Category: Life
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Son of SilverCon IV AAR
Fortunately this didn’t quite happen to me, but it was close. Son of Silvercon, the last stop on my summer of cons, was July 19-21 in Las Vegas (actually, Henderson, but that’s just a jump to the left and then a step to the right). I’ll get to the Con in a moment, but the…
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A Writer’s Life, or You Don’t Know How Good You Have It
A while ago I suggested somewhat whimsically that I should write up what an aspiring writer’s life was like a half-century ago. In 1967, at 16 years old, I told my father I wanted to be a writer. He came back with a statistic that only 150 Americans make their living solely by freelance writing.…
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Begin…End…Begin Again
On June 17 I left for the beginning of my summer of Cons as I related in my last essay. On the train ride home, I sold another copy of Advance Guards to Brian and Tina, so, for those of you keeping score at home, I left with 27 books and came back with 5.…
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Where Have You Gone Frank Dadada-Oh?
I apologize to my readers, but William F. Buckley seems to have seized control of my travel-addled fingers and insists that I use obscure words in this post. I blame all that rocking on the train that seems to have scrambled my brain along with my sense of balance. When I was last seen, I…
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Coming to a Tornado Alley Near You
OK folks, in my never ending quest to pass the honor of The King of Bad Marketing™ on to somebody, anybody, else, I’ve been assured that all the right people advertise their appearances at conventions ahead of time (instead of afterwords as I have been doing). Therefore you are all officially on notice that I’ll…
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Life & Death in the Afternoon
OK, this is bizarre, and it helps if you’re familiar with San Diego where I live. Yesterday I went to the Red Cross donation center in Kearney Mesa to donate platelets and plasma.1 I do that because I can do it every 2 weeks, and it helps cancer patients whose platelets are depleted by chemotherapy.…
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Where It All Started
A long, long time ago (1974) in a land not very far away (Hollywood), I ran into a brick wall, and that was a good thing. You see I had graduated college with my BA in History and a dream of being a successful writer. I was busy writing stories and sending them off for…
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Pleasure from Chaos
I just returned from FenCon XXI this morning. Yes, it was chaos, but to me and all those with whom I interacted, it didn’t matter. The chaos was the result of death, disease, pestilence, etc. among those good souls who volunteer their time and effort for the pleasure of the rest of us, and hopefully…
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Sailing Through the Desert
I wrote up my experiences at TusCon, but left out the things I saw along the way. And yes, there are things to see and contemplate on a 800 mile round trip through the desert. I only regret that I took no pictures, but navigating my cell phone to picture mode while driving 80 mph…
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TusCon 52 AAR
TusCon 52 After Action Report The ironically named TusCon (a trick on people who misspell Tucson) holds a warm place in my heart because TusCon 4 in 1976 was the first SF Con I attended outside my home town of San Diego. Since this is my blog, I’m going to indulge in about 10 paragraphs…
Musings of a Restless Mind 