Thursday started off healthy, with a one-mile walk organized by Stu and Stephen Segal. This event will occur each morning of the con, with different guest writers and editors, under the umbrella title of Strollin’ with the Stars. Walking along with me today were Ellen Datlow, Frank Wu, and 30 or so other attendees who, like me, obviously hadn’t partied hard enough last night.

Here I am with some of the survivors in front of the Big Blue Bear at the completion of our hike.

As the group broke up, I bumped into Jim Kelly, Connie Willis, John Kessel and a few other writers, who helped me solve the issue of which 10:00 a.m. panel I should attend—”Short Fiction: On Its Way Out?” or “Writers Reading their Juvenilia.” Jim was on the first of those, and Connie was on the second, which meant that I had the two panels before me in microcosm. Jim said I should definitely choose Connie’s panel, because she’d be funnier than him. (Though maybe he just didn’t want me in his audience.) I decided to take his advice, since most panels on the future of short fiction should offer razor blades for the audience members to use to slit their wrists on the way out anyway.

The four writers willing to embarrass themselves in public were Edward Willett, Connie Willis, Sarah Hoyt, and Joshua Palmatier. Ed came up with some great titles for his novels as a teen, including Castra Glaz, Hypership Test Pilot (sure hope I spelled that name correctly) and The Slavers of Thok. But the true star of the panel was (as it so often is) Connie Willis, who read two different hilarious pieces.

She started with “For the Love Of Susan,” a story she wrote back in high school about a young girl with a crush on actor George Maharis from the TV show Route 66, and how they were brought together by a car accident. Then, after regaling us with the titles and plots of some of her old true confessions stories such as “Wanted: A Boyfriend for Grandma” and “Swept Away in a Torrent of Passion,” she read from “I Called for Help on My CB and Got a Rapist Instead.” The performance was much funnier than that title would have you believe.

Bottom line—if Connie’s on a panel, be there.