Mike Douton's Stuff and/or Junk

It’s that time of year for my winter con, Boskone!

Even though they picked the worst weekend ever to host it on, my wife is awesome enough to be cool with me going to play Saturday and Sunday. Seriously, my wife rocks.

Mine is Red, but you get the …. drift.

Of course, there’s an epic ton of snow in the forecast for this weekend. I think three years in a row with a right proper blizzard makes it a tradition. Snow doesn’t bother me. That amazes people constantly, even native New Englanders who not only have winter, they have the same winters that I do. A foot of snow? Whatev. Me + Subaru > Nature. Really, the only downside is that I was thinking about taking the train to Boston this year. Boston is a horrendously miserable place to take a car and the T actually runs a train down into Rhode Island that stops four blocks from my house. But anyone who’s seen news from around here and all the snow knows the MBTA is a big mess right now that can’t seem to get out of its own way. So driving it is. I’ve never really lived in a place with functional public transportation anyways so am not comfortable relying on others for my travel plans anyways.

Boskone, and Readercon in the summer, recharge my creative batteries. I think my wife gets that better than I do, what with her being ok that we go to dinner later tonight instead of tomorrow. Writing, and more so writing successfully, is not an easy thing. If what we did was easy, everyone would. Or at least there wouldn’t be so much free self pubbed garbage cluttering up the ebook world.

So I’m marching off to Boskone tomorrow, commuting up each day and spending most of my money on overpriced hotel parking. Since this is my fourth year, and many of the same faces go to Readercon, half the crowd will do the Polite Head Nod of Recognition. I’ll see and chat with people I’ve seen and chatted with before. Maybe I’ll pretend I’m an extrovert and chat with more people. I’ll take notes for my writing. Ideas and inspiration and maybe I’ll remember to blog about all the cool topics that come up, unlike Readercon where I still haven’t blogged half the topics yet. Maybe this year the Dealer’s Room will have Max Gladstone or Mur Lafferty in stock and I can get more signed books. I’ll get Myke Cole to sign a whole stack of books because for some reason it’s become tradition for me to buy his book for Fred. I’m going to find ML Brennan because Rhode Island really should be run by vampires. I’ll discover new authors and maybe their books will actually be in stock for me to buy.

I am going to read a story for the Flash Fiction Slam and damnit, it’s the best little piece of micro fiction I’ve written. Related, this year I’m not bringing a cyberpunk story to lay out in front of judges who invented the genre.

When I get home on Sunday, I’m going to be riding a wave of momentum. It usually lasts a month. I recently twigged on how to fix the plot of the godpunk novel that I’ve been fighting with since I realized it was broken a couple months ago. I’m going to take that momentum and the third reboot of that novel is going to be the charm.

I’m going to get to the other side of the fence to go play with the cool kids.