I spent the last few days at Boskone. I didn’t end up with a roommate, so there was an extra bed in the hotel room. Lisa and the boys decided at the last minute to join me. It definitely made the long trip up and back a lot more enjoyable. During the con, they spent most of their time wandering the hotel, getting lost in Boston, eating jellybeans and watching countless episodes of Spongebob Squarepants. Aside from the getting lost part, that was the vacation the boys wanted. At 4 and 7 years old, my boys are still easily entertained.
My time was spent quite differently. One of the upcoming books I’m working on is the limited edition of Toast by Charles Stross. The signature sheets for this project were printed last week, so I brought them with me and made arrangements with Charlie to have some of them signed at the con. A con is hardly the best place for someone to sign over 700 pages, so I was very lucky that he was able to get through about 500 of them. The remaining pages will be mailed to the UK later this week.
Also in the world of Wyrm projects, Tobias Buckell and I met up with Brian Dow, the artist who is working on the cover for Tides from the New Worlds. It’s always nice to be able to put a face to someone I’ve been exchanging email with for a while. The preliminary work he’s shown us so far has been fantastic and I can’t wait to show you what he’s come up with. I find the process he is using very interesting and he said that we may see some of the models he built for this cover at next year’s Boskone.
I managed to attend a whopping total of two panels, a handful of signings and one reading during the course of the entire weekend. It was too easy to be distracted and sucked into conversations with new and old friends in the comfortable lobby bar and evening parties. Of note was the “Death to Peeps Fun Fest” where countless marshmallow minions were zapped, blended, nuked, and sacrificed to the whims of attendees. There were Peeps served at my wedding, so I have a soft spot for them. I had to take the boys down later that weekend to see the Peep carnage. I also had fun watching Bob Eggleton paint two pictures at the art show.
I bought a copy of Ten Sigmas & Other Unlikelihoods from Paul Melko (which is apparently the first copy he’s signed) and Radio Freefall by Matthew Jarpe. I tried to get a copy of Paul’s novel, Singularity Rising, but there weren’t any copies left in the dealer’s room within a few hours. I also picked up a copy of the latest issue of The New York Review of Science Fiction, which contains “The Third Bear”, a non-fiction piece by the same name as the story that appeared in Clarkesworld.
Overall, a great time. I’ll definitely be back again next year.
