First, a confession: I tend to treat local conventions Balticon and Capclave as one-day cons. (Even though each is about two hours away, I still consider them local.) Unlike with Readercon or a WorldCon, at which I tend to eat, sleep, and breathe the con, for those first two I generally ask the programming committee to squeeze all of my panels into a single day, schedule meals for that one day, hang out from around 10:00 a.m. until 10:00 p.m., and skip any late-night partying. So what follows is basically my personal 12-hour mini-convention, as opposed to any attempt to explore what the four-day Balticon was really like.

After my encounter in the parking lot with David Louis Edelman, I began by wandering the dealers room, as always. I chatted with (among others) David Hartwell about the smell of old fanzines, Michael Walsh about the new Howard Waldrop collection he’ll be putting out through Old Earth Books, Stephen Segal about Wildside Press, and Roberta Rogow about Philcon’s move to New Jersey. (No more dim sum in Philly’s Chinatown. Sniff!)

I was supposed to have lunch with Karen Newton, Charlie Newton, Sandy Stewart, and Risa Stewart, all of whom I know from the local writing workshop I was a part of until Science Fiction Age magazine took over my life about 15 years ago. But Sandy was feeling under the weather, which meant that the Stewarts bailed on Balticon, and so Karen and Charlie and I wandered over to Jesse Wong’s Kitchen on our own. (I hope that you’re feeling better, Sandy!) As we ate from the Thai, Chinese and Japanese buffet, the three of us talked of—what else—our writing.

We returned from lunch just as Connie Willis’ autographing session was wrapping up. We agreed to meet in the bar, where I ended up with Karen and Charlie once more. Connie joined us and shared a few stories I hadn’t heard before, such as her first contact with a writing critique group, which involved a meeting in a strange hotel and her fears that she might be kidnapped and would never see her husband again. (She’d even left a note on the seat of her car explaining where she was going just in case.) You’ll have to convince her to tell it to you someday.

The first panel I attended as a participant was “How the Internet Helps Small Presses,” which I moderated, wrangling Michael Walsh, Elaine Corvidae and M. T. Reiten. (It just struck me, as I typed that last name, that it might be a pseudonym. Say it out loud and see what you think. Empty writin’—get it? Of course, it might just be that the guy has apt initials. Anyone out there know one way or another?) The conclusion we reached (well, that I reached; I’m not entirely sure whether anyone else agreed with me) was that though the Internet has helped small-press book publishers, it hasn’t necessarily helped small press periodical publishers. I think that while the Internet helps sellers of dead-tree books reach new audiences, it has supplanted purveyors of dead-tree magazines. After all, when I was 15, I published a paper fanzine. If I were 15 today, I’d just blog, and suspect most of today’s 15-year-olds would agree.

As soon as the panel was over, I dashed off to hear Connie’s Guest-of-Honor interview, to which I doubt I could do justice, so I won’t even try. Nothing short of Connie herself will do. At 5:00 p.m., I autographed with Eric Shulman, author of A Briefer History of Time, at a table outside the dealers’ room. I handed out back issues of SCI FI magazine, which brought a few more people to the table than I would normally have drawn, since people do love freebies.

When that was done, I attended the “How Not to Break Into Print” panel, which featured the wit and wisdom (intentionally more of the former than the latter) of James Patrick Kelly, Walter John Williams, Lee Hillman, Connie Willis, and David Moldawer. For example—Connie explained that the best way to submit a manuscript is to follow an editor into the bathroom at a convention and slide your manuscript under the stall, David suggested that you spend a lot of time at the beginning of your story describing your world and delay the action as long as possible, Walter explained the importance of including long digressions that begin with “as you know,” Lee thought it important to let the editor know in your cover letter how much your family and friends liked your story, and Jim shared the joys of plagiarism, since after all, if they didn’t want us to plagiarize, we wouldn’t have Control-C, right? The “advice” came so fast and furious as panelists riffed off one another that I was almost dizzy by the end of the hour.

Then I rushed off to my 7:00 panel on “Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth,” at which I pontificated along with and Yoji Kondo. The panel proved more controversial than I had any idea it would be, as various audience members thought our deconstruction of the myth wrongheaded. (Well, let me clarify that—they took offense at me and Tom; Yoji was, as ever, polite, inoffensive, and gentlemanly.)

I then headed off to a late dinner with Karen, Charlie, Patrick Darby, Rosie Smith, Jim Kelly, and two people I’d never met before, , a Clarion graduate who’d just sold her first story to Analog, and , who’d just attended the Taos Toolbox workshop. We went to Sakura Japanese Steak and Seafood, one of those restaurants at which a juggling chef cooks your meal on a grill at the table, occasionally flinging food directly into your mouth. (Some of us had better luck in catching that food than others.)

I left for home a little after 10:00, letting the con continue on without me. I’m sure the rest of you had fun partying until dawn, but as for me, I had to rest up for today’s gardening. (Though I didn’t realize I’d also be resting up for killing a five-foot-long snake. But that’s a story for some other time … )