World Fantasy 2012: Day Two

Thursday started by recovering from Wednesday--that is, from the bar and the jetlag. I'm not sure exactly when Todd and I got out of the room but we checked into the Con, wandered the layout then decided to go for food. Though the convention is in the Sheraton, we're staying in the Best Western next door. Well, it's sort of next door. It's more like a bizarre duplex where you can't quite tell where one hotel ends and the other begins. Which is good, because it's cold and rainy and we have no desire to walk outside for any reason.

Charles Vess

In our quest for food we ran into Charles Vess, one of the only three artists I both adore and can actually name (the other two being my roommate, Todd, and Susan Seddon Boulet). Todd and Charles chatted while I reigned in my fanboy...I mean, controlled my desire to discuss my appreciation for his work, then we continued our quest. Charles mentioned that we could not only walk from the Best Western to the Sheraton without freezing, we could also walk underground to a food court in a mall next door. Unfortunately, we missed the turn and ended up outside anyway. That's when our hero, James Minz from Baen publishing, appeared in his magic (read: warm) chariot and a list of the best restaurants in the area. Our quest turned into a epic adventure to a liquor store, grocery store and excellent Thai food. Thank you, Jim.

James Minz

We got back to the con too late for the one panel I was interested in so we headed back to the room to relax. Mary hadn't arrived yet, and I was starting to get worried because she had a reading at 5, but she showed up around 4pm.

After Mary's reading, she and I headed up to the Con Suite (aka: Hospitality Suite), which is a wonderful and bizarre concept I discovered at last year's WFC. The Con Suite has food for con-goers from breakfast until 2am every day. Breakfast and lunch are standard cereals, coffee, oatmeal, cold cuts, veggies, etc. Dinner Thursday night was catered Chinese. Tonight (Friday) it's apparently Tex-Mex. Thursday night also featured local Canadian wines and beers, which is good because the hotel bar is outrageously expensive. It's one of the draws of a con like this for me--I pay for the admission, the hotel and the flight, but between the free books, food and alcohol, the admission is easily paid for.

Like with the bar, the Con Suite is a great place to meet new people. From dinner until 1am I spent time with new and established authors Wes Chu, Jessica Corra, Simon Larter, David Fortier, Garth Nix, Sarah Durst, Mary Robinette Kowal and too many others to name. Mary Kowal in particular killed us with a story about a marionette performance of Sleeping Beauty that went terrible, hilariously wrong.

To be continued...

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Additional photos of WFC 2012 can be found here.