Convention Season

I've been on the road again; this time for longer than usual.  Rina and I left for Readercon a couple of weeks ago, arriving in Burlington, Massachusetts just as the heatwave broke.  A number of Tachyon authors and editors were in attendance, including James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel, Suzy McKee Charnas, Jeff VanderMeer, Rick Wilber, Ellen Datlow, David Hartwell, James Morrow, and Michael Swanwick.  Many plots were hatched, some of which, hopefully, you may see for yourself in the coming months. 

From there it was on to Manhattan.  I got a chance to stop in and see a Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading, where Rina and I enjoyed hearing Ysabeau Wilce and Leah Bobet.  I'd never been to a reading at the tiny second floor bar and it was entertaining to compare it to the SF in SF reading series that Rina and I host here in San Francisco.  Both events were pioneered by Terry Bisson, who still moderates SF in SF, and both are unique in ways one might imagine of events run on their respective coasts.  Much to my surprise, I was introduced by co-host Matt Kressel as a visiting dignitary and received some applause from an audience that seemed to already know a lot about Tachyon.

The next day, David Hartwell and I celebrated the launch of The Sword & Sorcery Anthology at a reception hosted by Henry Wessels in the James Cummins bookshop.  The bookstore is aptly described on their website as “a seventh floor oasis” and is one of my favorite book venues ever.  It was there, several years ago, that Henry Wessels once showed me a signed first edition of Alice in Wonderland—inscribed to Alice.  We were all exceedingly cautious and none of the fine antiquities inside the shop were damaged by any of us rampaging barbarians. 

On Saturday Rina and I brunched with Carol Emshwiller, who despite problems with her eyesight, is still unbelievably hale and hearty.  It's been several years since Tachyon published I Live With You and The Secret City, back when Carol was just a youngster in her mid-eighties. 

The next convention, thankfully, will be here in the Bay Area: Mythcon on August 3rd.  But both Worldcon in Chicago and World Fantasy in Toronto loom on the horizon.  If you also plan to be at any of them, please come by and say hello: we'll be tabling at all three.

Jacob