Carrie has a worst-first-lines competition.  Limit of three entries per person, and I’ve already used it up.  I’m very pleased with:

CLIPCLOP CLIPCLOP clipclop clipclop went Cowboy Dan’s horse as it decelerated into an empty parking spot out front of the Last Chance Saloon.

Anyway, once I start doing one of these things I can’t stop, I binge and binge until I feel bloated and sick and ashamed; so the comments here are for overflow.  Anyone under a similar compulsion can feel free to post here or there or both.  No prizes here and no point because that’s how life is.

Incidentally, I genuinely rather like Bulwer-Lytton, and I don’t think It was a dark and stormy night. . . is nearly as bad as it’s cracked up to be.

So I didn’t win the Campbell, not even nowhere close.  On the other hand, I did win a bet with my editor that it would go to David Anthony Durham (to whom, congratulations).  Getting to say I told you so was a fairly satisfactory substitute for winning.

I did several interviews, including one with the very erudite Matthew Surridge, which is here.

I heard Faye Ringel tell a story about a British writer trying his hand at a western, in which, knowing that coyotes were the kind of thing that appeared in westerns but not exactly what they were, he wrote in a flock of them, circling overhead.  That was probably the high point of the weekend.

Anyone going to WorldCon? I am.

I will be doing the following:

• “Making up the Facts as We Go Along” –  “How do we write hard SF in fields where there’s still uncertainty about interpreting the data? Can we claim as rigorous a trope like the many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory, which is just that: one of many interpretations among many?
  • Friday, 5.00 p.m., Room P-518A, with Daniel P. Dern, John Helfers, Paddy Forde, Jordan Jackson
  • [Why am I on this panel when I don’t know anything about science and don’t write hard SF or anything remotely close to it? I don’t know. A computer assigned me to it, or possibly some sort of Sorting Hat. I suspect everyone else is some sort of physicist or something; I will be there as a representative of the Pig-Ignorant Community.]
• Signing.
  • Saturday, 10.00 a.m, Room P-Autographs.
• “Weird Tales” — As in the magazine.
  • Saturday, 11.00 a.m., Room P-524C, with Ann VanderMeer, Stephen Segal, others.
• “Stroll with the Stars”
  • Sunday, 9.00 a.m., meet at Riopelle Fountain outside the Palais (corner of Ave Viger & Rue de
    Bleury).  With Farah Mendlesohn, Lou Anders, Mary Robinette Kowal, Paul Cornell, Stu Segal, John Picacio.
  • The idea here is that we all go for a briefish walk. Adventure and excitement ensue.
• “The Anti-Workshop Panel; You don’t have to Go to Clarion/Odyssey to have a Career in Genre” — “Does going to one or more of the writing workshops help your career? Some writers have a very successful career without
  attending one.”
  • Sunday, 10.00 a.m, Room P-522B, with Camille Alexa, Jay Lake, Lawrence M. Schoen.
  • [I have never attended a workshop of any kind. On the other hand maybe I probably should have. Who knows?]
• “How much History does a Fantasy Writer Need to Know?” — “Should a fantasy writer have a degree in medieval studies? Fantasy writers discuss how much historical knowledge is required for their work.”
  • Sunday at 5.00 p.m.,  Room P-512BF, with Ellen Kushner, Faye Ringel, P. C. Hodgell.
  • [Exactly the amount of historical knowledge I happen to have, and no more].