Inner Peace Is For Losers

I just returned from Hypericon 4 in Nashville. The weekend was a good time.

It started with Rick and me taking our daughter to music camp, where her audition resulted in first chair, percussion, wind ensemble. That's a pretty high-level band, so way to go, kid! Proud of ya.

From there we headed to Ann Arbor, where we lived back in the day. We ate Cottage Inn pizza and wandered around town and U of M campus. Sadly, A2 is not the town we remembered, and we've lost our desire to move back there. Stil, it was a pleasant day and night spent there. It's rare that we get time to ourselves, minus kids.

In the morning I was dropped at Detroit Metro airport for the flight to Nashville, which went off without a hitch. Metro has an awesome fountain, but for some reason it wasn't running. There's also a tunnel between AB and CD, which has a very cool light and music show. Better than O'Hare's, I'd say.

So, on to the con. This was my first experience as a guest. Thanks, Fred! It was very cool. I had two panels, both on podcasting. The first, on Friday, was about promoting your podcast. matt_wallace and I represented Variant Frequencies. Mark Kinney was there for All Games Considered, and some very charming folks from the South Eastern Paranormal Society. We had a lively discussion with a smallish audience. It was great to see Mark again, who we met last year, and meet some new folks.

The second panel was on Saturday. Same group of folks, and we talked about what we've learned as podcasters and how our podcasts are better than when we started.

We were a small but mighty group.

Party-wise, Friday night was pretty dead. I had some pizza from hell with Matt and Natalie and chilled out a while. (Matt described this pizza as "mediocre" but he's being generous. My GI tract is still protesting.)

Saturday night, though, was the Apex room party. That was pretty cool. Alethea Kontis was mixing drinks called Brains. They were awesome. Here's the recipe: you pour some VERY cold peach schnaps into a shot glass. Gently squirt or pour in a dab of Bailey's Irish Cream, and then add a few drops of grenadine. The Baileys sort of congeals in the center, so it looks like a tiny little brain floating in a glass. The grenadine looks like blood has settled to the bottom. It's the perfect drink for horror types. Looks gross, but it's sweet and tasty.

Since I was the one with the camera, there's only one picture of me from the con. Matt has it up in his blog.

Now, about the hotel. I was not impressed. The people at the desk were friendly and helpful, the bed was comfortable, and the AC worked great. That's the upside.

The downside was that the cleaning was suspect, there was no phone in my room, the jacuzzi didn't work, and the bar was closed. That's right, no bar. How the hell do you have a con with no bar?!

But all in all, it was a good experience. Met some great people, made some great connections for the podcast and for Murky Depths. Had breakfast with Jason Sizemore on Sunday. We talked about kids. Chatted with Fran Friel, also about kids. Saw lots of awesome artwork, game stuff, and books. Bought some books, got one signed by Jeremy Lewis. Nice guy. I'm looking forward to digging into his book.

Enough rambling. I had a grand time, but it's good to be home.

The schedule is up for Hypericon 4 so I checked it out. I'm on two panels: "PROMOTING PODCASTS AND PODCASTS PROMOTING YOU" on Friday at 6pm, and "WHY MY FIRST PODCAST MAY HAVE SUCKED" at noon on Saturday.

I'm psyched. This will be my first experience as a guest at a con, and I do know a little bit about podcasting. At least, the way we do it. It'll be fun to act like an authority and talk about this stuff. And, of course, the room parties.

Hypericon runs June 27-29 at the Days Inn Stadium in Nashville. Hoping for a good turnout!

Is this cool, or what?

Hit the link and scroll down a bit. Right there, in the guest list for Hypericon 4, Nashville's Speculative Fiction Convention, Celebrating Science Fiction, Horror, & Fantasy Literature, Arts, & Media, that's my name. I am going to be a guest at Hypericon!

I don't know what the program will be like as it's all still in planning stages, but I think they're having more panels on podcasting. So I'll talk up Variant Frequencies. And, y'know, maybe hit the room parties.

It's all about networking.