Dwelling in Probabilities

 But so much happened before that! To recap, I spent the first half of January getting my wife into memory care, which included everything from a raptor of paperwork to assembling furniture to labeling her clothes to negotiating new medical stuff and many, many medical-related things. I got her signed up with all the appropriate entities and got everything organized. I set up backs for my backups so I could leave town. And in the midst of all of that, had not 1, but 2 credit cards hacked.

And then I hopped on a train to Chicago with my friends to go to Capricon 44, where I was a guest of honor. It was a whirlwind! Day 1 before the con started was all about travel, recovery and exploring the hotel (the Sheraton Grand, which is very nice - here’s a TikTok video tour of my suite).
Thursday morning, we went and visited the Bean and the Art Institute, which is alway amazing. 
Day 2 launched with the “All the GOHs” panel at which K. Tempest Bradford, Victor Raymond, Ariela Housman and I got into a discussion about AI, uses and discontents. Then Matt, Mike and Sherry and I went off to my favorite fancier Chicago restaurant, Vermillion, now serving Indian/Chinese fusion. It was every bit as good as I remembered! Then we headed back for Opening Ceremonies, which were charming. We each got very nice gift bags and mine included a statue of the con’s mergoat mascot by artist Chris Rose. You can see a photo montage here on Patreon. After that, we enjoyed a GoH and friends bar con for a few hours, which was fun.

Day 2 began with a lovely breakfast with Cecilia Tan in her room. Cecilia was one of my first publishers, back when I was writing erotica, and we have gotten to hang out since before lockdown so it was wonderful to start to catch up. Then we went to the LGBTQ + Meetup and from there, I went off to go moderate the Queer Eye for Sci-Fi panel. Lively, if rather free-ranging discussion at the latter, but I enjoyed it. Then I was off to be interviewed by publisher Larissa Davila of Stone Raven Press, which was delightful. After that, I enjoyed a fine dinner with Mike and Matt at a local pub, then went up to my room “to rest up for a few minutes.” Reader, I drank my tea, put my feet up and called a night.

Saturday was an intense amount of programming, starting with a 3 item block at 10. We started with a small press panel with Larissa and Kris of Stone Raven and Greg Clumpner from Parsec, followed by my Guest of Honor reading with Tempest. This was unfortunately scheduled over lunchtime and was sparsely attended, which meant you all missed out since we both read new things. But we got to chat and Paul Weimer got some great photos of us, so there was that. After that, I was off to do a much more lively presentation on aging and representation in sf and f - engaged audience, good questions and thoughts. Then I got a brief break to hit the Art Show and the Dealer’s Room before going to my autographing. I did get to chat with folks who  dropped by, but did not actually sign any books. Then I got whisked off to dinner at the same pub, this time with Matt, John O’Neill of Black Gate, Tina Jens, Rich Horton, Brendan Detzner and his partner, Reina Hardy. Reina had a movie she had written, “Paging Mr. Darcy,” debuting on the Hallmark Channel that night so we chatted about that and sundry genre topics. Then I went back to the con for Self-Promotion for Writers, which was quite interesting. I often daydream about how much more I could do for Queen of Swords Press if I didn’t also have to work full time and this gave me some ideas. After that, I did an erotica reading from some of Emily L. Byrne’s work, which was well-received, and then I crashed hard.

Day 4: went to the American Writers Museum, followed by tea at the Russian Tea Room, which was delightful as on past visits. Then we headed back to the con for the whirlwind of luggage wrangling and good byes and such. Our train trip back was plagued by weird things like Michael being offered onboarding assistance, then getting abandoned in a room with Sherry, from which they had to rescue themselves. There was lots of misdirection and basic mistakes by staff and one of the women in our car acted out for hours because she didn’t get a smoke break. But we survived and eventually got dropped off at our respective homes (thanks, Kevin!). I didn’t get to bed until 1, but had planned on taking Monday off anyway. 

Monday was sort of a catch up day, mostly on hacked credit cards and such. I worked Tuesday and began feeling poorly on Tuesday night. Tested positive for COVID on Wednesday morning, got in touch with the state telehealth program on Thursday and got Paxlovid delivered to the doorstep. Still not feeling great, but definitely on the mend. Bummed that my 4 year streak at  dodging it is broken, but glad to get the meds pretty easily. And now I get to lay low and try to get stuff done between naps.