Sword & Sorcery is Alive and Well at Pyr
Well, I’m back from Dragon*Con, and my head is still spinning. It would take me weeks to jot down even a partial record of all the events we attended and the great people we met (not to mention the jaw-dropping costumes I was constantly gawking at) — so I think I’ll leave that to Howard, who’s already posted Part I of a splendid con report.
Instead, I’m going to hit the highlights. The best event we attended at the convention, bar none, was the Pyr Books, a New Voice in Publishing panel, hosted by publisher Lou Anders and attended by Pyr authors Clay & Susan Griffith, Erin Hoffman, Andrew Mayer, Ari Marmell, Mike Resnick, Jon Sprunk, Sam Sykes, and the amazingly cool James Enge.
Why was it so great? Lou highlighted the terrific titles Pyr will be publishing over the next six months in a fast-paced and entertaining slide show, and each of the authors chimed in at appropriate moments to tell us a little more about their books. It was a great way to get introduced to an entire line in under an hour.
And what a line. I haven’t been this intrigued by so many books from a single publisher in a long time.
On the whole, I’m not opposed to traveling with boys. Generally speaking they are amusing companions particularly when refusing to ask directions, thereby winding you through mildly interesting places while attempting to locate the desired destination sans MapQuest. Along the route, in an effort to distract their hapless passengers from all the pointless meandering, they can generally be counted on for lively and revealing conversation about former girlfriends, prior arrests and entirely icky things done in frat houses; all of which become prime blackmail fodder for later use.
There’s a temporary lull in operations and the skies are clear over Oklahoma, so I thought I’d take the time to set the record straight about our expedition to Dragon*Con via the Black Gate zeppelin, the Harold Lamb. John described the 
I arrived at our building this morning to find people milling around in the street, pointing into the air. A fat, smoke-shrouded zeppelin was moored to the Black Gate rooftop headquarters.
Have you ever woken up in an extremely good mood, found you were left enough hot water for a skin-peeling shower, stepped on the scale and found it down two pounds in spite of the bacchanalia of the night before? Have you ever leapt out of bed feeling euphoric and thought, “I really love my life?”
Has anyone ever asked what you would grab out of your house if it was on fire and you could only make one trip? Or maybe the question was, if you knew you were going to be stranded on a deserted island, what would you take with you?
Now that Gen Con is done, it’s time to offer up some final thoughts, experiences, and, of course, games.