I enjoyed my first Readercon, though it’s the first time in a while I’ve gone to an sf/f con and not been on the programming, so I felt vaguely like I was slacking. That’s what I get for registering so late. Got to talk to some interesting people, though, and to learn some valuable lessons:

(1) Walking around the book room with a copy of Silverlock in one’s hands is a fantastic way to start conversations with total strangers. Everybody has their favorite bit. (Mine is the alliterative Norse rendition of the Battle of the Alamo.) And I am not, in fact, the only person convinced the book was written Just For Me.

(2) I do just fine picking up folksongs I’ve never heard before; in fact, sometimes I can predict the rhymes in advance, which is fun. If, however, I wish to attempt singing something I know, even for the purposes of a brief demonstration, I should take the time needed to coax my sense of pitch into providing me with the notes I need. Rushing this process will result in me sounding like I have no sense of pitch at all.

(3) Hanging out with fairy-tale-oriented friends and then going to the talk on quantum mechanics is either a recipe for brain meltdown or the Best Idea Ever. Or possibly both.

I didn’t get as much written on “The Last Wendy” as I wanted to while on this trip, but “Double Woman Dreamer” got unexpectedly resurrected from the dust-bin of story ideas (courtesy of one room-mate), and now I’ve got a notion for something calling itself “Schroedinger’s Crone” (courtesy of the other room-mate and Lesson Number Three). Cons always make ideas breed like flies in my head. Most of them are flashes in the pan, briefly shiny and forgotten before the con’s over, but usually there’s at least one keeper.

I’d prefer a keeper, though, which doesn’t involve someone e-mailing me a reading list in Lakota folklore, or self-lessons in quantum mechanics.