoner.”

A frustrated Sheriff Maddox sent the constable back to Austin County while he checked into a hotel room to try and unravel the problem--made doubly difficult since he couldn’t reach the Mexican police chief by phone. The next morning, Ranger Martinez happened into the commandante of the Mexican Federales from Nuevo Laredo. The commandante directed him to the Mexican newspaper, emblazoned with the headline, “Ignorant police officers arrested for clandestine extradition.” The killer hadn’t been from Sutton, Texas--such a town didn’t exist--and was, in fact, a Mexican national. When the trio reached customs, the truth finally came out, and the officers as well as the killer ended up behind bars.

When Ranger Martinez relayed the information to the sheriff, an exasperated Maddox asked, “What the hell am I going to do?”

In the end, Sheriff Maddox flew back to Sealy and with the assistance of the American Consulate in Nuevo Laredo, translated, notarized and filed the proper paperwork to transfer the case to the Mexican prosecutor’s office. The imprisoned Mexican officers were released with a reprimand.

“The guy was tried over there and I think he got 10 years. Over there, 10 years in a Mexican prison is 10 years--it’s not like here,” Ranger Martinez explained. “So, the sheriff was happy. That saved the county a lot of money!”

Other officers might brood over losing “their” arrest to another jurisdiction, but Sheriff Maddox had a way of looking at things that cut through everything that didn’t matter. Serving out a sentence in a Mexican prison worked just as well as a Texas prison. Either way, the killer was brought to justice, and that satisfied Sheriff Maddox just fine.

Not all of Austin County’s trouble arrived via I-10. In one particularly noteworthy instance, it came from the skies, sparking a statewide scare and talk of alien invaders. It sounded like something Fox Mulder might investigate on The X-Files, but in reality, a panic over so-called cattle mutilations swept the state in the early 1970s with many cases reported in Austin, Harris and surrounding counties. The hysteria grew so much that the Texas Rangers eventually looked into the matter, but for the most part county sheriffs handled the investigations on their own.

“Over the years, I’ve had calls on everything you can imagine, but some of the strangest had to do with dead animals,” Sheriff Maddox said. “There was a lot of publicity throughout Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, and some into Colorado, of the little green men from Mars killing the cattle and using some means of killing ‘em that nobody could find out what was going on. Some people even thought they would take out all of the blood of the calf or cow. They had certain things that they did. They would cut the eyes out of the animal, they would remove the sex organs, and they’d do this with and extremely sharp, surgical-type knife. No one was supposed to be able to do a job that good. It spread like wildfire.

“Well, being a country boy, I couldn’t believe in these people from Mars coming in here and doing anything to us, and I couldn’t believe that no type people, even thought there is some weird people in the world, could go from place to place and kill these animals,” he said.

Sheriff Maddox made up his mind to get to the bottom of it, and being a straightforward man, went about it in the most direct manner possible: He purchased a calf, slaughtered it, placed it in an isolated field then sat back and waited. Within 24 hours, black vultures arrived. They attacked the carcass at its softest points–the eyes, the genitals and the anus, slicing openings with their sharp beaks and pulling out the entrails. Within a surprisingly short time, they’d hollowed out the calf leaving behind cuts of surgical precision that perfectly matched the techniques supposedly employed by aliens.

“I went back to town to get some proof of this, carried some people back out there and let several people see it,” Sheriff Maddox said. “Then I made a tape on this particular deal. It got out through the news, and it stopped most of the stories of the little men from Mars. I was a country boy, and I just couldn’t believe it. That’s the way that we solved the notorious gang from Mars.”

No two ways about it, that's a pretty big chunk of prose, isn't it? So you can imagine how much directly relevant good stuff went into the chapter forcing this out. I'm a particular fan of his investigation of the "Little Green Men from Mars" and wanted to make everyone else got a chance to enjoy it as much as I did. Hopefully, this is the last major blood-letting I'll have to inflict on the manuscript.

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Biblion: Frankenstein

I am remiss. I've had a new publication available for months yet inexplicably failed to tell anyone about it. My apologies. This is a little different from anything else I've done in the past, so perhaps I can be forgiven for the oversight.

I have a paper, or essay, if you prefer, available now on the New York Public Library's Biblion website. The paper, co-written with Donald Olson, Marilynn Olson, Russell Doescher, Ava Pope and Kelly Schnarr (whew! That's quite a mouthful, innit?) is titled "Frankenstein's Moon" and reexamines some of the work done in pinpointing the time frame when Mary Shelley began work on her famous novel as well as validating her version of events (which have been questioned by various historians over the years).

The paper is part of a much larger celebration of Shelley and her literary creation, titled FRANKENSTEIN: The Afterlife of Shelley and Frankenstein. Here's a brief description from the site itself:

What makes a monster? What is it like living on the margins of society? Is technology inherently good or bad? These questions guided Mary Shelley 200 years ago as she wrote her classic novel Frankenstein — they remain just as relevant today. The second edition of Biblion explores the connections between Shelley’s time and our own, showing how the classics resonate throughout society and the breadth of NYPL’s offerings.

I'm very pleased to participate in my own small way, and encourage everyone to take a look. The site is well worth a look if you're a fan of Frankenstein and have an hour or six to spend going through all the fascinating features on display.

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Chicken Ranch report no. 26

I have met the enemy, and it's name is Wagon Wheel. See that image to the right? Yeah, that bombed-out row of cinder block buildings. That's all that remains of the Wagon Wheel, lesser-known cousin to the more famed Chicken Ranch. If you've ever driven along Interstate 10 between Houston and San Antonio, you've probably seen it just west of Sealy, even if you never knew what it was.

The Wagon Wheel was a failed motel that found a second life as a brothel. It was closed down by Marvin Zindler at the same time as the Chicken Ranch, but as Austin County Sheriff Truman Maddox never challenged Zindler, or the governor, or anyone else, really, in defense of the brothel, it pretty much went away quietly. Very few people have ever heard about it. Even newspaper accounts of the time generally relegate it to an afterthought tacked on to the end of a sentence about the Chicken Ranch, usually going something like this: "...as well as another brothel outside of Sealy." That's it. Nothing to see here, move along.

Except that when I made up my mind to tell the Chicken Ranch's story, I committed to telling the entire story--or at least as much as I could uncover--which included the Wagon Wheel as well. I didn't realize what I was getting myself into. The more I researched, the more I learned that the Wagon Wheel and Chicken Ranch fates were very much intertwined by circumstances. So much so that the Wagon Wheel demanded a separate chapter. The trouble was, I didn't really have enough information for a full chapter, and because of a dearth of information on the Wagon Wheel from any source, I ended up padding the chapter with tangential material by necessity. In the end I had a short chapter with some interesting stuff in it, but nothing very meaty and not terribly satisfying to me, personally.

Fast forward a few months. Out of the blue, I have a source very familiar with the operation of the Wagon Wheel practically drop into my lap. And this source gives me a few key bits of information that leads to some other sources. Suddenly, boom! I've got a whole heck of a lot of blanks filled in, validation of several extrapolations on my part and illuminating context for facts I already had. The downside is that the chapter required an extreme rewrite, rather than a simple edit.

I worked hard to integrate a lot of the padding material into the chapter, so extracting it is proving more challenging than simply highlighting and deleting. And the new material doesn't fit so neatly in the vacated spots, forcing me to extensively rewrite perfectly good material. But as I slog through and make my slow progress, the new materials laid out clearly next to existing materials, the cumulative context makes one thing obvious: Some of the folks involved with the operation of the Wagon Wheel were not very nice at all.

Hopefully, I'll wrap up the Wagon Wheel chapter shortly, at which point I'll only have six more chapters to go in the second draft re-write. Those should go much more quickly, after which I'll be time for beta-readers. Now, if I only had a publisher...

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Godspeed, Neil Armstrong

Neal Armstrong, commander of Apollo 11, the first human being ever to walk on the moon, died today. The Eagle touched down on the lunar surface July 20, 1969. I was born September 16, 1969. I've never known a world where humans haven't set foot on another world.

I never met Neil Armstrong. For someone who is a complete stranger to me, his death has thrown me into a kind of numb melancholy. I've met Buzz Aldrin, who has become one of NASA's greatest ambassadors after overcoming clinical depression. I've read several of Michael Collins' books, including the sublime Carrying the Fire. I've met other astronauts over the years, such as the late Dick Scobee, and even interviewed Bill Anders regarding a funny anecdote for my Chicken Ranch book. I live in the same town as Charlie Duke, and driven past his house many times. But Armstrong is the man who inspired my early dreams of becoming an astronaut, and my love of astronomy and space exploration that he engendered prompted me to become a science fiction writer after it became clear the whole flying rockets into space thing wasn't going to work out for me. You see, in addition to commanding Apollo 11 and walking on the moon (which was the coolest thing ever!) he also piloted the astounding X-15 rocket plane into sub-orbital space seven times, earning his astronaut wings before he ever joined NASA (which was the second coolest thing ever!).

This summer, the family made another of our patented, cross-country family vacation road trips (which reminds me--I haven't properly chronicled the misadventures via blog yet. My bad). We went to Florida this year, and one of our stops was the John F. Kennedy Space Center on Cape Canaveral. Even having visited the Johnson Space Center as many times in Houston as I have, I must admit Kennedy gave me many, many instances of squee! One of the most affecting moments, however, came when I discovered the hand casts of the Apollo 11 crew, in the image above. Aldrin's hands look rough and rugged, like an engineer's. Collins' hands seemed almost archetypical, Everyman's hands. Armstrong's though, I found arresting. They reminded me a lot of my grandfather's hands, although they didn't necessarily look all that much like my grandfather's hands, if that makes any sense. They had a sense of age about them, like they carried the weight of an entire species. Silly, I know, but still, the simple plaster display struck me as profoundly intimate.

Godspeed, Neil Armstrong. You inspired me, and hopefully I'll do some good in this life because of it.

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Friday Night Videos

Okay, today's video is "Calling Elvis" by Dire Straits. To be honest, I feel the live version of this song, off the On the Night album, is much stronger than the studio single. But then again, the live version doesn't have this magnificently bizarre Thunderbirds puppet video. So my choice is clear. Enjoy.

Previously on Friday Night Videos... The Kinks.

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Friday Night Videos

Hey all, blogging from my hotel room in the Dominican Republic, and the power just went out. Predictable, huh? So I'm going to keep this one short and sweet. Here are the Kinks with, you got it, "Predictable":

Previously on Friday Night Videos... Men At Work.

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Yeah, I'm late with the Armadillocon report, pt. 2

Saturday morning dawned all too early, and it took quite a bit of convincing to roust Monkey Girl out of bed (nothing against Armadillocon--this is a recurring theme at our house). We were rewarded with a cool, comfortable ride to Austin, which is a thing to be cherished, as my AC in the car was still out. Once we arrived at the hotel, we were happy to see no fire trucks parked out front. Flooding (which I've since been informed was the result of a broken 1-inch line and not some idiot hanging heavy stuff from a fire sprinkler) was not in the cards this day. Monkey Girl quickly found a fellow in an elaborate steampunk battle armor costume for me to take her photo with, then was off to pursue her schedule of events.

My first panel was at 11 a.m., "Alternate History: The Way Things Weren't," with Steven Utley, Howard Waldrop, Peni Griffin, Bob Mahoney and Josh Rountree. With a lineup like that, how could it not be a great panel? We talked a whole heck of a lot about history--the regular kind--and how hindsight is so apt at spotting pivot points where things could very, very easily gone a different way. Research is a rabbit hole one can fall down and never emerge from. We also touched on the fact that bad alternate history exists pretty much only as a cockeyed "Where's Waldo?" exercise with famous figures. I don't think I embarrassed myself too badly, and it was a lively discussion.

My next panel came at 4 p.m., "Learning from Others' Mistakes: Writing Errors to Avoid," which proved great fun. I moderated. Bill Spencer, Kathleen Cheney, Urania Fung, Scott Lynch and Jamie Lee Moyer pulled more than their weight in the discussion. I kicked things off by confessing that as a 17-year-old, I sent my recently completed epic fantasy novel (based heavily on D&D) to Stanley Schmidt at Analog for serialization. Yeah, nobody else 'fessed up to anything that cringe-inducing. Mostly we talked about stupid writer tricks, and how not to interact with editors. Nothing earth-shaking, but the audience seemed entertained, so I call it a win.

I fear I missed a whole lot of cool panels this year, and didn't make a single reading. Mid-afternoon, I got a call from home that the air conditioner had gone out. How's that for crummy luck? Not only was my car a sweatbox, but my house was rapidly becoming one as well. This became something of a distraction for me the rest of the day, so to anyone I had a conversation with--if I didn't seem like I was all there, you have my apologies. I took Monkey Girl over to How Do You Roll for sushi dinner, then came back in time for her to hit the art auction and me to wander through the dealers' room a bit (art show was fantastic this year, with lots of talent on display). I did catch the "Pictures at an Exhibition" session, in which pro artists such as John Picacio gave a guided tour through the art show and discussed the styles, influences and techniques used in the various works on display. It was interesting, but as the art show is merely sectioned off from the dealers' room, the noise grew overwhelming after a bit and I ended up stepping away simply because I couldn't hear anything said.

A highlight of the evening was a screening of Joe Lansdale's low-budget horror film, Christmas with the Dead, scripted by his son, Keith, based on a story of Joe's, with daughter Kasey Lansdale as one of the zombies. It's a little rough, as you might expect from a low-budget indy film, and there were a few pacing issues, but overall it was a great deal of fun. It's certainly better than almost any Roger Corman-produced film, or anything you can find on the skiffy channel. There's some sly, subversive humor in the film, some trademark Lansdale strangeness, and a good number of gross-out bits to satisfy the zombie fans. I can see this becoming a cult classic, especially around the holidays. It's not Bubba Ho-Tep, but then again, what is?

We wrapped it up soon after that. There were several room parties, including a joint one thrown by ApolloCon, FenCon and ConDFW--great folks, all of them--but for some reason hardly anyone showed. I mean, it wasn't exactly crickets chirping, but it wasn't far from it. This is the second year in a row where Armadillocon had no Friday night parties at all, which is troubling enough, but to have the Saturday parties underwhelm--and I'm not speaking of heavy drinking, but rather of the continuous ebb and flow of fans and interesting, varied and stimulating conversations--that I am rightfully concerned. hopefully, next year will correct this negative trajectory.

So, Monkey Girl and I packed up and headed home before the wee hours got too wee. She made a killing at the art show, leveraging her limited funds into a veritable plethora of fine art pieces worth far more than the paltry sums she paid for them. Now all she lacks is wall space for the illustrations. She also found a partner in crime close to her own age that also likes Doctor Who and is active on Deviant Art. Yeah, a monster is created. For my part, the convention ended on a downer. The AC issues at home ended any hope of returning for Sunday's wrap up, and I had soooo many people I still hadn't gotten a chance to talk with. And, of course, I wanted to hear Howard Waldrop's traditional con-ending reading. Maybe next year, hmm?

I have to admit my amusement of Neal Barrett, Jr., being utterly befuddled by my Galaxy Note phone when he borrowed it to make a call. Not to worry, I helped him out. But still. Does that make me a bad person?

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Yeah, I'm late with the Armadillocon report

So sue me. Life's been a bit busy. Armadillocon 34 happened almost two weeks ago, and I'm just now barely getting around to writing up a report. And guess what? That report's going to be fairly terse. And I'm not identifying everyone in the photos--you kids can tag those you know once this blog post imports to Facebook. Yeah, I'm that lazy.

Armadillocon, through circumstances beyond my control, turned out to be the only convention I attended in 2012. This is not good for me, since 1) New Braunfels is not known for its writer community and 2) I depend on the writerly interaction I experience at conventions to recharge my enthusiasm for whatever projects I'm working on. This year, for the second year in a row, Monkey Girl attended with me, hitting the gaming demos, wreaking havoc on the art show and generally attending any panel that caught her attention. We arrived around 5 p.m. on Friday, after a miserable drive up in my car with the non-functioning air conditioning. My apologies to anyone who happened to be standing downwind from me--I normally don't smell that bad, I swear (on the upside, I now have a new car with a great AC system!). Monkey Girl and I checked in at registration then headed over to Fire Bowl Cafe for dinner. When we returned, we found the disconcerting sight of two fire trucks parked outside of the hotel. And fire alarms going off inside. Nobody seemed to take evacuation too seriously, so she and I wandered in and out.

Turns out there was no fire, but rather some genius decided to hang something extremely heavy from one of the fire sprinklers in a room on the fourth floor. Which promptly broke, flooding the room, and adjacent rooms, and rooms below, and eventually the lobby while setting off all the fire alarms. Stop me if you've heard this one before. The moral of the story: People are dumb.

I caught the tail end of the "Texas Is Fantastic" panel, interrupted often by a voice over the intercom muttering something unintelligible about the watery apocalypse ongoing on floors 1-4 and the lobby. Opening ceremonies were fun, with A. Lee Martinez as the toastmaster. He promised not to get mushy, then got all mushy and life-affirming and geeky. Other guests of honor included Anne Bishop, Liz Gorinsky, Chloe Neill, Julie Dillon and Bill Parker.

My one panel on Friday was "The Still Changing Definition of Urban Fantasy" with Anne Bishop, Chloe Neill, Nancy Holzner, Stina Leicht (my arch-enemy) and Ari Marmell. About half the panel came to Urban Fantasy through the works of Charles de Lint, and the other half some time after de Lint, Emma Bull and others had done much to define the sub-genre. I'm still not clear one the changing definition element, other than the fact that Urban Fantasy has proven flexible and moved beyond the old "elves in the modern city" stereotype it once had. We also distinguished it from other forms of "Contemporary Fantasy," such as what someone like Jonathan Carroll writes, in that music seems to play a big part in Urban Fantasy, and the subgenre is very much a product of the time it is written, steeped in pop culture and the flavor of the era (ie Wizard of the Pigeons etc.). Holzner moderated well, giving everyone an opportunity to contribute to the discussion. Fun panel, and I got to rub elbows with two of the GoHs. Does Armadillocon treat me right, or what? Afterwards, I chatted with various folks a bit then, as there were no room parties that night (second year in a row nothing happened on Friday evening--a disturbing trend) I gathered Monkey Girl and headed home. Hey, I'm old and she's young, so we've got to manage our time wisely.

And with that, I'll stop for now. I'll try and wrap up my report and post the remaining photos I took in the next day or so.

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