Okay, so my previous post wasn’t very informative. So here’s what happened yesterday:

Flight got in around 4:15, caught the shuttle to the hotel with Jay Caselberg, Laura Anne Gilman, Darrell Schweitzer, Jo Fletcher, and others. Entered the lobby, was waiting as Gordon checked us into our room, and was pounced upon by Diana Rowland, who I’d exchanged emails with (and read the submissions of) but hadn’t yet met in person. Saw Toby Buckell in the lobby, who demanded a man-hug and followed it up with a complicated handshake. Went up to the room to deposit my goodies, tried without success to get the wireless internet working (it later started working on its own), then went back downstairs to registration.

Registration was nice and efficient — they had my stuff all ready for me and found it in a timely fashion. Received my big bag o’ books, which was considerably less big than I had anticipated. At the WFC in DC a couple years ago, the goodie bag was a really sweet score, full of brand new hardcovers — this one was smaller, had fewer books, and most of them were mass market paperbacks. Also, I was disappointed to see that my bag didn’t include a copy of the new Fantasy Magazine (though other people did receive it in their bags). However, I later found one on the retread table, which was dominated by several large piles of unwanted copies of Robert Jordan’s New Spring.

Wandered into the dealer’s room, made a circuit around it. Saw Diana Rowland again, and had more time to chat with her, found out some interesting stuff about being a NOLA police officer on the front lines in the aftermath of Katrina. Met and chatted with Daniel Abraham, whose first novel is due out from Tor early next year (and whose galley I was admiring at the office just the other day). Later last night, Daniel won the IHG Award for best short story, for his F&SF story “Flat Diane.” (Congrats!)

After chatting with Diana and Daniel for a while, my dawg, Charlie Finlay wandered over with Paolo Bacigalupi, one of my favorite new-ish writers, whom I hadn’t yet had the chance to meet. Had some more good conversation before wandering around the dealer’s room again, then joined Gordon as he chatted with Jeremy Lassen and Jason Williams from Nightshade Books, who, incidentally, seem to be doing quite well lately, with their new distributor, Diamond, and thanks largely to them now being the American publisher of UK uberkind Iain M. Banks.

Charlie Finlay had a reading at 7, so Gordon and I headed out to get something to eat beforehand. Wandered over to a nearby pub, and discovered Charlie (who was supposed to be prepping for his reading) having dinner there with a bunch of folks from the OWW (Online Writing Workshop, for which Charlie is an administrator). Toby Buckell was there too, and later, Paolo showed up. I had a caesar salad topped with cajun chicken–the chicken was great, but they put dressing on my salad despite my explicit instructions, and I didn’t have time to send it back. D’oh! Other than that, dinner was great.

Had to rush out a bit early to catch Charlie’s reading. He read most of a new “spicy” story, which he had intended for the Wheatland Press anthology, Spicy Slipstream stories, but though it was certainly spicy, everyone seems to agree that it’s not slipstream. It was terrific though, in any case, and I wished he could have finished reading it in his time slot. He got through most of it though, and what he did read makes it seem like a winner for sure. It’s funny and has a lot of cool SFnal concepts, and…how can you not like a story that begins with a guy telling someone about the eyeball he had inserted in his rectum?