Originally published at Thus Sayeth the Lord…. You can comment here or there.

Yesterday afternoon, I took a long drive up to Baltimore for Balticon 41, my first science fiction convention ever.

My objective for going to Balticon was firstly to assist the launch of Prime Codex. I discussed that in the last post, here. Secondly, I wanted to see what the big deal about conventions was. Thirdly, I thought there might be the off chance at self-promotion. What I was to promote about myself…well, I’m still a little baffled as to that.

I went to lunch with some other writer-types; we went to Noodles, and chit-chatted before the launch, which we’d all committed to attend. It was great to see Andrew “We-Don’t-Talk-About-Bangkok” Gudgel again; we met at Writers of the Future 21. Lawrence Schoen was also there, as well as Ruth Nestvold and Elaine Isaak. Topping off the list of ne’er-do-wells was Edmund Schubert, editor of Intergalactic Medicine Show. A fantasmagoric time was had by all.

I picked up three books from the dealers’ room– Ray Bradbury’s ‘Something Wicked This Way Comes,’ and an anthology of his short stories called ‘Vintage.’ Also, Hart’s Hope, by Orson Scott Card. I’ve been looking for a long time for Hart’s Hope, so I was very pleased to find it in paperback, in pretty good condition.

The atmosphere of the Con was…well, not quite what I expected. I’d been expecting a lot more people, with a lot more…uh…interesting quirks. But it was fairly tame. Once you get past the bodices… er…nevermind. About the weirdest thing I saw was some poor schmuck wandering around in a marsupalami costume. But there wasn’t much programming that interested me, alas. And since I’d stayed up late the night previous, I left a little early to get home before I dropped from exhaustion.

Capclave is coming up in October; it’s a smaller, more literary con. I’m planning on attending…