On the road again: Balticon, day 3

The hotel's bandwidth has been so slow prior to tonight that you could almost hear the screaming of the bits as the comm elves shoved them one by one down the Interweb tubes that feed this place. Tonight, though, the bandwidth has miraculously improved to the point of being merely worse than anything I've experienced since the dreaded Omni in Atlanta and the Super 8 in Biloxi, so I'm basking in the happy glow of electronic flow.

My first con activity of the day was a Guests of Honor brunch, which was pleasant but brief because I had to leave early to do an interview with Paul Fischer of the fine Balticon podcast team. I'm not sure when it'll be up, but when I notice it, I'll let you know about it. My guess is that it'll appear sometime in the next month or so.

I then headed to the Compton Crook winners panel, where our moderator lead four Crooks through a series of writing-related questions. I think it went reasonably well, and the mid-size audience seemed happy, so I was happy.

I stayed in the same room but slid two chairs to the left for my next gig, moderating the Liars' Panel. This one went extremely well, with a ton of laugher and fine answers from all participants. In the process, we raised $249 (I think) for Reading Is Fundamental (RIF). In the hall afterward, we raised a bit more money for RIF by selling a few Science Magic Sex show t-shirts--though in all honesty I must admit all of them went to friends. I hope we sell more tomorrow after the show, which I hope goes well.

By the way, after telling people in the Crooks panel that Overthrowing Heaven was not available yet and so was not in the dealers' room, several folks brought me copies to sign. It seems that the formidable Glennis Le Blanc had managed to get some. I have to hope she sells them all!

In the evening, I helped Marty Gear present the awards to the young writers after the young fans section of the masquerade, then watched the rest of the the show and headed to Kyle's for the UFC PPV. If you're an MMA fan, you had to be impressed with the way Lyoto Machida handled Rashad Evans en route to winning the light heavyweight belt. Machida is simply amazing.

I'm doing a one-man, one-hour show in eleven hours and I'm exhausted, so I'm outta here. I hope your weekend is going well.