Friday started off slow. I spent the morning working in my room, and so didn’t get out to attend any official programming until Patrick O’Leary’s 11:30 a.m. reading. Patrick always give good reading. At the World Fantasy Convention in Saratoga Springs last year, he read a piece which will appear in Pete Crowther’s upcoming anthology I Think Therefore I Am<\/i>, and if Patrick’s moving story is any indication, it will be a great book. This time, he read a story titled “The Little Guy,” which inexplicably has yet to find a market. The sad, funny tale tells the true story of why the Decider-in-Chief’s IQ seems to have fallen year after year after year, and stars Dick Cheney and an alien who speaks with an Irish brogue. He also read a few poems, including one about the woman he was destined to marry, which luckily for him turns out to be the same woman as the woman he is about<\/i> to marry.<\/p>\n
Immediately after that reading, I headed off for my noon kaffeeklatsch. I shared a table with Mary Robinette Kowal, someone whom over the years I’d managed never to meet before. (See, Karen, I don’t know everyone<\/i>.) Over the course of an hour together, we talked (along with others who came to listen, urge on, and cajole) of the first female archaeologist, of her puppeteering background, and many other topics. And though Mary did not demonstrate those puppetry skills for us, she did perform the magic trick she learned during her brief career as a singing waitress fairy in a Christmas show aboard a cruise ship. That’s a picture of us below, snapped before our event began and I learned how interesting she was.<\/p>\n
![\"Readercon2008Kowal\"](\"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Readercon2008Kowal.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n