I had a great time at Boskone last weekend! Many people spoke to me about Beneath Ceaseless Skies, which was great–it’s more and more people at each con I go to. A good small crowd attended the BCS reading, and several nice-sized audiences attended the two panels about online topics that I was on.

Special thanks to a few folks: JoAnn and Boskone for inviting me, Maggie and KJ and Mike for reading, Neil Clarke and James Patrick Kelly for great interaction on two different panels, Teresa Nielsen Hayden for remembering me :) , Ian and NewGuyDave for a cool chat, Anne for her great brewpub recommendation, the good folks at Harpoon Brewery and Cambridge Brewing Co. for their fine skill, and my compatriot Mike for bringing a church key!

Last weekend I attended agent and writing lecturer Don Maass’s High Tension Workshop in Austin, TX. His whole “tension” idea is to make every paragraph in a work, of any type of narrative, so compelling a read that the reader can’t put it down. I found his strategies immensely interesting, partly because he presented them as a tool to be used wherever the writer sees fit. Some of them were based on anticipation or playing with reader expectations. Many others were rooted in the character, which is my favorite aspect of fiction.

Maass was a very engaging lecturer and knew his material thoroughly, using many examples from best-selling novels. Austin was also quite cool–we were at the north end of town, but I still found a cool brewpub called North by Northwest and a sampler six-pack of local ales from Blanco, TX. All in all, a damn fine weekend.

I’m in Kill Devil Hills, NC (of Wright Brothers fame), eating grilled tuna & black bean burritos, drinking Cottonwood ales, and reading The Lies of Locke Lamora. All my music buddies are clustered around the kitchen table on their laptops, working. Yay beach!