MarsCon AAR

Wubble-blargh AUGH! Edition

OK, as promised, the MarsCon after-action report. Sure, it’s taken me about two weeks to finish it, but that’s because there was something like a week’s worth of events packed into two and a half days. No, I’m not kidding.

Summary: holy COW this was a fantastic con, and if you are able to make it next year, you absolutely should. Great people, wonderful guests. Overall a fantastic experience. A+++, would recommend. Buy now, supplies are limited!

So, I’m going to go chronologically.

Thursday

I drove out to Virginia Beach. About seven hours, which is… OK, but a little on the long side. My wife was supposed to go with me, but we changed up plans at the last moment, so I didn’t have a traveling companion. Put on some music, thought about my works in progress, and pulled into the hotel about 10:30.

At which point the clerk at check in wondered who am I, because I certainly did not look like the Samantha Robb who had booked the room…

Turns out that someone, trying to be helpful, had looked up “Sam Robb” in their rewards database, and attached the first name they came across that matched to the account. Never mind that Samantha has an address in the UAE, I’m from Pittsburgh, and there’s some obvious other problems. All this was compounded by the fact that we had to cancel our credit card last year (identity theft, yay!) so the card I presented was not the card on file used to reserve the room.

Nothing is easy
Though times gets you worried
My friend, it's OK…

Thankfully, we resolved the whole issue fairly quickly so I could stumble upstairs and crash.

Friday

Get up. Head downstairs. Breakfast. Talked with a lovely fellow named John - it was his first time at MC as well. Found out that Spearman Burke, Intern Steve (also known as Nick, for some reason - likely because that’s his name), and Lawdog were trading stories over at the next hotel over, so I made tracks to join them. Spent the morning listening to war and war-adjacent stories from all of them. I’m know that we cleared out a few folks because… well.

I thought the stories were hilarious.

I also learned a lot. including something about Dr. Pepper and the peanut butter packets you get in MREs. Knowledge that I desperately hope I never need to make use of.

Back to the con hotel, with a small detour to pick up some flowers. All us miscreants chipped in to buy flowers for our favorite editor at Raconteur Press. It always pays to butter up your editor. Plus, you know, she’s a lovely person and deserves flowers. (Don’t worry, production managers deserve something too, Jonna. Oban and Sherrywoods, was it?)

Anyway! Somewhere in there, Dave Butler showed up, and I got pulled into a game of Here I Stand shortly after noon with him, Chris Deboe, Christopher Ruocchio, Jeremy Bailey, and David who was the Reincarnation of Martin Luther. We managed to finish the game in four turns by 11pm. Yes, it was one of those games. Lots of fun, and we had to swap players in and out as other con things were going on. For example, I had to actually go check in to the con at one point. Whee!

I also had to bow out of the game at 3pm or so to do the panel on “Ninja Romance in Sci-Fi & Fantasy”. Very, very much fun! Pretty sure that Jenny Posthumous, Amanda Spriggs and I all decided that romance pretty much belongs everywhere, thank you very much. If you write realistic people, bonds form. Deal with it.

Later, I bopped out of the game to go to dinner with Mike, Nick, Lawdog, and a mess of folks from Raconteur Press. Marina Fontaine joined as, as did Ben Yalow.

Did I tell you I got to have dinner sitting next Ben and Jonna? That I got to listen to them chatting about their experiences with SF fandom over the years? Ben is a fascinating gentleman - I could listen to him all day! - and as a young lady, Jonna was more or less right smack dab in the middle of West Coast fandom. That was a culture that I got to know second hand, from the books and magazines I read as a teen, but she was there for it all. Listening to her and Ben trade anecdotes was… man.

Dinner was amazing. Oh, and we had chicken in there somewhere. It was pretty good, too.

Back to the con! I made it in time for the final (fourth) turn of Here I Stand, where my Ottomans were able to clinch victory. Largely because Jeremy played them exceptionally well while I was gone. Evening done, I headed up to my room, only to get invited into Jack’s Crosstime Saloon along the way. That was a wonderful little party that goes on every MarsCon, and a find all on it’s own.

Bed. Crash. Up the next morning…

Saturday

Saturday morning started off early. They all did, actually. Up at 8, grab something to eat, get rolling! This morning I showered, shaved, and wandered down to the green room to get some coffee. I scattered some bookmarks advertising the Stories in the Key of Tull open call around the room, got the aforementioned coffee, and sat down to do some last-minute research before heading into my 10am panel on “The Weirdly Versitile West”.

Somewhere along in there Bethanne Kim wandered in and we started chatting. Research immediately forgotten. She’s a wonderful lady, and deep into the realms of Eric Flint’s 1632 Universe. I heard from her about stories she’s working on, and we talked about what it was like to base a series of alternate history stories on a real town and manage continuity for something like 14 million (yes, million) word of fiction.

After that I wandered into the Weirdly Versatile West panel like a greenhorn looking for trouble. Well, maybe not. H. Y. Gregor did a fantastic job of moderating, and asked some really interesting questions. I also got to meet Bill Blume, who was a tremendously nice guy. Oh, and I sat next to Dave Butler, which is always a treat. I’ pretty sure we decided that the west doesn’t just have to be, you know, The West, and that writing stories with the elements of Westerns is pretty darn cool, pardner.

I spent a good part of the day in a daze, wandering around the con. No, really. The time the in the dealer’s room was well spent. I found a dealer with a couple of Tom Reamy books (well, there are only a couple of Tom Reamy books, and he had ‘em!)

I also ran into Phil Pournelle and got to catch up. We went to SWOS together, way back when, and it was honestly fascinating to talk about the paths our lives took to bring us back together again at MarsCon. We talked about family (girls and girls, with various attached quadrupeds, though his are rideable), what we’ve been up to professionally outside of writing, and all the usual chatter. Phil’s not only an amazingly nice guy, he’s unbelievably smart, and I look forward to seeing some of the things he talked about working on.

Somewhere in there, I did a book signing with Marina Fontaine. This was about the only part of the con that was “meh”. I was thinking the signing space would be in the dealer’s room, since that’s my experience at other cons (LibertyCon and our local SF con here in Pittsburgh). Instead, the signing room was way off the beaten path, back in a wing devoted to gaming sessions. So we got a total of seven people visiting us, including one confused gamer, a mother and two children on a scavenger hunt, and a fellow with a dog. Yes, dogs count as people. Wally from Raconteur stopped in at some point to chat. So we didn’t do much in the way of signings, but I did have some down time and got to chat with Marina, who’s a charming and delightful lady. So I’ll count it as a win anyaway.

Later in the afternoon, I caught Dave Butler again in one of the few panels I attended. He moderated “The Trick to Creating Believable Magic Systems”. I have to admit, I went because I know that Dave’s view (and mine, in many ways) are not necessarily compatible with the idea of “magic as technology” that seems so prevalent these days. Not surprising when you consider we’ve got a couple of decades worth of role-playing gamers (and now, video gamers) turned writers.

I’ll admit, there is something fun about knowing the rules of magic. There’s a sense of weirdness and wonder that you lose when you do that, though. I can’t imagine Gandalf or Conan or the like explaining the rules of magic to someone. I have to admit that I was really happy at the end, where Dave explained his view, with an emphasis on relationships - because that is exactly what backs the magic in my Weird Pittsburgh universe. I’m going to have to make an effort to lean into that and keep Weird Pittsburgh, well. Weird.

I did my time “at the bar” as Spearman Burke describes it. I somehow managed to wander away for dinner on my own. Which meant I missed going out to dinner with a bunch of fun folks (Larry and Bridgette Correia included). Brandon did, however, so he started off his second round at the con bby having dinner However, that meant that I was able to catch the opening of the Kish RPG game that Dave Butler was running. I didn’t want to play, but I did want to observe, so I bopped in and out of the game room over the course of the evening. The game went absolutely brilliantly. To give you a sense of the majestic wonder: when I first dropped in after they’d been playing for an hour, they were hauling around the body of their boss - who had died from being jumped on - and trying to convince a scribe that they scroll of bad love poetry they had stolen was, in fact, a cunningly encoded form of the crop report they had been sent to steal.

Note to self: always make sure at least one character in your party is semi-literate.

At some point, I rejoined folks at the bar. The troupe returned from dinner, and Bradon showed up for another round at the con! His wonderful wife, bless her soul, practically kicked him out of the house so he could go hang with all us writing weirdos. He didn’t realize what that entailed, bwa-ha-ha!

I think this was the point where Mike, Nick, Brandon, and I chatted with Jack Wylder for a bit; though in all honesty, he was kind of peopled out, and was using us to keep others from grabbing him for a “quick conversation”. Which was fine by us. Convention Beards, just one of the Many Services provided to you by the Alpha Mercs!

This was the point where Jonna announced we were all going upstairs. If you want the rest of that story, including the gory details of my obliviousness, you’ll have to go read Spearman Burke’s AAR. I’ll just say that Jonna is wonderful, listening to Speaker to Lab Animals was amazing, and yes, I did get to meet David Weber, once I realized I was sitting in the same room with him.

MARSCON After Action Report

Sunday

Sleep. Wake. You’re getting the idea here, right?

The highlight of the day was breakfast with the usual suspects. I got to chat with Wally and Liz, who are absolutely charming people. You may notice a theme here. The Raconteur folks and the people who orbit them (or whom they are mutually in orbit with, in some strange authorial N-body problem) are all pretty darn cool. Ben Yalow joined us again as well, which meant we got to hear more SF fandom history from him. I think we all came away from that with another reading list (“Wait, how have I never read this book that he says was the start of modern science fantasy?!?!”)

I spent the morning packing, looking for cheap caffeine, and checking out before going back to hang out in the bar. That meant - once again! - gettin to hang out with Ben Yalow. If you’re sensing a theme here, it’s because it was. There are certain people you just shut up and listen to, whenever you get the chance; and Ben is one of them.

Somewhere along the way, I wandered over to chat with David Hensley. Say it with me: an absolutely delightful human being. Seriously, Dave is Good People. If I came away from this con with nothing other than getting to know him, I would have counted the whole thing as a successful weekend.

Of course, while we were chatting, Larry came out of one of his sessions and stopped right next to us to field questions from folks. Which was interesting, and cool - I mean, we were listening in, as one does. It kind of went to 11 with the last fellow, though, who asked Larry a question about dealing with idiots online. His response, paraphrased, was something like:

“If you’re talking about anything online, especially anything related to politics, you’re going to get idiots coming after you.” Gestures at me. “Sam here knows what I’m talking about.”

Yeah, I’m just standing around, and Larry Correia: (a) remembered me, (b) remembered I did the politics thing, and (b) referenced me as an example.

Which was really, really good, because after he was done with the last guy, Dave offered him one of his books. Hey! At that point, I was toting around an extra copy of One October Night. I figured if we were giving Larry books, I would definitely get in on that action! Larry looked at Dave, looked at me, and said:

“I can’t take these, guys. You haven’t signed them yet.”

That, folks, is an level of awesomeness that I will remember for a long, long time to come. Dave and I scrambled for some pens, signed our books, and Larry wandered off with them. Freaking amazing!

My final panel was a 3pm: “The UnderWorld: Black Market Goods”. This is the one that I was most looking forward to. Seriously, you invited the Libertarian politician to talk about black markets? Dude!

Sean Korsgaard did an absolutely amazing job moderating. Wayland Smith and Amanda Spriggs were on the panel as well, and both have law enforcement experience. I had a tremendous amount of fun talking about what causes black markets (government, duh), what makes a market a market, and all sorts of other economics stuff. Wayland and Amanda had some entertaining real-life stories about criminals to relate. Overall, I think we agreed that there’s just so much fun you can have with black markets that they’re well worth considering including in your fiction or your game, if you need it.

After the panel, I said my goodbyes, got a final picture with Liz, and headed out. Yes, on the road for a seven-hour drive home after sleeping about 18 hours all weekend. It was… doable, let’s put it that way. I listened to a lot of music, as well as a couple of interesting episodes of the Novel Marketing podcast, and came up with two story ideas while I was meandering back home across the length of Pennsylvania. As you’re reading this now, you can likely surmise that I made it home safely.

Overall evaluation? A+++, would Con again. Though next time I’m going to make sure I’ve got my wife with me so I can sleep on the way home!

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