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GenCon 2013 Part 1 — the Wheaton Conundrum

Last Wednesday night I almost met Wil Wheaton.

Let me rephrase that. Last Wednesday night, I almost inflicted myself upon Wil Wheaton. I was standing with Scott Lynch at the Diana Jones Award, held the night before GenCon begins, and not ten feet off was Wil Wheaton, bigger than life. Well, actually, he was appropriately life-sized.

As I saw him and briefly considered introducing myself, several scenarios played through my head.

Scenario 1: Visceral 

Me: I have noticed that you are Wil Wheaton, and I wished to say that it’s really cool that you are, and how nifty it is that you are in the same room with me.

Wheaton: I praise you for your observational skills, for I am Wil Wheaton. And it is, indeed, a nifty room.

 

GenCon Photos

Every time I go to a convention I swear to myself I’ll remember to take pictures, and I never do. At GenCon this time I finally had my camera with me, but by the mid-point of the con I’d stopped snapping pics, and I never took that many. Fatigue? My natural absent-mindedness? Whatever the case, I have but a handful of pictures.

I’ve lost a lot of writing days and need to climb back into the saddle this morning, so I’ll provide a longer recap later in the week. For now, though, here are a couple of photos.

GenCon Schedule

My GenCon schedule is now finalized, complete with the times I’ll be joining the friendly folks at the Paizo booth in the Great Hall.

I know I’ve said this in public before, but it bears repeating. GenCon itself is great fun and the Writer’s Symposium is one of its best kept secrets. There are hours and hours worth of panels on great topics that should be of interest to writers (and readers), with guests that range from talented semi-professionals to seasoned and famous industry leaders, like Lou Anders, Patrick Rothfuss, Mary Robinette Kowal, Scott Lynch, Brandon Sanderson… I could go on and on. To top it all off, things are well-run and organized. Last year was my first year to be involved with the symposium and I had such a fine time that I’ve enthusiastically recommended it to many friends, and decided to attend GenCon for all all four days so that I could participate more fully.

If you’re in the neighborhood, I hope you’ll stop by, and if you’re already coming, I hope you’ll swing by the rooms in the convention center where the symposium is under swing.

Here’s my schedule. Some of the names on the panels below may change depending upon the schedules of the other participants, but I think this is mostly accurate.

Evildoers Beware!

I have a spider bite on my hand. It may seem unrelated, but while everyone else in the house has come down with various coughs, colds, and even a stomach virus, I remain in perfect health. Coincidence? I think not. Nay, my conclusion is that I have been bitten by a RADIOACTIVE spider. Already I have developed a superhuman immune system. I expect other amazing powers to manifest very shortly. Frankly, I’m just glad I wasn’t bitten by a radioactive camel. Those things HURT, and besides, I’d only be able to go for days without water and spit incredible distances, which isn’t especially useful for crime fighting.

On Saladin Ahmed, and How He Rocks

Two years ago I was talking with the brilliant and charming Mary Robinette Kowal at DragonCon about my upcoming novel (The Desert of Souls, not The Bones of the Old Ones, which wasn’t even written yet) and she happened to mention that another fellow had been writing stories about a duo of Arabian fantasy characters fighting things man was not meant to know. I feigned polite interest, but I knew a sudden chill. That was my thing! Who was this other guy?

Well, it turns out his name is Saladin Ahmed, and at this point you’ve surely heard of him. He’s talented, gracious and damned funny, but I didn’t know any of that two years back. All I knew was a fear that someone was doing my shtick. What I didn’t know is that he’d heard about Howard Andrew Jones in much the same way, with a similar reaction (when we traded stories at ConFusion he mimed the moment of learning about me by shaking his fist at the heavens and cursing my name). We had a good laugh.

Worldcon Friday Morning

It’s Friday morning here in Chicago and another day of the 70th Worldcon is dawning. James Enge and I ended up with a spectacular view from our hotel room, and my camera actually does it some justice. Below us is the Chicago River, winding its way out to Lake Michigan, and the Navy Pier.

I arrived mid-afternoon Friday after a long drive. I’ll provide further updates upon my return. Today I give my reading at 12:30 in the DuSable room. Unfortunately, I acquired a cold from my son this week. The sniffles are mostly cleared up now, but it’s settled into my chest, so I sound strangely deep. Maybe it will help. What won’t help is the fact I had one of the worst night’s sleep of my life, thanks to me taking too much cold medicine. I’m pretty bleary this morning.

Right, well, off to breakfast.

Back From GenCon

I returned from my whirlwind trip to GenCon late Saturday night. The four days of GenCon  aren’t long enough to see and do everything, which means that the one day I was there didn’t give me a chance to really do the convention justice at all.

Still, I met (or re-connected with) a whole slew of interesting people.

Before I get into any recounting, I want to pass on my pleased impression about the GenCon staffers. There was some mild confusion about where my badge was supposed to be. When I arrived at the GenCon hall twenty minutes before I was scheduled to appear on a panel and my badge couldn’t be relocated, staff member Rik DesChain personally escorted me to the panel to make sure that I could get to where I needed to go, then marched off to sort out the matter with the missing badge.