I’m still pretty tired after my long weekend in Madison, and I’m hoping that the con crud doesn’t turn into an actual cold, but I thought I’d post a few highlights from the trip.
Thursday: After a long afternoon of traveling, and then a quick dinner of fine sushi at Wasabi, most of the rest of the evening was spent in the hotel bar (creatively named “The Bar”) at a table that included various combinations of arcaedia‘s talented clients, including jaylake, kaygo, matociquala, pbray, plus, for a time, katallen (who is not a client, but is still quite talented). It was a fine way to spend the first night of the con, and I managed to avoid acting like a fanboy when first meeting kaygo, so that was a definite plus.
Friday: In the evening arcaedia led several WFC attendees in an escape from the hotel to see what ended up being a really excellent Vienna Teng show at nearby Café Montmartre. Vienna was pretty darned surprised to see Jenn and I outside of our usual haunts in New England and NY, and she seemed to be quite pleased to see familiar faces in a town where she’d only played once before.
Saturday: arcaedia was expecting a meal out at Chautara with suricattus, agamisu and I, but instead she ended up at a surprise agent appreciation dinner thrown for her by her clients! I only wish I’d been able to see her face when they all started applauding as she approached the table. In attendence were jaylake, kaygo, matociquala, pbray and truepenny (who proved to be especially useful in pulling all of this off).
Sunday: Morning readings by matociquala, truepenny and jaylake, and then it was off to my first WFC banquet, which, despite the not-especially-good food, was a fairly enjoyable experience. Many thanks to mme_publisher for letting arcaedia and I sit with the cool kids at the Wheatland Press table. My favorite speeches of the afternoon came from the modest Kinuko Y. Craft, an obviously very moved John Picacio, and the rather stunned (but exceedingly happy) Carol Emshwiller.
In between all of this there was wandering through the dealer’s room (I made it out with only three books) and art show, some used book shopping at the bookstores of Madison, and much hanging around in the Governor’s Club Lounge (land of free drinks and a great bartender named Brian). Overall, I had a really good time, and I’m already looking forward to my next WFC (which may be Austin next year, but is more likely to be Saratoga in 2007).