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This was a much more full day at the convention than Thursday. Started off with breakfast in my hotel room, a pre-packaged Caesar salad that I had brought with the plan to stay within my diet for the duration of the con.

The first panel of the day was Gothic Writing and Worldbuilding. Gothic literature is not something that I have a lot of knowledge or experience with and I sought to expand my horizons there and I believe that I did. It is certainly something I want to know more about.

On the next panel I was a panelist. This was Bring Me the Head of Howard Phillips Lovecraft and I got to share the panel with my friend and fellow author Denise Dumars. It was a lively discussion that was less about the man Lovecraft and more about the nature of cosmic and ‘Lovecraftian’ horror and whether a moral dimension was a requirement for horror.

We skipped the noon panels to have lunch with another friend, bestselling author Gail Carriger. I had the pleasure of knowing her before her most well-earned success had come along and it gave me such joy to watch her sail so high. It was a leisurely lunch and all three of us I dare say had a very enjoyable conversation.

At 3:00 p.m. I went off to an exploration of robotics, drones, and automation in warfare. Again, a panel that gave me precisely what I had gone there for, so far this convention is firing on all cylinders. (Will we continue to use that expression once the internal combustion engine has passed into history? Who knows?)

After that I joined the audience in What Science Fiction Gets Wrong About My Profession. Not a lot of new knowledge there but the panelists were entertaining and that’s really the purpose of that sort of panel. Not expanding your knowledge or learning a craft, but having a bit of fun and exposing just how much you can’t trust fiction for truth.

Dinner was eaten basically on the run with steak and french fries from a food truck that my sweetie-wife procured for me so I could then hurry off to the panel discussion of del Toro’s Frankenstein. We had no moderator and as such our discussion was immoderate. I shared the panel with some very knowledgeable people but managed a few bomb throws of my own concerning why I think the creature in the story is a monster undeserving of sympathy.

With my phone losing the last of its power I skipped out on the 7:00 p.m. panel I had planned for and spent the time in my hotel room with my sweetie-wife. Then, after a turn through the floor of open parties I retrieved my laptop and composed this report.

Now I am ready for day 3.