NECON-ho!

No, this post isn’t about Elizabeth Massie and her sister, which is sort of an inside joke, but never mind.

This time tomorrow I’ll be in Providence en route to Bristol, RI for NECON XXVI, my fourth time at this illustrious and ever-so-delightful conference. If you’ve never been, it’s almost impossible to convey how much fun and how relaxing NECON is. If you have been, I don’t need to tell you. While it does have panels, and usually some good ones that generate vibrant dialogue, and Guests of Honor with interviews and the like, the heart of NECON takes place outside the classroom. Ghost stories around the campfire during the hot dog roast. Standing in the residence quad until late at night drinking and shooting shit with fellow writers and readers and friends. Playing darts, horse shoes, mini golf, softball. Game shows with VALUABLE PRIZES. The annual celebrity roast. Communal meals in the cafeteria. A mass signing where just about everyone present has something to sign.

Though little of the next four days will be spent sleeping, I expect to return on Sunday night rejuvenated and looking forward to getting back at the novel-in-progress. Exhausted, hung over, electrolyte-imbalanced and physically drained, but creatively energized. Nothing compares.

Editor Mike Heffernan gave me the official acceptance today for Sturm und Drang, my previously untitled story, for his World War II horror anthology A Dark and Deadly Valley. Here are the other authors who have stories accepted for the anthology (with possibly more to come): Harry Shannon, Paul Finch, David J. Schow, Steve Vernon, Larry Santoro, Scott Nicholson, Elizabeth Massie, John Everson, Rick Hautala, Gary A. Braunbeck, Weston Ochse, Graham Joyce, Brian Hodge, Scott Edelman. Alex McVey is handling the interior illustrations, and John Skipp is writing the intro. I’m stoked! What a lineup to share. I’m proud to use my cover pseudonym “And others” on this one. The book is scheduled to come out in late 2006.

We watched “Boom Town” last night, the next of the Eccleston Doctor Who episodes, which reprises Margaret the flatulent Slitheen from earlier in the season. With the addition of Jack to the team, the dynamic has changed somewhat. It’s the first time I can recall a tag-a-long who is almost an equal for the Doctor. I get a kick out of the pansexual banter between the two, but it seems to me that the Doctor is somewhat diminished by Jack’s presence. I don’t know how long he stays on board, so I’ll give it some time, but he makes me uneasy. The story boils down to a discussion of capital punishment, and it has a bit of an easy-way-out resolution, but for a while it presents the Doctor with a moral dilemma. The dinner scene with him and Margaret is by turns funny and poignant. The Doctor is cavalier with his “not my problem” attitude, and he delivers a good speech about how by letting someone go every now and then she is able to live with herself (though I believed that her motivation for letting the reporter live wasn’t so much altruism at first as the concern that the reporter had told her fiance about her suspicions), but Margaret gets the last word. I get the sinking feeling that things with Mickey could get ugly. Only two episodes to go until the end of the season.