Duane Joseph Olson, Thomm Quackenbush, Dante Basco

Once I have thoroughly researched someone, my brain decides I must know them. This will cause me to instinctively react as though we are friends when meeting them for the first time.

I am a few hours settled at my table at No Such Convention when Dante Basco checks in with the student organizers at the registration table. My head bounces up. I give him a smile of greeting. I know many of the people who return to this convention year after year, so the trigger is not "This is the voice of Prince Zuko and the everything of Rufio in Hook," but "Oh, I recognize this person! He probably bought one of my books. Best to be excited to see them."

Basco, with polite awkwardness, gives me a nod and smile because he has no idea who I am. I am a much lower level celebrity than him. I wouldn't expect him to have seen my face or looked me up, as I did him given that we are going to be doing a panel together. I wanted to be prepared to interview him more deeply than "Hey, does it annoy you that most of what people say to you is 'Bangarang' and 'But your scar is on the wrong side'?"

Last year, owing to the paucity of guests, I half-joked that I was the headliner. This year, I am not by a wide margin. NSCon gleefully advertised others, even flying them here. I received a couple sentences ("And also, Thomm Quackenbush, who writes books or something!"), an honorarium, and a hotel room. I am not complaining, as I could have easily had none of these things.

Air-quoting racism

An organizer formally introduces me to Basco. Even if he doesn't recognize me, he is a warm enough soul and experienced enough in being a "Hey, it's that guy!" that he can fake it. He shakes my hand and tells me it is good to meet me, and I damn near believe he means it.

I ask Basco if he is fine having me record the panel, which of course he is. I don't know why he would object, but it is better to ask than endure the queasy look of telling me I am offending him with a microphone.

Once Basco walks off to attend to whatever duties are inherent headlining (blessing lepers, groupie orgies involving red snappers, hoovering cocaine, inspecting a dragon hoard of gold), Amber comments how unfazed I was by this interaction.

I told her that, at this point in my life, the person on the other end of the handshake must basically be Neil Gaiman for me to freak out in their presence, and maybe not even him at this point. (I've encountered Gaiman a few times and expect I will a few more. Gaiman has pretended he remembered that I gifted him my first two books, for which he may well be canonized in my head as a saint.)

I do have two consistent fans at the convention, a man named Lou and his daughter. In first seeing me this year, he mentions how he asked his daughter if she thought I would have new murders to talk about. She replied that I probably committed murders to keep things interesting. What keen insight into my character she has.

At the Q&A

The first night, I give a Christmas panel, as seasonally inappropriate as this is, because I needed something new to present. It goes over as well as one might expect. It is not a large con and I am literally the first panel of the convention. Getting even the ten or twelve people I do by the end of the panels is laudable. One person comes in telling me that their small attention span will likely mean that they bow out early, but I manage to be dynamic enough to keep them in their seat.

Amber seems distant all night. I had been having mental health issues most of the day, though she only saw the tip of that iceberg. I tried to purge these by singing on my drive to Vassar College (which also warmed my voice up for the speechifying I would soon do), but I was still emotionally raw until I vented it all in my panel. Amber, too, is tired. I think she resents having to do with convention instead of concentratedly studying. She would prefer to be home, tending to our pets.

My mental health issues have me fighting with her in my head all day and night, which is not conducive to good sleep. I tell Amber that we've been fighting, and she says to tell Head Amber to stop fighting me. She then seems taken aback that I am most of who is fighting.

Friday nights and Sunday all day are notably sedate. People come here on Saturday, seeing it as the only day worth attending. I am giving my best panel - I know this - and doing a Q&A with the Basco Saturday. Everything else is superfluous. I assume most of the other vendors won't be here until tomorrow - I hope, at least, that there are more vendors - and that some will not return Sunday because there isn't much money in it.

The Knife Guy, who has been a mainstay of the convention for years, is first told that the college will not allow him to sell knives on campus. Despite what I've chosen to call him, he does have other wares, so this is insulting and obnoxious, but not a total ban. However, when he puts these ornamental knives in his car, a student sees him, calls security, and gets the police involved. As long as I have attended this convention in any capacity, he has sold steampunk knives and accoutrements from his booth without trouble. The police escort him from the campus and let him know he is to never again set foot on the grounds or they will arrest him.

This becomes the first bit of gossip I offer whenever I see a regular.

At the Q&A

Saturday, I conduct the joint Q&A with Dante Basco. I start it, because I understand how these things should go. After half an hour, I realize I have been monopolizing the moderation and consciously pull myself back so that the other panelists can have more hand in the interview. Basco is eager to talk, so it is a matter of figuring out what is going to get him to say the most at once. He twice bursts into a spoken word poem, which I mark as a success. I get in a few funny lines at no one's expense, which is a greater personal success.

Afterward, Basco does a signing upstairs from our booth, which goes on for over an hour. I wonder what that experience would be like, to have so many care enough to wait in so long a line.

My second and final panel of the night is an hour and a half. I had planned for prepped for an hour, unaware of this fact, and throw together some other material. I feel myself faltering, because this is more than I wanted to discuss. I am up to the task, though I would have liked to have prepared more and better. Still, aside from one person who falls asleep (I do not understand how anyone could sleep when I am getting going), it went about as well as one could feasibly expect.

After the panel, my humors are better balanced. I feel mostly myself. I apologize to Amber for my testiness and she apologizes for getting mad at me over the order in which water ought to be boiled to make cup noodles (she was right, I was careless).

I scroll through social media under tags for the convention, liking some new posts. Within twenty minutes, a guy arrives to my booth to thank me for liking a picture of him. I try to convey to him that he doesn't need to thank me, but he is proud to have gotten second place in the costume contest and wants me to know that my like meant something to him. I do not tell him that I was mostly looking for pictures of me, because being a public artist is to be a slight narcissist.

Gotta go fast

Danielle, my spooky friend whom I only see during this convention, tells me she had applied to an artist residency at a decommissioned church run by two occultists, and that this residency is still open to writers. It would be two weeks away from Amber. I ask Amber twice if she would be okay with this. She could not, of course, come. Summer is the busy season for veterinary hospitals and she could not be spared that long. She cannot spend this weekend away from the pets, to say nothing of a fortnight. "But I could visit you," she says.

"It's New Hampshire."

"I would visit," she reaffirms.

Sunday morning, I give Danielle a copy of Artificial Gods, because it contains occult threads she will like. She refuses the gift and says she would like to pay for it, so I give her what it cost me, figuring that I meant to give it to her for free, so this will suffice. After buying one of her pins, which I had wanted for months, she gives me another one for free. If she lived closer, we would be good friends. Instead, this is most of our contact for the year, outside the internet. We talk about the residency and how she should start a cult, Upstate New York being a curiously popular place in which to do that.

Sunday, few people come. I accept this, getting writing done when I don't have to smile and tell people about my series. I have a panel on writing and publishing that only Lou and his daughter attend, so I mostly use it as an excuse to complain, as is my wont. I expected little different from a Sunday, so I am not disappointed.

Soon in Xenology: Social Justice Wiccans. Ken.

last watched: American Gods
reading: Aliens: The World's Leading Scientists on the Search for Extraterrestrial Life
listening: Damien Rice