These Are My People

If the last four days had gone by any faster, you'd still be hearing the sonic booms.

Traveled down to Dragon*Con with Oleg Volk and Michael Z. Williamson. The oversocialization the weekend before with Tam's GunBlogger Meetup was merely inoculation for plunging into 35,000+ geeks and gamers in four hotels.

Wow.

A few blocks away, we started seeing people in costume, and stranger for me, people I knew. Except they weren't. In a small pool of geek, nerd, goth, gamer, otaku, and dork, everybody is an individual. In a large enough crowd, body types and hair styles are sterotypes, not an individual. All weekend, I kept turning around and seeing old roommates, housemates, gaming group partners, friends... and they weren't the people I knew, but they sure looked and acted alike. It was like meeting thousands of your old friends, who turn out to be new friends instead. Yes, these are my people.

I met a lot of awesome folks, including Larry Correia (who is an awesome gentleman, as well as a New York Times best-selling author), Howard Tayler of Schlock Mercenary and Writing Excuses, Dan Wells of great horror fiction like I Am Not A Serial Killer and the Writing Excuses podcast, Julie Cochrane who wrote several Posleen War books with John Ringo, John Ringo and his absolutely wonderful wife... so many authors I've lost track, and even the editors of Baen Books! (Okay, some geeks really want to meet the actors of Firefly. Me, I really like meeting the editors and authors. I may be a dork, but I'm a happy one!) Not to mention all the really cool people from the internet in the flesh! (Thanks, Ryan! You are awesome!)

And then there was dinner at the Brazilian Steak House. I think I'm still full! The only thing that kept me from falling into a meat coma was the concert later that night.

After 10 years in Alaska, with almost no concerts since I moved there, Sunday night moved into Monday morning with Jefferson Starship opening for the Cruxshadows, and I had more fun than my tired mind has words to express. After all, y'all probably are looking for something more profound than SQUEE!

Monday, despite being bathed in rain and sweat from the heat and humidity, we got people off to the airport on time, and out on the road in time to drive through the remnants of a tropical storm. While the drive itself was long and rainy, there are worse fates than being in a car with Mad Mike and Oleg Volk, both of whom are great guys. Though I think my water bottle is still in Mike's van - good excuse to visit in Indianapolis, eh?

Life is good, and I definitely have to bring Calmer Half next time.

Hey! If you like good scifi, go buy Mike's book Rogue! It comes out today, and sales in the first week drive the New York Times bestseller list - now only is he a great guy, but also a great author!