Ah, well, it was quite a weekend. First off, I missed Friday night’s reading because I wasn’t feeling well. I got this wild hair about exercising earlier in the week and joined the YMCA. I promptly pulled a muscle my first day in the gym and could barely walk Friday.

Saturday started better. People showed up for the Using SF in the Classroom panel and we had a nice discussion about the role of science fiction, fantasy and horror, and students. Nobody showed up for my signing later in the afternoon, but that seemed to be the way it was going for about everybody.

This morning we started with a panel called Is Blogging Helping Your Career? panel. It wasn’t quite so well attended, but it did meet fellow panelists Shanna Swendson and Rachel Vincent for the first time. They’re super nice ladies and it was fun talking to them.

A few hours later it was time for my solo reading. Thirty minutes to read whatever I wanted to whomever showed up. So, I go to the room about 10 minutes early and there’s a lady I don’t know (and won’t name here) reading from a magazine. Her time ends, and she keeps reading. And keeps reading. And keeps reading. I was going to say something, but at first I kept thinking she had to realize she was way over time and would wrap it up. Plus, the only person there to hear me was Craig Wolf, and he’d already heard me read my story. Then it became a matter of indignant amusement as I wondered if she would ever realize, or acknowledge, that she was using another author’s time. Twenty minutes into my slot, she finally drones to an end. Then she asks me and Craig if we’re aspiring authors and proceeds to give us advice and offers to put us in touch with her editor (magazine I’d never heard of). Had anyone besides Craig shown up, I’d have been really pissed. As it was, it was just ridiculously rude and didn’t really matter. I’ve never tried reading “Noodlers Nab Nekkid Nymphs” completely sober, anyway, so who knows if I could have pulled it off. (Oklahoma doesn’t allow you to carry alcohol in the hallway of a hotel, so drinking is pretty much confined to the bar, which I never entered this weekend.)

A few minutes after this woman left, Shanna and Rachel came in and Shanna read a few pages from one of her novels. It’s fantasy chick lit, but dammit, it was really pretty good. And she cut it off right at a good part. The tease!

I feel like I should name and link to all the friends I saw there, but hell, that’d take all evening. And I’d probably forget somebody. I will say to Rhonda Eudaly that I can recognize you without Angeline Hawkes being present. Pfft. It was also great seeing Dr. Fear from Enid again, as well as J. Madison Davis, my thesis committee chairman from OU. Oh, and Stephen R. Donaldson was incredibly nice and fun to listen to; I hope to see him at some more cons.

Summer school starts tomorrow. 2 + 2 = 5, right? It’s actually the y x z = b that boggles my mind.