Do you ever attend after parties or anything after the cons? What goes down at these shindigs?

I generally don’t, I don’t drink alcohol (have nothing against it, just have never had any), and I’m not a big shmoozer. If someone’s a friend, I want to talk to them, but a party is generally the last place where you can actually talk.

A lot of people in the industry, they work in a little office in their home all year, it’s a solitary job for most. So when they go to a con, they cut loose. And there’s a lot of drinking at most of them, people get pretty smashed fairly often.

If someone really wants me to go for some reason, I will often make an appearance and then hightail it out as soon as I can politely escape. At a couple parties, people have actually been assigned to keep me at the party as long as possible, as weird as that sounds.

I SHOULD like them more, because it really is the only chance I get to see most of these people, without interrupting some interaction they are having with readers. But it’s just not my kind of thing.

Nice people, no judgments, but I’m not much for parties. I’m happier seeing something new in the area. I have been to cons in other parts of the world where some of the pros never left the con floor, the hotel and the bar…I will never understand that if I live to be a million.