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Forgive me for not giving a day report for World Con Day 4, but when the evening rolled around and I settled into my quiet corner of the hotel lobby to write it and brainstorm the next novel, I just ended up streaming videos from YouTube and chatting with a couple of people.

Day 4 was a pretty nice day, which I kicked off with Editors’, Agents’, and Slush Readers’ Pet Peeves, which I followed up with a panel discussion of 50s SF movies. The other big highlight of the day was a panel on TV tropes, which featured author John Scalzi, who is always very entertaining.

The evening, after my sweetie-wife retired to bed, was the above-mentioned YouTube videos and general brain degaussing.

The 5th and final day of the con was a short one, a panel called Modern Monsters, followed by a table talk with agent Arley Sorg. I did not pitch him a novel because a table talk is not the venue for that, but I did hear a lot of things that are good and hopeful for me and I got a new resource to check out. My final activity was the panel Trauma vs Entertainment, of which I was one of three panelists. I think we had a great talk, and afterwards it was climbing into the car and driving home.

Leaving a convention is always a little sad. The good times, the entertaining panels and presentations must end, friends must depart for distant homes, and there is always a little depression that follows. It is the price we pay for the good times. And it is such a very small one.

We stopped at a little place named A’s Burgers for my lunch; they have great cheeseburgers, but stopping there is always a little bittersweet as it was my friend Brian that introduced us to the place, and he is no longer with us. We made it home about 4:00 pm, got unpacked, had a supper that did not cost an arm and a leg, and simply enjoyed being home.

Our local power company had warned us that electric power to our entire complex was being shut off that evening starting at 10 pm, and that the expected restoration would be about 3 am. My sweetie-wife went to bed at 9, her customary time, and I went out to the movies to see Coyote vs. ACME. The movie was enjoyable, but nothing I will purchase for my home library.

After the movie I killed more time shopping and listening to podcasts in my car, but around midnight I returned home; still no power. By the light of my iPhone, I readied for bed, slipped on my CPAP mask, and hooked myself up to the machine, even though it had no power. Once the electricity was on again, it would start up automatically.

The power returned at 2:43 am, and I awoke the next day, Tuesday, groggy and exhausted for the entire day. I truly have adapted to CPAP and require it for fully restorative sleep.

I have the rest of the week off from my day job and look forward to relaxation, movies at home, and maybe some more brainstorming.

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This report will be decidedly shorter and less comprehensive than the previous two. I have spent some time brainstorming for a potential new horror novel, actually a sequel to the one I am currently shopping, and that has taken quite a few CPU cycles from the old wet computer haunting my skull. So, I am not documenting all the panels I attended.

Nineteenth Century Medicine was interesting, particularly the part where I learned that some surgeons would place a wooden bowl over the heads of their patients and club them to knock them unconscious for the procedure.

Hollywood and AI about how AI is being used in Hollywood was a bit of a bust and I departed from it early. One panelist was dominating the talk and not in an interesting or entertaining manner. I knew it would only get worse once it turned to audience questions and fled the scene.

Fear and Lust in Las Vegas about the intersection of horror, romance, and sex, worked much better, even though one panelist seemed to never leave the safety of their RPG writing background.

Killer Robots and Rogue Computer in SF was fun.

I ended the day with a pair of horror themed panels, Global and Regional Horrors: Monsters from Other Cultures, and the last one a discussion of the ‘Final Girl’ trope.

After all that I toured the parties — briefly — and then retired to a corner of the hotel lobby to brainstorm.

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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.

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The World Science Fiction Convention, a 5-day gathering of writers, artists, scientists, and fans, this year is being held in Anaheim California and being so close the sweetie-wife and me drove from San Deigo today to attend.

Traffic coming north proved to be light and pretty much hassle free and we arrived at the hotel/convention center fairly quickly. Too early to check-in into our room but late enough that after collecting our badges and necessary items I missed the earliest panels that I had hoped to attend. Instead, we got a lunch from a food truck at the convention center and made our plans. Just before we finished eating, I got the alert on the app that our room was ready, we collected our luggage from the car and hauled the mass up to our room to get settled in before heading out to the panels.

My first panel was Horror in Space. It was missing a couple of panelists but still proved lively and entertaining and had a local author and acquaintance on it K.C. Grifant whom I know from being a member of the local chapter of the Horror Writers Association.

Next up was Villains You Root For which also boasted an acquaintance Andrea G. Stewart whom I knew from the Writers of the Future contests and who is now the best-selling author of several fantasy series. This was another fun conversation.

We took a dinner break after that, eating stuff we had brought with us. My goal this convention is to not break my diet too badly.

I finished out the day with an evening panel on the science of the early universe. There was actually little there that I did not already know but it was presented in an engaging and entertaining manner so I felt it was worth my time.

Tomorrow not only boasts panels that I want to attend but one on which I will be panelist Bring Me the Head of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, should be a blast.

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Next month, August 27-31, is the 84th World Science Fiction Convention, in Anaheim, California. As it went down last year, I will be attending but this time with a twist.

A regular smaller convention held in the greater Los Angeles area is LosCon, the Los Angeles Science Fiction Convention which takes place over the long, for most people, Thanksgiving weekend. I have been a regular at LosCon since 1996 and an infrequent participant on panels at that convention as both fan and author. Because the local fan groups that host and organize LosCon are the same people that are hosting the WorldCon this year, I have been invited to participate on a few panels for that much larger convention.

I will be part of two panels on Friday, August 28th:

10:30am, Bring Me the Head of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, exploring the moral dimensions of horror fictions and their creators.

 6:00pm, Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, discussing that adaptation of the classic novel.

Monday, August 31st, I have one panel.

12:00 pm, Trauma vs Entertainment, discussing the line between the trauma that horror can be inspired by and the entertainment it seeks to create.

The rest of the time I plan to be attending panels, workshops, and having a grand old time. If you are attending the convention please do not hesitate to say hello as, due to my inherent shyness, I rarely speak first.