Fantasy Magazine

Day two of Penguicon was the day of panels — I followed Mary Robinette Kowal to her first one: a podcasting panel where I met & geeked out girl-style over Escape Pod’s Steve Eley. From there I hooked up with Danielle Friedman and networked by sneaking into the back of one on social networking. We then hopped over to poolside and had a ton of fun taking part in “Lie to Me,” where Mary, John Scalzi, Elizabeth Bear, and Sarah Hoyt immediately launched into an in-depth (and to the untrained ear fairly plausible) discussion about complete and utter bullshit. Audience participation was not required, but intensely amusing.

Danielle and I stayed in the room for the next panel, where Dan Hoyt, Sarah Monette, Cherie Priest, and two lovely gentlemen whose names escape me this morning JOINED our already-established panelists (minus Scalzi) for a talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly of character development. Yes, that’s EIGHT panelists in a dark, chlorine-soaked, standing-squeezing-floorsitting only room and no riots broke out. (Of course, Bear was moderating.) Ah, how I do love conventions.

When we emerged, it was time for the troops to scatter. We had received our marching orders from Doselle Young & Anne K. G. Murphy several months back. We knew exactly where to go and–with a couple of rehearsals directed by Mary Robinette–exactly what to do. So when Scalzi showed up at his surprise 40th birthday party, we all jumped out and…well…genuinely surprised him. He might still be getting over the shock. I’ll post the video to YouTube soon. And pictures–I took so many great pictures. It was as if I had suddenly been blessed by the Gods of Canon with a magic camera for the evening. Kodak moment? I got it, and then some. I’ll be posting those soon too. Except, of course, for the ones that will only be seen again by the eyes of subjects and the photographer.

That’s right, kids. Even for us jacked-into-the-net folks, some things that happen at a con stay at a con.