Dragon*Con Report Part 2
I said a few words about Dragon*Con itself in Part 1 of my con report. In this one, I’d like to share our experiences at the largest science fiction and fantasy convention in North America.
After a long journey, Black Gate publisher John O’Neill and I reached Atlanta late Thursday afternoon. Reviews Editor Bill Ward acted as our elite scout, and was not only waiting with con badges, but had scoped out the route we’d need to follow to unload our boxes and boxes of Black Gate magazines and vintage science fiction paperbacks. While John and I have been corresponding with Bill Ward for several years, we’d never before met him in person, and it was a pleasure to be able to do so. Bill proved to be just as indispensable, organized, and articulate as he is online, and possessed a dry, quick wit as well.
Jason Waltz, owner of Rogue Blades Entertainment, shared a quarter of the booth with us, and although he and his friend John Whitman had driven down from Milwaukee and we had driven down from Illinois and Indiana, we somehow arrived within a few minutes of each other without coordination. I doubt it would have worked out as well if we’d actually planned it. Between the five of us we managed to get all the Black Gate gear and RBE gear unloaded within an hour. Unpacking it and putting it on display took a bit longer, and required additional time the following morning.
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 
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?