I’ve always thought that if you do Eastercon right you should emerge on the other side with very little you can remember to tell people about, just a sort of warm, fuzzy, drained feeling like you’ve been on a week-long stag-do with a happy-go-lucky bunch of psychic vampires. So, considering that I feel I pretty much did Eastercon (in Chester) right this year, I won’t be doing a report. I know these days people tend to blog on the spot, but c’mon for me that gets in the way of the slow and enjoyable process of Achieving Horizontal as the weekend progresses.But if you’re interested here’s what I do remember:
– I drank some beer (and a small quantity of strange Thai whisky and nasty raspberry vodka, although not at the same time)
– I ate some delicious food (particularly of the Thai variety)
– I toured the Ye Olde Disneyfest of the old town a couple of times
– I talked to many wonderful people
– and I got inspired.
This last point is very important. I usually find the interaction with other writers and the like at Eastercon an inspiring experience, a resetting of personal goals and receiving the energy to go and achieve them. Often – tired though I undoubtedly will be – I head up the road brimming with ideas and twitching to get back to the laptop. I love this aspect of it, but this year I really felt that I needed it, and am exceedingly grateful for the inspirational influx that came from talking to my agent and my friends and people I didn’t know, but do now; from seeing people I admire do well; from seeing the last copy of my collection being sold; from being asked to contribute to a forthcoming anthology; from even being asked to sign a copy of the very first anthology I was in. And if people ask why I go to Eastercon every year – even on a year like this when the event that took place was a, necessarily scaled-back and yet more expensive, replacement for the cancelled original, resulting of many familiar faces not making the trip down from Glasgow and other places – that’s why.
Thank gawd for Eastercon.
ayeahmur 