ReaderCon was fantastic. I couldn’t have picked a better venue for my fortieth birthday. I got to visit with wonderful people and had a blast all weekend long. If you’re wanting panel highlights and such, though, this post won’t be for you. I barely attended anything, electing to socialize instead. :-)
Here’s a group shot of Neil Clarke, Robert Legault, Eli Torres, China Miéville, me, John Klima, and John Scalzi. 
With Matt Cheney: 
With China: 
With David Barr Kirtley: 
With David Louis Edelman:
. (There’s a better one of the two of us here, though it’s mislabeled.)
With David Hartwell. He and I share a birthday! 
With JJA: 
Peter Watts being silly. 
I found David Louis Edelman (I’d been lucky enough to copyedit his novel Infoquake, which was great), JJA, and Douglas Cohen (, of Realms of Fantasy) right away, and I spent a lot of the con hanging out with them. Ernest Lilley, of SFRevu, took tons of pictures of me that I can’t wait to see, and I had fun visiting with him and Ian Randal Strock (whose name I’ve been mispronouncing for the last several years, I found out, much to my chagrin). Allen Steele’s an old bud of mine from the WorldCon Early Risers’ Club (he and I are the only two in it), and it was great to catch up with him, too.
Jeff Ford and Paul Di Filippo invited me to breakfast one morning, and I got to hear all kinds of wonderful writing conversation from them. Later that morning I met up with a friend of mine from high school who’s now a cardiologist at Boston Children’s, and it was great to see her.
John Scalzi pumped me up with enough compliments all by himself (and walked me around the dealers’ room counting the looks he said I got and dropped conversations I caused, of which I was utterly unaware :-)) to last me to whatever my next con is; he’s wonderfully gregarious and outgoing. (I was so impressed with him that I went and bought Old Man’s War and devoured it in five hours on the way home–it’s incredibly rare for me to read purely for pleasure any more, so it’s a big compliment. :-))
What else…? Oh, yeah. Matt Cheney wished me happy birthday every time I saw him. I discovered that I share a birthday with David Hartwell of Tor! (He led the crowd in singing “Happy Birthday” to me at my celebration, which was wonderful.)
I found that Beth Meacham has a delightfully droll sense of humor. I saw Liz Gorinsky there, looking as gorgeous as always, and she was kind enough to praise my copyediting to other editors.
Elizabeth Bear propped another writer’s mouth closed when he was gaping at me in my birthday outfit (which I have to admit I felt pretty sexy in). :-D It was very funny.
I had a fantastic copyediting conversation with James Morrow and his wife; they both seem born copyeditors. We discussed linguistics and hypercorrection and the difficulties of writing when you want something to be just right. They invited me to the final dinner of the con, but I hesitated to crash the party.
Another great copyediting conversation ensued outside the bar later that day, this one with Michael Burstein and his wife.
I got to visit some with Robert Legault , a copyeditor whose comments here always seem right on target, and I spoke ever so briefly to fellow copyeditor Eli Torres (about how nice it is to cuddle with muscled-up men ;-)).
Paul Witcover bought me a beer and gave me a signed copy of his Dracula: Asylum for my birthday. Kelly Link gave me a yummy chocolate bar and a copy of Naomi Mitchison’s Travel Light. China came to my birthday celebration, which I thought was awesome considering his schedule there. I shared a beer with Ann Zeddies (another author of mine) and talked about all kinds of things. I listened to Tom Disch go on (and on and on ;-)) about how utterly gorgeous Rose Fox is, and how much she favors her father.
I talked to R. Scott Bakker and Karl Schroeder and Patrick O’Leary and Andrew Morse and John Bowker and Tempest Bradford and Alan DeNiro (who was kind enough to offer to buy me a shot for my birthday, though I turned it down) and probably a ton of other people whose names I’m shamefully forgetting.
I was complimented all con on how great I look, which was a wonderful salve for turning forty. :-)
Teresa Nielsen Hayden gave me perhaps my favorite compliment I had all con, though, saying how she had watched me keep my online cool under “intense provocation” and likening it to her favorite saying related to arguing: “Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I shall fear no evil, for I am the meanest son of a bitch in the Valley.” :-)
So you see, I just didn’t have time for panels. Maybe next ReaderCon will be different. :-)