Conned out

I am back home, and very tired.

Two weeks ago, I did Worldcon, which was super fun. Then I ended up being nominated for a Dragon Award for Best Military SF/Fantasy novel, so I let my friend Melissa F. Olson guilt me into going to Atlanta for DragonCon on short notice. I thought that almost two weeks since Worldcon would be enough rest to be able to tacke a DragonCon weekend, especially since I didn’t have any panels.

Reader, I was SO VERY WRONG.

I was fine on Friday, so-so on Saturday, and on Sunday my social battery and energy level were both in the red and blinking. DragoCon is a crazy, big, loud affair (word has it there were over 90,000 attendees), and those kind of cons, while fun, tend to wear me down much faster than the smaller literary-minded ones. I will say that downtown Atlanta is a big party during DragonCon, and that the cosplay in particular was off-the-charts excellent.

I did not win, by the way…just like my first Dragon nomination in 2016, I lost to David Weber, so I guess it’s a tradition now.

Now I’m back home and finishing some projects I’ve had cooking for a while (a Wild Cards and a Frontlines novella), and then I’m off to work on the next novel, which I hope to finish by the end of the year…or at least by the end of the winter, which will probably start to descent on us here in NH by the end of next month. We’ve had snow as early as my birthday in late October, although it usually doesn’t really start in earnest until December.

That was my last con appearance this year. Apologies to everyone who messaged me to maybe get together at DragonCon…my social dance card was too full, and the place was too big and complicated to navigate in a hurry to squeeze in a lot of coffee or lunch meetings, especially with the lines everywhere. My next con will probably be ConFusion in Detroit in late January…if I end up finishing the new book by then, that is.

In closing, have some snapshots from WorldCon and DragonCon:

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The lobby of one of the four DragonCon hotels, the Marriott, on Saturday night.

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The view from the executive floor of the Marriott Marquis, 47 floors up.

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Downtown Atlanta from my hotel room window.

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DragonCon street traffic. Lots of cosplay.

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ATL in the late PM.

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Downtown ATL from above.

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The view up from the Marriott lobby.

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George R.R. Martin’s Hugo Losers’ Party.

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The Hugo Awards ceremony.

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That’s me, sitting on a panel next to Larry “Ringworld” Niven.

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The view from the podium. Standing room only.

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Our Wild Cards panel, with Mary Anne Mohanraj, GRRM, Melinda Snodgrass, and David Levine in the picture.

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Wild Cards panel, sitting with Mary Anne and George.

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A tiny slice of the Wild Cards signing line.

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Con hotel in San Jose.

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Obligatory view from the hotel window.

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Another view from the hotel window, overlooking the San Jose Museum of Art and the Cathedral Basilica of St. Joseph.

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These don’t grow in New Hampshire.