Tad Williams

Some of me buddies.

Some more of me buddies.

A Charles N Brown buddy, with some old broad.

One's a pinot, two's a cosmo, back to pinot...

... Floor. Actually, the windowsill just above. I didn't jump. I'm typing this, aren't I?

We’re walking, we’re walking, we’re walking through the mammoth spaces inside the Hyatt Regency Hotel, specifically the one in Calgary, Canada. There’s a lobby outside the bar that reminds me of the Turbine Hall at the building that was once Battersea Power Station – only it’s sort of all in soft Canadian stone. Calgary is pretty. The people are kind and very connective. The weather is intermittently lovely and the convention is mellow.

I run around with the Shadowmarch crew here. It’s also like I’m at play with whoever’s popped up this time from the continuum of writers and creators and publishers in our field. I find I don’t want to go nuts doing the partying thing, though. Which is kind of wise given that there aren’t any significant publishers parties – not this time, which is fine (though sweet-smelling Steve Jones of Wembley, North London, ha, has a mouthful of viewpoint on this one.)

I ask Ellen Datlow how many awards she has now and it’s a bonny, bonny haul. I listen to her and Kathryn Cramer on a panel about the best recent favorite short fiction, then get to do a panel myself on something like mystery tropes in young adult fiction. I find I’ve got far too much to say. Tad of course is firing on all guns with that one – he’s always got too much to say – Lee Modesett Jr gets into riffing on him on one panel, and it’s hugely entertaining.

We’ve got a lot of work to think about and do. In the background, in our hotel room, we have the television on, babbling away about the election, and I feel the heaving of history and the turning of the age, and I wonder.