What I did on my Worldcon vacation
I'm baaaaaaaaaaack! Hazy and exhausted, from absolutely the most intense, exhausting trip I've ever been on.
I'm giving myself time to take it easy, catch up with all the stuff that happened while I was abroad, do as much non-book-related writing as I want before diving back into manuscript edits. As part of that I'm letting myself write DW/LJ posts! Starting with travel recap.
I'll recap just the 5 days I spent at Worldcon in Dublin, mostly for my own memory and to lay it out as much as I can HOW RIDIC BUSY those 5 days were. I think I'll be using people's full names, mostly, and not their internet handles, to save time.
Thursday
After a sleepless night because my flight was at 6am, I flew 3 hours to Rome and then another 3 hours to Dublin (on that flight they put on "Avengers: Endgame" on the overhead screens, a movie that was precisely as long as our flight time, so I could always look up and figure out how long we had left by what was going on on screen).
I got to Dublin around 3pm and discovered an author I wanted to meet up with anyway, Alexandra Rowland, was at the airport at the same time. At first we agreed I'd wait for them and we'd head into town together, but then their suitcase was lost (they had the journey from hell to Dublin) and they eventually told me to just go ahead and not wait :( It was very sad. But I did need to get a move on to make it to the rest of my plans that that.
So I eventually got to the hotel (foregoing a bus because bad knees and bad back and taking a taxi instead) and situated around 5:00pm (they randomly upgraded me to a much better room than I'd paid for, because when I showed up the hotel was overwhelmed and I had to wait for a room to be available, so I guess they just gave me whatever they had).
I literally had time to change, shower, collapse into bed for about 30 minutes, and then I had to get up again and start getting ready to face the world.
I first had to go to the convention center, the main venue where Worldcon was held, to get my badge and the access sticker, which would let me skip lines. Unfortunately though content at the con ran until about midnight, the registration and access desks were only open until 7pm, and if I didn't get there in time I wouldn't be able to do anything else at the con that day AND would have to get up extra early the next day.
So I got dressed (in meeting-people clothes instead of on-a-plane clothes) and got to the convention center around 6:30pm, went around the various desks, got my registration, badge, access sticker, etc. Although unfortunately by the time all of that was done the Program Participant desk was closed, and I didn't even know I had to stop by there to get various necessary items since I was on the program.
Anyway, I met up with local friends briefly, R. the local author (and director of the play I'm in) and her girlfriend, we chatted and squeed for a bit (WE ARE IN DUBLIN! FOR WORLDCON!) and then went to a panel together (my first!): Sexy beasts: nonhuman pairings in SFF erotica.
It was super fun! At some point it turned into the audience throwing out suggestions for supernatural creatures and the panelists discussing whether they'd like to fuck them and why/why not lol.
Then I had to go because G. V. Anderson had invited me for dinner with a few people at 8pm. I originally told her I wasn't sure I'd be up for it after a day of travel, but my knees and back seemed OK enough. I tried to text G. V. and let her know I was around, but alas she didn't seem to see my texts.
So I figure I'd go to the restaurant (a floating boat right outside the convention center) around 8pm, when we were scheduled to meet, and just... see if anyone showed up?
Which they did! I recognized G. V. from her twitter photo, and came up to her and asked if she was who I thought she was, and told her I was Marina, lol, and she was like "yay! You made it!"
So we had dinner on a boat! It was myself, G. V. Anderson, her roommate and fellow short story author Eliza Chan, poet and short story author Eleanna Castroianni (who I had a panel with on the last day of the con) and their partner.
The food was great, eating on a boat was super fun (honestly probably the best meal I had during the entire con) and conversation was great too. At some point Eleanna's partner and I started comparing military experiences, of course, and it led to some hilarious anecdotes. Bathroom stalls were discussed, as well as norms around nudity (apparently the Greek military doesn't do group nakedness as much as we do? lol) and I also heard a story about the most bizarre man in Cornwall and the gun culture on Crete.
Dinner ended around 10:30pm, and I met up with my local friend R. again and we ostensibly went to drink some cider together. But by the time we got to the bar I felt utterly exhausted and on the brink of developing a migraine, and I had an early morning the next day, and like, THE REST OF WORLDCON to go, so I said goodbye and went back to my hotel and went to sleep around 1am, utterly, utterly exhausted.
Friday
I gave myself a "late morning" by which I mean I got up at 9 and went down to breakfast (which was fantastic, and I basically ate up all the hashbrowns, bacon and eggs, with some veggies and a scone) before coming up again and slowly getting my shit together.
Finally I left the hotel around 10 and went to the convention center to sort out whatever bureaucracy I had left and then meet up with my local friend R. and go the Queer Meetup at 11am! It was hosted by Laura Antoniou, whose books I'd been obsessed with for a while, and who would be modding a panel I'm on later in the con.
The meetup was fun. I'd never been to a meetup at a con before so I had no idea what was supposed to happen. Shockingly there were quite a few queer people at Worldcon but the room they'd allocated for the meetup could only fit like, 50 people tops, so they had to kick two thirds of the room out early on :/
Anyway, I got to talk to Laura about her books, and meet some nice people, and get some nice pins and postcards, and R. and I had a good time.
I... no longer remember what I did between noon and 1pm? I was at the convention center, probably talking to people, but I no longer remember who? Possibly I went up to the floor where some of the Israelis I know (like Keren Landsman) were congregating and talked to them?
Oh right! I probably did go to say hi, but then I took advantage of the "free time" to get the mandatory mid-day break in, as I'd promised myself I'd do, and went back to the hotel for 20-30 minutes of just being in silence before diving back in.
At 13:30 I went to the autograph area to get my copy of "Spirits Abroad" from Zen Cho! She signed it and I finally got to meet her and it was SO GREAT!
After that, on my schedule I wanted to go to a reading by R. F. Kuang but I never made it there, because a spontaneous lunch date materialized. I met up with poet Hester J. Rook (who I had a panel with later on), Jennifer Mace (of Be the Serpent among other things), Darcie Little Badger, Rivers Solomon, and like 5 other wonderful people, and we went to a pizza place for a quick lunch. I got to sit next to Rivers and their partner, Martha, and we chatted! I told Rivers how much my friend liked their book, and we talked about the British education system lol.
Anyway, I then had to run before the lunch was really over, to make it to the fountain pen meetup! I was very curious what it would be like, I hadn't really played with fountain pens since first grade, but it sounded like fun.
There I met Mia/Likhain! Who I've known online for eons but never got to meet in person! I asked for an autograph, which turned out to be an extra good move since two days later she won a Hugo :D I also got to meet Aliette de Bodard and tell her how much I enjoyed her work *____*
I ALSO met a lovely person who drew me a lovely cat in the notebook I'd brought with me, and later turned out they were the partner of someone I knew in a different content, lol.
I then had to grab a tea and hurry over to Odeon, a different venue, where I'd have my first panel! I was nervous about when/how I'd figure out the transport, but all was well in the end and I made it to the panel just in time, with a few minutes to go to the bathroom, even.
I also ran into Iona Datt Sharma coming out of the room! LOL we agreed to talk to each other at our pre-arranged date later on.
So, the panel was Is Hari Seldon’s project becoming achievable?, which I will grant you, having me on it to talk about media/advertising was a bit of a stretch (but I consulted with the mod beforehand and they said I'd be a good fit) but it was still... probably one of the worst panel experiences I've ever had.
It genuinely was so awful it made question whether I should have come to Worldcon at all.
I'm not going to go into the details too much, but of course, OF COURSE, the hands down worst part of it was my fellow Israeli panelist, who I didn't know in advance.
Basically, aside from how terribly the panel went in general (and how out of place in it I felt) after it was over I had another panel to get to, but this fellow panelist kept holding me back and asking me to wait for him and asking me ridiculous questions and I kept telling him I HAVE TO GO but he kept pushing on the fact that we're both Israeli and surely I would give him a bit of my time, and so on.
I finally extricated myself (after he spent the panel saying AI would soon be writing all SFF short stories and then privately asked me how to make his aspiring author dreams come true) and headed back to the convention center, for my next panel.
I got to the convention center just in time to go to the green room for panelists (a thing I've never experienced!) which was a sitting area on the top floor where you could get a free drink and meet up with the people you were on programming with.
I thought I'd be the only person there, but actually most of my panel assembled right on time. It was for Hugo finalists discussion: Best Dramatic Presentation.
Even though I'd prepared for this panel (as I did for all my panels) I felt not prepared ENOUGH (I HATE feeling like I'm not being 100% professional on stage) and the format of it (which was a perfectly fine format) chosen by the moderator ended up not working for me too well? It was better than my first panel, but still a somewhat fraught and not great experience. Maybe it was just that I needed time to adjust to being on panels at Worldcon, IDK.
Anyway, I met a lot of great people at that panel, chief among them Phoebe Wagner, who was nominated for a Hugo from Nerds of a Feather, and who didn't have a date to the Hugo festivities, and I was like - oh hey, I could be your date? Would that work?
She said she'd check whether she was allowed to bring a date at the last minute and get back to me, which was super gracious of her but I assumed she would just prefer to go with her other Nerds of a Feather friends and I'd somehow overstepped. Still, she was lovely and I was very happy to meet her!
After the panel I yet again met my local author friend R., and we went to yet another late night, x-rated panel together, lol, Yes! Yes! Yes! Sex positivity in SFF.
Yet again with K.M. Szpara, whose book I can't wait to read and with whom I did not get to exchange a single word for the entire con, sadly, despite being at several of his events.
Anyway, this was SUCH AN AMAZING PANEL. I heard Annalee Newitz describe their own book as "I wrote the robot I wanted to fuck", I sat in the front row with Charlie Jane Anders, Vina Prasad was on the panel and I later got to tell her how much I loved "Pistol Grip".
The panel ended at 10pm, and it was at this point that I realized that I hadn't eaten since 2pm and all the stores were already closed. I... don't remember what I did at that point? But I did SOMETHING, went out for drinks or something with people maybe? Because I definitely didn't get back to my hotel until like 1am, according to tweets and photo timestamps, and I remember I didn't have an actual dinner that day. Maybe ate an energy bar or something when I got to my room.
Saturday
Yet again I had plans to attend content at 10am, but it was unrealistic with the times I was going to bed, so I did the same routine as before and got to my first bit of content for the day: ‘Be the Serpent’ podcast: live recording
I've never been at a podcast live recording before! It was super fun. I wanted to stay aferwards and chat to people, but I only had time to say hi to Freya Marske, who I have yet again known online for AAAAGES and never met before, and then I had to go to another lunch date.
This one was a "snacks and woolens swapmeet", and I realized belatedly I didn't brought the snacks I'd planned for with me /o\ So I rushed to my hotel and grabbed them and brought them to the nearby hotel we were meeting at.
We met at the bar, and they basically had light snacks and alcohol available, so I... had some alcohol and a light snack. I mean it was around 1pm and I'd had breakfast at 9am, so. Not ideal.
The meetup was great, there were like 15-20 people there, most of whom I'd never met before. I got to meet artist Grace P. Fong, whose partner apparently drew me the lovely cat at the fountain pen meetup, R.F. Kuang stopped by and I got to tell her HOW MUCH I loved her book (and help her translate the title of said book from the Russian edition, which she had with her).
Someone representing Kameron Hurley also stopped by, and I got to tell him about my upcoming lecture, and get some swag, and sign a shirt for the author. Kelly Robson stopped by and I told her how pretty the cover of her book was and she also gave me some swag. I also just met a ton of other people there, which was lovely. Also one of the attendees legit sang up an Irish ballad with her beautiful voice, right there at the bar.
Then I had to hurry to my next panel, The portrayal of disability in art, again at the Odeon, at 2:30pm.
I got to their green room and saw that they had signs to tell you which day of the week it was, which was... helpful, as I was beginning to run on fumes. I had some kind of snack and a tea and my fellow panelists and I strategized a little. I had a brief moment of panic that I had NOTHING to say on the subject, had no examples to give, etc, but thankfully it slowly passed, my brain slowly came back online, I started thinking again and by the end of the panel I felt like there hadn't been nearly enough time to cover what we wanted to cover.
It was probably the panel with the least amount of people in the audience, of all the events I did, but the one I was most... honored? grateful? passionate? about being on. It felt really important, and a very privileged position for me, to be talking about this stuff to an audience. Ultimately I think we did pretty well, and the audience participation was great.
After that was over, I headed back to the convention center for the 4pm kaffeklatsch with Alexandra Rowland! Which I managed to sign up for the day before. I'd asked the author if they wanted to meet up, and they asked if we could do it at the kaffeklatsch, and since there was room I was happy to see them in that setting.
They told a lot of interesting anecdotes about their book and career, and it was also interesting to see how a kaffeklatsch worked, since I'd never been to one before.
I had to leave the kaffeklatsch about 15 minutes early though, because at 5pm I had my next panel, Winter came, about the ending of Game of Thrones.
I met most of my fellow panelists in the green room, we talked a bit and then headed down. The room wasn't huge but it was PACKED. People were standing because there were no more seats left.
The panel was a lot of fun. Laura Antoniou opened with "Welcome to the panel "Winter came". Who's winter? We'll find out later."
I was very proud of myself that, at Charlie Jane Anders' prompting, I came up with a Good Thing to say about the ending of Game of Thrones (I was pleasantly surprised by Jon's ending!). In general it was cool to be there as a media critic, when two of the other panelists worked for Westeros.org and Charlie Jane Anders has two books and a Hugo winning podcast about media.
After the panel was over and we were done talking to everyone, I left the convention center and headed for my hotel, which was on the way to the place where Freya Marske and I had agreed to meet for dinner! We'd agreed to meet at 7pm, and that's exactly where I got there, lol, and Freya was already inside.
It was a fancy sort of steakhouse, and I had very delicious lamb, and meeting Freya after so many years was AMAAAAAAZING. We chatted for about two hours, and then, while my exhausted carcass would have otherwise gone to bed and passed out, Freya asked if I wanted to get drinks and try to find people to hang out with, and I said yes.
I hadn't really understood the night time socializing scene at cons before, until that evening with Freya.
We went back to the convention center, tried to message a few people and see who was available and where people were hanging out. Freya messaged Gavia Baker-Whitlaw, but it hadn't worked out for us to meet. We eventually went to the bar at the nearest hotel, and there it was just... a sea of people and conversations. I met G.V. Anderson again, and Eliza Chan, and Hester J. Rook, and so many other people.
I sat down next to a nice lady who introduced herself as Marina, I told her that was a LIE, but it turned out she was the author Marina J. Lostetter, and we laughed and immediately followed each other on twitter, because Marinas unite.
She introduced me to Gareth Powell, and we finally went on a brave quest to get drinks together. The bar was so PACKED that the poor bartenders were totally overwhelmed. When I tried to get the attention of one of them he literally stopped, stared straight at me and went "MADAM, THERE ARE TEN THOUSAND PEOPLE HERE" before going on about his business lolol
We eventually got drinks (god so much alcohol was consumed during this con, next time I am DEFINITELY not caving to the "but maybe this will be nice?" pressure and just like, not drinking as much because I was too tired and needed to be focused and the alcohol didn't help) and hung out for a while, and I talked to a whole bunch of people, and it was super nice but also super overwhelming and Too Much.
I left just before midnight, while everyone else was just getting started.
I got to my hotel, showered, changed into PJs... and then got an invite to a room party at my hotel, on a different floor, from Gavia Baker-Whitelaw. I'd never been to a room party before! I basically texted people like, is it OK if I'm in my PJs??? and with no bra lolol because I'm NOT getting dressed again! They said it was totally fine, but of course when I got there everyone was dressed in their regular con clothes, lolol /o\ and I was the only outlier.
WHATEVER, I said. I hung out with Gavia and Jay Wolf and eventually ALiette de Bodard stopped by, and other people whose names I didn't catch, and around 1:30am I finally gave up and went back to my room to sleep.
I now totally understand why people talk about the crucial worldcon afternoon nap! You can't socialize super late if you've been up since 10am and doing stuff that whole time.
Sunday
Wasn't supposed to do any events that day so figured it would be an easy, breezy time? Wooooow was I wrong.
So, after trying to meet the amazing Jeannette Ng throughout the con and it not working out, we eventually scheduled a breakfast date for 9:30am. Because I was too tired to function properly at that point, I mixed up our meeting point, so really we met up closer to 10am. The only thing open nearby was a Starbucks, so that's where we ended up lol. Jeannette tried to battle me for the bill, but I managed to pay her back without too much hassle.
We talked about our mutual love for The Poppy War, and Jeannette's upcoming projects, and I told her I totally thought she'd win the Campbell that evening. She said she thought it would go to someone else. GOOD TO KNOW I WAS RIGHT lolol.
Once I said goodbye to Jeannette at the convention center, and she hurried off to her panel, I went to my next date: coffee with Iona Datt Sharma. Jeannette's panel started at 11am and my coffee date was for 11:15, so it worked out perfectly lol.
Iona brought me two copies of their book (for myself and for
roga) and signed them, and god it was so lovely to catch up again, especially with someone I've known IRL and online for such a long while, and getting the book physically was so great, and just. I wish we'd both had more time in our schedules.
We said goodbye at noon, and I went off to my next engagement, lunch with Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman! This was a lunch I organized and a few Israeli friends also attended, including my author friend R. I was late, because of coffee with Iona, but thankfully Ellen was even later, lol, so I didn't miss anything.
The lunch lasted like 3 hours, all of which I spent telling Ellen Kushner all of my feelings about her books, and it was really amazing. Also Naomi Novik stopped by at some point, and Ellen and R. and I said hi, and I got to meet one of the founders of the OTW! It was cool. I got to tell her in person how much her work has influenced me, which is really what Worldcon was about for me.
Anyway, after we were done eating we moved onto a coffee shop nearby to get coffee/tea, some people had to leave, some people joined, and I continued to vomit feels at Ellen Kushner lolol. As I we were talking I got a message from Phoebe Wagner, telling me that I was welcome to come to the Hugos reception with her, and the ceremony, though she already had a date for the Losers Party.
I was like, !!!, OK THEN! I guess that's happening? I have no idea how any of it works? Should I dress up? I'm not nominated so probably not?
Anyway, around 3 I went back to my hotel, knowing I had to be at the reception at 6. This gave me about an hour of actual rest time, and although I can't do naps, I forced myself to just lie in bed with the lights off, and let my body get whatever rest it could, before getting up and getting dressed as nicely as I could with the clothes I had (ended up with black sneakers, tights, black mini skirt, and a sparkly sweater) and rushing over to the convention center to meet Phoebe and her friends.
The reception was pretty amazing - and not just because of the free food. I tried to help Phoebe with stuff as much as I could, but ultimately there wasn't that much to do so I just... walked around taking in all the tuxedos and evening gowns (one person "complimented" me by saying I looked like "the most comfortable person in the room"). I stopped GRRM sitting with his friends and debated endlessly about whether to talk to him. Ultimately my friends urged me to do it, and I came up and told him that his books had had a huge impact on me (which they had) and that they were the gateway to reading fantasy for me, as an adult, and he was like "oh cool so you're a fantasy reader now?"
And I was like "reader and writer, yes"
And he picked up my badge to look at my name and went "Berlin, like the city? I'll look you up" LOLOL
Which he obviously won't, but it was a very cool moment! I got back to our table and Phoebe was like "why was GRRM examining your badge???" lolol
I also got to talk to Annalee Netwitz and Charlie Jane Anders and say hi again to Rivers Solomon and Mina Prasad, and Likhain, and Jeannette, I got to say hi to Yoon Ha Lee as well, who I'd never met before!
In general it was like being a fangirl in a room full of BNFs lolol I didn't know how to speak to people, and whether I was ~allowed considering I wasn't a Hugo nominee and didn't really know anyone and they all seemed to know each other.
I also said hi to the Be the Serpent folks, and they invited me to their table for a bit, which was cool. It was weird being one of the least stressed people in the room, lol, because I wasn't nominated for anything and was just hanging out and enjoying myself.
Then it was time for the ceremony! I'd never seen it before, and being in the room for it was amazing. Jeannette Ng going up first and opening with "Joseph Campbell, for whom this award is named, was a fucking fascist" and all of us erupting into screams and cheers, my god.
Sitting up front with the ~important people~ I also got to hear some of the negative reactions live, discussed behind me, like "let's see what this does to her career". It was super gross, and I cheered extra hard to make up for it.
Zen Cho won, Likhain won, THE AO3 WON! When that happened I was like, BLESSED TO BE IN THE ROOM ON THIS NIGHT, my god. When Novik went up on stage and then asked them to turn on the lights in the theater and for everyone who's part of the AO3 community to stand up and cheer I got up and we all screamed and clapped. It was amazing.
Once it was over it was time for the Losers Party, for which Phoebe's husband was going to be her date, and I wasn't sure if I should take the taxi to the Guinness brewery where it was held? But Phoebe and her friends convinced me we'd probably manage to get me in somehow, so we went, and I took a chance, and they were all lovely and all did their best, but I had no ticket and they were checking names at the door, so.
(Later there was a scandal because apparently they sold too many tickets to... IDK I guess ~Important People~ who were offered the chance to get/buy tickets? And nominees who arrived later in the night weren't allowed in because there was no room inside. But when I got there there was still room.)
I could have stuck around and maybe waited for someone I knew who didn't have a date or had an extra ticket, or tried to message people I knew who were going, but I was just really exhausted, and didn't have the mental energy to go through the whole thing of trying to get in, so I just turned around and took a bus back to the hotel.
I got back to my room slightly depressed around midnight, talked to some friends on the phone who reminded me that nothing bad had happened and I was just overwhelmed and overstimulated from the con, and I decided I'd use this time to rehearse for my lecture the next morning, and so finally around 3am I finally went to sleep.
Monday
Somehow, I managed to wake up early enough to have time to eat breakfast, around 8:30am, and I also ran into Amal El-Muhtar in the scone line, and decided it was a good time to tell her I loved her work. So, that was lovely.
At 10am I had my lecture/talk, Women Write About War, in a huge room that was about half full? Which was pretty amazing.
The talk went well, even though I didn't have time to procure tea beforehand, so constantly felt like my voice was about to give out. It's also the first time I gave a talk while sitting down, instead of standing, because of my knees, but it went OK. People clapped at the end, and asked questions I hadn't heard before, which was great, and livetweeted. I also met several LJ/IRL friends at the end of it, which was great.
I then... genuinely have no memory of what I did between 11am and noon, another complete gap although I remember I was rushing somewhere to meet someone. I was so braindead at that point I was basically hallucinating.
At noon I met up with local author friend R. and a few others to go to Dragons, wyrms, and serpents: why the myth endures which as a panel topic I wasn't super interested in, but the panelists seemed really great, and I'd wanted to catch at least one Naomi Novik thing, so.
We came up to talk to her at the end - I mostly wanted to squee with her about the AO3 winning. My friend R. is a huge fan of her published works, so I was kind of glad to further facilitate their acquaintance and further their relationship.
After we said goodbye to Naomi Novik, I realized in the entire con I hadn't actually had time to visit the dealers room?!? I'd wanted to buy stuff! It was the last few hours of the con, but I still rushed down and did a quick round, and bought a book and a tshirt and some presents for people, and then went up to the green room, got a cup of tea, and then the rest of my panel was there, and it was time for Rossetti to Rhee: the speculative and the poetic.
Honestly, maybe because I was so tired at that point, maybe because it was the end, maybe it was all the experience I'd gained, but ended up being my favorite panel to be on. I got to be there not as a critic but as a poet, which is a dream come true, and I got to just... talk about poetry with a bunch of other poets for an hour, and I still can't believe that actually happened.
Also I got to meet Brandon O'Brien, who I've admired for such a long time, and who greeted me with "I'm a fan of your work" which made me MELT INTO A PUDDLE RIGHT THERE AND THEN. I was like, THAT IS A LIE, SIR. THAT IS A LIE. But of course I didn't say that lol.
So, all of that was amazing. Just me, Hester, Eleanna and Brandon, all people I know and like and admire, talking about our favorite subject, and just... it doesn't get better than that. Also the room was at least half full! Which was amazing, to me!
Afterwards we went out for snacks and tea (again, I hadn't eaten since 8:30am, it was 4pm and I'd only just realized that food probably needed to be procured) and Brandon looked at me across the table and went "So, Marina, what are you working on right now?" which was like, ONE OF THE HIGHLIGHTS OF THE CON FOR ME lolol and we talked about our projects and stuff.
I met a lot of people at that lunch that I'd seen before, but this was like our third meeting and we finally got to know each other? LOL
I went back to my hotel, despite an invite from author friend R. to join them somewhere. I got to my bed around 5pm, and at 7pm I had to be in the center of Dublin for a farewell dinner at a nice pub. On the way there I was like - oh right! Dublin is a real city! That's gorgeous! And not just the convention center area! LOL
We went to a very fancy, old timey pub, and I had seafood chowder which was great, and again alcohol, and I hung out with Hester again and Sara Norja and Karolina Fedyk and Sein Gawain Lin and others.
There was some kind of talk of getting something else after dinner, but it was about 10pm at that point, and we all just headed to our lodgings. I got home around 11pm and collapsed in bed, desperately needing to spend some alone time with the internet and unwind, and eventually I went to sleep around 2am I think.
The next morning I got up at 9am to make it to breakfast, then got my shit together, packed, and left for the airport, to get on a plane to Edinburgh and meet
roga and another friend for 5 days of Fringe!
Anyway, I still can't believe I how much I did and how many people I met at worldcon. Please remember I AM AN INTROVERT. I was basically OUT OF MY MIND by the end of it, my god. JFC.
comments on Dreamwidth
I'm giving myself time to take it easy, catch up with all the stuff that happened while I was abroad, do as much non-book-related writing as I want before diving back into manuscript edits. As part of that I'm letting myself write DW/LJ posts! Starting with travel recap.
I'll recap just the 5 days I spent at Worldcon in Dublin, mostly for my own memory and to lay it out as much as I can HOW RIDIC BUSY those 5 days were. I think I'll be using people's full names, mostly, and not their internet handles, to save time.
Thursday
After a sleepless night because my flight was at 6am, I flew 3 hours to Rome and then another 3 hours to Dublin (on that flight they put on "Avengers: Endgame" on the overhead screens, a movie that was precisely as long as our flight time, so I could always look up and figure out how long we had left by what was going on on screen).
I got to Dublin around 3pm and discovered an author I wanted to meet up with anyway, Alexandra Rowland, was at the airport at the same time. At first we agreed I'd wait for them and we'd head into town together, but then their suitcase was lost (they had the journey from hell to Dublin) and they eventually told me to just go ahead and not wait :( It was very sad. But I did need to get a move on to make it to the rest of my plans that that.
So I eventually got to the hotel (foregoing a bus because bad knees and bad back and taking a taxi instead) and situated around 5:00pm (they randomly upgraded me to a much better room than I'd paid for, because when I showed up the hotel was overwhelmed and I had to wait for a room to be available, so I guess they just gave me whatever they had).
I literally had time to change, shower, collapse into bed for about 30 minutes, and then I had to get up again and start getting ready to face the world.
I first had to go to the convention center, the main venue where Worldcon was held, to get my badge and the access sticker, which would let me skip lines. Unfortunately though content at the con ran until about midnight, the registration and access desks were only open until 7pm, and if I didn't get there in time I wouldn't be able to do anything else at the con that day AND would have to get up extra early the next day.
So I got dressed (in meeting-people clothes instead of on-a-plane clothes) and got to the convention center around 6:30pm, went around the various desks, got my registration, badge, access sticker, etc. Although unfortunately by the time all of that was done the Program Participant desk was closed, and I didn't even know I had to stop by there to get various necessary items since I was on the program.
Anyway, I met up with local friends briefly, R. the local author (and director of the play I'm in) and her girlfriend, we chatted and squeed for a bit (WE ARE IN DUBLIN! FOR WORLDCON!) and then went to a panel together (my first!): Sexy beasts: nonhuman pairings in SFF erotica.
It was super fun! At some point it turned into the audience throwing out suggestions for supernatural creatures and the panelists discussing whether they'd like to fuck them and why/why not lol.
Then I had to go because G. V. Anderson had invited me for dinner with a few people at 8pm. I originally told her I wasn't sure I'd be up for it after a day of travel, but my knees and back seemed OK enough. I tried to text G. V. and let her know I was around, but alas she didn't seem to see my texts.
So I figure I'd go to the restaurant (a floating boat right outside the convention center) around 8pm, when we were scheduled to meet, and just... see if anyone showed up?
Which they did! I recognized G. V. from her twitter photo, and came up to her and asked if she was who I thought she was, and told her I was Marina, lol, and she was like "yay! You made it!"
So we had dinner on a boat! It was myself, G. V. Anderson, her roommate and fellow short story author Eliza Chan, poet and short story author Eleanna Castroianni (who I had a panel with on the last day of the con) and their partner.
The food was great, eating on a boat was super fun (honestly probably the best meal I had during the entire con) and conversation was great too. At some point Eleanna's partner and I started comparing military experiences, of course, and it led to some hilarious anecdotes. Bathroom stalls were discussed, as well as norms around nudity (apparently the Greek military doesn't do group nakedness as much as we do? lol) and I also heard a story about the most bizarre man in Cornwall and the gun culture on Crete.
Dinner ended around 10:30pm, and I met up with my local friend R. again and we ostensibly went to drink some cider together. But by the time we got to the bar I felt utterly exhausted and on the brink of developing a migraine, and I had an early morning the next day, and like, THE REST OF WORLDCON to go, so I said goodbye and went back to my hotel and went to sleep around 1am, utterly, utterly exhausted.
Friday
I gave myself a "late morning" by which I mean I got up at 9 and went down to breakfast (which was fantastic, and I basically ate up all the hashbrowns, bacon and eggs, with some veggies and a scone) before coming up again and slowly getting my shit together.
Finally I left the hotel around 10 and went to the convention center to sort out whatever bureaucracy I had left and then meet up with my local friend R. and go the Queer Meetup at 11am! It was hosted by Laura Antoniou, whose books I'd been obsessed with for a while, and who would be modding a panel I'm on later in the con.
The meetup was fun. I'd never been to a meetup at a con before so I had no idea what was supposed to happen. Shockingly there were quite a few queer people at Worldcon but the room they'd allocated for the meetup could only fit like, 50 people tops, so they had to kick two thirds of the room out early on :/
Anyway, I got to talk to Laura about her books, and meet some nice people, and get some nice pins and postcards, and R. and I had a good time.
I... no longer remember what I did between noon and 1pm? I was at the convention center, probably talking to people, but I no longer remember who? Possibly I went up to the floor where some of the Israelis I know (like Keren Landsman) were congregating and talked to them?
Oh right! I probably did go to say hi, but then I took advantage of the "free time" to get the mandatory mid-day break in, as I'd promised myself I'd do, and went back to the hotel for 20-30 minutes of just being in silence before diving back in.
At 13:30 I went to the autograph area to get my copy of "Spirits Abroad" from Zen Cho! She signed it and I finally got to meet her and it was SO GREAT!
After that, on my schedule I wanted to go to a reading by R. F. Kuang but I never made it there, because a spontaneous lunch date materialized. I met up with poet Hester J. Rook (who I had a panel with later on), Jennifer Mace (of Be the Serpent among other things), Darcie Little Badger, Rivers Solomon, and like 5 other wonderful people, and we went to a pizza place for a quick lunch. I got to sit next to Rivers and their partner, Martha, and we chatted! I told Rivers how much my friend liked their book, and we talked about the British education system lol.
Anyway, I then had to run before the lunch was really over, to make it to the fountain pen meetup! I was very curious what it would be like, I hadn't really played with fountain pens since first grade, but it sounded like fun.
There I met Mia/Likhain! Who I've known online for eons but never got to meet in person! I asked for an autograph, which turned out to be an extra good move since two days later she won a Hugo :D I also got to meet Aliette de Bodard and tell her how much I enjoyed her work *____*
I ALSO met a lovely person who drew me a lovely cat in the notebook I'd brought with me, and later turned out they were the partner of someone I knew in a different content, lol.
I then had to grab a tea and hurry over to Odeon, a different venue, where I'd have my first panel! I was nervous about when/how I'd figure out the transport, but all was well in the end and I made it to the panel just in time, with a few minutes to go to the bathroom, even.
I also ran into Iona Datt Sharma coming out of the room! LOL we agreed to talk to each other at our pre-arranged date later on.
So, the panel was Is Hari Seldon’s project becoming achievable?, which I will grant you, having me on it to talk about media/advertising was a bit of a stretch (but I consulted with the mod beforehand and they said I'd be a good fit) but it was still... probably one of the worst panel experiences I've ever had.
It genuinely was so awful it made question whether I should have come to Worldcon at all.
I'm not going to go into the details too much, but of course, OF COURSE, the hands down worst part of it was my fellow Israeli panelist, who I didn't know in advance.
Basically, aside from how terribly the panel went in general (and how out of place in it I felt) after it was over I had another panel to get to, but this fellow panelist kept holding me back and asking me to wait for him and asking me ridiculous questions and I kept telling him I HAVE TO GO but he kept pushing on the fact that we're both Israeli and surely I would give him a bit of my time, and so on.
I finally extricated myself (after he spent the panel saying AI would soon be writing all SFF short stories and then privately asked me how to make his aspiring author dreams come true) and headed back to the convention center, for my next panel.
I got to the convention center just in time to go to the green room for panelists (a thing I've never experienced!) which was a sitting area on the top floor where you could get a free drink and meet up with the people you were on programming with.
I thought I'd be the only person there, but actually most of my panel assembled right on time. It was for Hugo finalists discussion: Best Dramatic Presentation.
Even though I'd prepared for this panel (as I did for all my panels) I felt not prepared ENOUGH (I HATE feeling like I'm not being 100% professional on stage) and the format of it (which was a perfectly fine format) chosen by the moderator ended up not working for me too well? It was better than my first panel, but still a somewhat fraught and not great experience. Maybe it was just that I needed time to adjust to being on panels at Worldcon, IDK.
Anyway, I met a lot of great people at that panel, chief among them Phoebe Wagner, who was nominated for a Hugo from Nerds of a Feather, and who didn't have a date to the Hugo festivities, and I was like - oh hey, I could be your date? Would that work?
She said she'd check whether she was allowed to bring a date at the last minute and get back to me, which was super gracious of her but I assumed she would just prefer to go with her other Nerds of a Feather friends and I'd somehow overstepped. Still, she was lovely and I was very happy to meet her!
After the panel I yet again met my local author friend R., and we went to yet another late night, x-rated panel together, lol, Yes! Yes! Yes! Sex positivity in SFF.
Yet again with K.M. Szpara, whose book I can't wait to read and with whom I did not get to exchange a single word for the entire con, sadly, despite being at several of his events.
Anyway, this was SUCH AN AMAZING PANEL. I heard Annalee Newitz describe their own book as "I wrote the robot I wanted to fuck", I sat in the front row with Charlie Jane Anders, Vina Prasad was on the panel and I later got to tell her how much I loved "Pistol Grip".
The panel ended at 10pm, and it was at this point that I realized that I hadn't eaten since 2pm and all the stores were already closed. I... don't remember what I did at that point? But I did SOMETHING, went out for drinks or something with people maybe? Because I definitely didn't get back to my hotel until like 1am, according to tweets and photo timestamps, and I remember I didn't have an actual dinner that day. Maybe ate an energy bar or something when I got to my room.
Saturday
Yet again I had plans to attend content at 10am, but it was unrealistic with the times I was going to bed, so I did the same routine as before and got to my first bit of content for the day: ‘Be the Serpent’ podcast: live recording
I've never been at a podcast live recording before! It was super fun. I wanted to stay aferwards and chat to people, but I only had time to say hi to Freya Marske, who I have yet again known online for AAAAGES and never met before, and then I had to go to another lunch date.
This one was a "snacks and woolens swapmeet", and I realized belatedly I didn't brought the snacks I'd planned for with me /o\ So I rushed to my hotel and grabbed them and brought them to the nearby hotel we were meeting at.
We met at the bar, and they basically had light snacks and alcohol available, so I... had some alcohol and a light snack. I mean it was around 1pm and I'd had breakfast at 9am, so. Not ideal.
The meetup was great, there were like 15-20 people there, most of whom I'd never met before. I got to meet artist Grace P. Fong, whose partner apparently drew me the lovely cat at the fountain pen meetup, R.F. Kuang stopped by and I got to tell her HOW MUCH I loved her book (and help her translate the title of said book from the Russian edition, which she had with her).
Someone representing Kameron Hurley also stopped by, and I got to tell him about my upcoming lecture, and get some swag, and sign a shirt for the author. Kelly Robson stopped by and I told her how pretty the cover of her book was and she also gave me some swag. I also just met a ton of other people there, which was lovely. Also one of the attendees legit sang up an Irish ballad with her beautiful voice, right there at the bar.
Then I had to hurry to my next panel, The portrayal of disability in art, again at the Odeon, at 2:30pm.
I got to their green room and saw that they had signs to tell you which day of the week it was, which was... helpful, as I was beginning to run on fumes. I had some kind of snack and a tea and my fellow panelists and I strategized a little. I had a brief moment of panic that I had NOTHING to say on the subject, had no examples to give, etc, but thankfully it slowly passed, my brain slowly came back online, I started thinking again and by the end of the panel I felt like there hadn't been nearly enough time to cover what we wanted to cover.
It was probably the panel with the least amount of people in the audience, of all the events I did, but the one I was most... honored? grateful? passionate? about being on. It felt really important, and a very privileged position for me, to be talking about this stuff to an audience. Ultimately I think we did pretty well, and the audience participation was great.
After that was over, I headed back to the convention center for the 4pm kaffeklatsch with Alexandra Rowland! Which I managed to sign up for the day before. I'd asked the author if they wanted to meet up, and they asked if we could do it at the kaffeklatsch, and since there was room I was happy to see them in that setting.
They told a lot of interesting anecdotes about their book and career, and it was also interesting to see how a kaffeklatsch worked, since I'd never been to one before.
I had to leave the kaffeklatsch about 15 minutes early though, because at 5pm I had my next panel, Winter came, about the ending of Game of Thrones.
I met most of my fellow panelists in the green room, we talked a bit and then headed down. The room wasn't huge but it was PACKED. People were standing because there were no more seats left.
The panel was a lot of fun. Laura Antoniou opened with "Welcome to the panel "Winter came". Who's winter? We'll find out later."
I was very proud of myself that, at Charlie Jane Anders' prompting, I came up with a Good Thing to say about the ending of Game of Thrones (I was pleasantly surprised by Jon's ending!). In general it was cool to be there as a media critic, when two of the other panelists worked for Westeros.org and Charlie Jane Anders has two books and a Hugo winning podcast about media.
After the panel was over and we were done talking to everyone, I left the convention center and headed for my hotel, which was on the way to the place where Freya Marske and I had agreed to meet for dinner! We'd agreed to meet at 7pm, and that's exactly where I got there, lol, and Freya was already inside.
It was a fancy sort of steakhouse, and I had very delicious lamb, and meeting Freya after so many years was AMAAAAAAZING. We chatted for about two hours, and then, while my exhausted carcass would have otherwise gone to bed and passed out, Freya asked if I wanted to get drinks and try to find people to hang out with, and I said yes.
I hadn't really understood the night time socializing scene at cons before, until that evening with Freya.
We went back to the convention center, tried to message a few people and see who was available and where people were hanging out. Freya messaged Gavia Baker-Whitlaw, but it hadn't worked out for us to meet. We eventually went to the bar at the nearest hotel, and there it was just... a sea of people and conversations. I met G.V. Anderson again, and Eliza Chan, and Hester J. Rook, and so many other people.
I sat down next to a nice lady who introduced herself as Marina, I told her that was a LIE, but it turned out she was the author Marina J. Lostetter, and we laughed and immediately followed each other on twitter, because Marinas unite.
She introduced me to Gareth Powell, and we finally went on a brave quest to get drinks together. The bar was so PACKED that the poor bartenders were totally overwhelmed. When I tried to get the attention of one of them he literally stopped, stared straight at me and went "MADAM, THERE ARE TEN THOUSAND PEOPLE HERE" before going on about his business lolol
We eventually got drinks (god so much alcohol was consumed during this con, next time I am DEFINITELY not caving to the "but maybe this will be nice?" pressure and just like, not drinking as much because I was too tired and needed to be focused and the alcohol didn't help) and hung out for a while, and I talked to a whole bunch of people, and it was super nice but also super overwhelming and Too Much.
I left just before midnight, while everyone else was just getting started.
I got to my hotel, showered, changed into PJs... and then got an invite to a room party at my hotel, on a different floor, from Gavia Baker-Whitelaw. I'd never been to a room party before! I basically texted people like, is it OK if I'm in my PJs??? and with no bra lolol because I'm NOT getting dressed again! They said it was totally fine, but of course when I got there everyone was dressed in their regular con clothes, lolol /o\ and I was the only outlier.
WHATEVER, I said. I hung out with Gavia and Jay Wolf and eventually ALiette de Bodard stopped by, and other people whose names I didn't catch, and around 1:30am I finally gave up and went back to my room to sleep.
I now totally understand why people talk about the crucial worldcon afternoon nap! You can't socialize super late if you've been up since 10am and doing stuff that whole time.
Sunday
Wasn't supposed to do any events that day so figured it would be an easy, breezy time? Wooooow was I wrong.
So, after trying to meet the amazing Jeannette Ng throughout the con and it not working out, we eventually scheduled a breakfast date for 9:30am. Because I was too tired to function properly at that point, I mixed up our meeting point, so really we met up closer to 10am. The only thing open nearby was a Starbucks, so that's where we ended up lol. Jeannette tried to battle me for the bill, but I managed to pay her back without too much hassle.
We talked about our mutual love for The Poppy War, and Jeannette's upcoming projects, and I told her I totally thought she'd win the Campbell that evening. She said she thought it would go to someone else. GOOD TO KNOW I WAS RIGHT lolol.
Once I said goodbye to Jeannette at the convention center, and she hurried off to her panel, I went to my next date: coffee with Iona Datt Sharma. Jeannette's panel started at 11am and my coffee date was for 11:15, so it worked out perfectly lol.
Iona brought me two copies of their book (for myself and for
roga) and signed them, and god it was so lovely to catch up again, especially with someone I've known IRL and online for such a long while, and getting the book physically was so great, and just. I wish we'd both had more time in our schedules.
We said goodbye at noon, and I went off to my next engagement, lunch with Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman! This was a lunch I organized and a few Israeli friends also attended, including my author friend R. I was late, because of coffee with Iona, but thankfully Ellen was even later, lol, so I didn't miss anything.
The lunch lasted like 3 hours, all of which I spent telling Ellen Kushner all of my feelings about her books, and it was really amazing. Also Naomi Novik stopped by at some point, and Ellen and R. and I said hi, and I got to meet one of the founders of the OTW! It was cool. I got to tell her in person how much her work has influenced me, which is really what Worldcon was about for me.
Anyway, after we were done eating we moved onto a coffee shop nearby to get coffee/tea, some people had to leave, some people joined, and I continued to vomit feels at Ellen Kushner lolol. As I we were talking I got a message from Phoebe Wagner, telling me that I was welcome to come to the Hugos reception with her, and the ceremony, though she already had a date for the Losers Party.
I was like, !!!, OK THEN! I guess that's happening? I have no idea how any of it works? Should I dress up? I'm not nominated so probably not?
Anyway, around 3 I went back to my hotel, knowing I had to be at the reception at 6. This gave me about an hour of actual rest time, and although I can't do naps, I forced myself to just lie in bed with the lights off, and let my body get whatever rest it could, before getting up and getting dressed as nicely as I could with the clothes I had (ended up with black sneakers, tights, black mini skirt, and a sparkly sweater) and rushing over to the convention center to meet Phoebe and her friends.
The reception was pretty amazing - and not just because of the free food. I tried to help Phoebe with stuff as much as I could, but ultimately there wasn't that much to do so I just... walked around taking in all the tuxedos and evening gowns (one person "complimented" me by saying I looked like "the most comfortable person in the room"). I stopped GRRM sitting with his friends and debated endlessly about whether to talk to him. Ultimately my friends urged me to do it, and I came up and told him that his books had had a huge impact on me (which they had) and that they were the gateway to reading fantasy for me, as an adult, and he was like "oh cool so you're a fantasy reader now?"
And I was like "reader and writer, yes"
And he picked up my badge to look at my name and went "Berlin, like the city? I'll look you up" LOLOL
Which he obviously won't, but it was a very cool moment! I got back to our table and Phoebe was like "why was GRRM examining your badge???" lolol
I also got to talk to Annalee Netwitz and Charlie Jane Anders and say hi again to Rivers Solomon and Mina Prasad, and Likhain, and Jeannette, I got to say hi to Yoon Ha Lee as well, who I'd never met before!
In general it was like being a fangirl in a room full of BNFs lolol I didn't know how to speak to people, and whether I was ~allowed considering I wasn't a Hugo nominee and didn't really know anyone and they all seemed to know each other.
I also said hi to the Be the Serpent folks, and they invited me to their table for a bit, which was cool. It was weird being one of the least stressed people in the room, lol, because I wasn't nominated for anything and was just hanging out and enjoying myself.
Then it was time for the ceremony! I'd never seen it before, and being in the room for it was amazing. Jeannette Ng going up first and opening with "Joseph Campbell, for whom this award is named, was a fucking fascist" and all of us erupting into screams and cheers, my god.
Sitting up front with the ~important people~ I also got to hear some of the negative reactions live, discussed behind me, like "let's see what this does to her career". It was super gross, and I cheered extra hard to make up for it.
Zen Cho won, Likhain won, THE AO3 WON! When that happened I was like, BLESSED TO BE IN THE ROOM ON THIS NIGHT, my god. When Novik went up on stage and then asked them to turn on the lights in the theater and for everyone who's part of the AO3 community to stand up and cheer I got up and we all screamed and clapped. It was amazing.
Once it was over it was time for the Losers Party, for which Phoebe's husband was going to be her date, and I wasn't sure if I should take the taxi to the Guinness brewery where it was held? But Phoebe and her friends convinced me we'd probably manage to get me in somehow, so we went, and I took a chance, and they were all lovely and all did their best, but I had no ticket and they were checking names at the door, so.
(Later there was a scandal because apparently they sold too many tickets to... IDK I guess ~Important People~ who were offered the chance to get/buy tickets? And nominees who arrived later in the night weren't allowed in because there was no room inside. But when I got there there was still room.)
I could have stuck around and maybe waited for someone I knew who didn't have a date or had an extra ticket, or tried to message people I knew who were going, but I was just really exhausted, and didn't have the mental energy to go through the whole thing of trying to get in, so I just turned around and took a bus back to the hotel.
I got back to my room slightly depressed around midnight, talked to some friends on the phone who reminded me that nothing bad had happened and I was just overwhelmed and overstimulated from the con, and I decided I'd use this time to rehearse for my lecture the next morning, and so finally around 3am I finally went to sleep.
Monday
Somehow, I managed to wake up early enough to have time to eat breakfast, around 8:30am, and I also ran into Amal El-Muhtar in the scone line, and decided it was a good time to tell her I loved her work. So, that was lovely.
At 10am I had my lecture/talk, Women Write About War, in a huge room that was about half full? Which was pretty amazing.
The talk went well, even though I didn't have time to procure tea beforehand, so constantly felt like my voice was about to give out. It's also the first time I gave a talk while sitting down, instead of standing, because of my knees, but it went OK. People clapped at the end, and asked questions I hadn't heard before, which was great, and livetweeted. I also met several LJ/IRL friends at the end of it, which was great.
I then... genuinely have no memory of what I did between 11am and noon, another complete gap although I remember I was rushing somewhere to meet someone. I was so braindead at that point I was basically hallucinating.
At noon I met up with local author friend R. and a few others to go to Dragons, wyrms, and serpents: why the myth endures which as a panel topic I wasn't super interested in, but the panelists seemed really great, and I'd wanted to catch at least one Naomi Novik thing, so.
We came up to talk to her at the end - I mostly wanted to squee with her about the AO3 winning. My friend R. is a huge fan of her published works, so I was kind of glad to further facilitate their acquaintance and further their relationship.
After we said goodbye to Naomi Novik, I realized in the entire con I hadn't actually had time to visit the dealers room?!? I'd wanted to buy stuff! It was the last few hours of the con, but I still rushed down and did a quick round, and bought a book and a tshirt and some presents for people, and then went up to the green room, got a cup of tea, and then the rest of my panel was there, and it was time for Rossetti to Rhee: the speculative and the poetic.
Honestly, maybe because I was so tired at that point, maybe because it was the end, maybe it was all the experience I'd gained, but ended up being my favorite panel to be on. I got to be there not as a critic but as a poet, which is a dream come true, and I got to just... talk about poetry with a bunch of other poets for an hour, and I still can't believe that actually happened.
Also I got to meet Brandon O'Brien, who I've admired for such a long time, and who greeted me with "I'm a fan of your work" which made me MELT INTO A PUDDLE RIGHT THERE AND THEN. I was like, THAT IS A LIE, SIR. THAT IS A LIE. But of course I didn't say that lol.
So, all of that was amazing. Just me, Hester, Eleanna and Brandon, all people I know and like and admire, talking about our favorite subject, and just... it doesn't get better than that. Also the room was at least half full! Which was amazing, to me!
Afterwards we went out for snacks and tea (again, I hadn't eaten since 8:30am, it was 4pm and I'd only just realized that food probably needed to be procured) and Brandon looked at me across the table and went "So, Marina, what are you working on right now?" which was like, ONE OF THE HIGHLIGHTS OF THE CON FOR ME lolol and we talked about our projects and stuff.
I met a lot of people at that lunch that I'd seen before, but this was like our third meeting and we finally got to know each other? LOL
I went back to my hotel, despite an invite from author friend R. to join them somewhere. I got to my bed around 5pm, and at 7pm I had to be in the center of Dublin for a farewell dinner at a nice pub. On the way there I was like - oh right! Dublin is a real city! That's gorgeous! And not just the convention center area! LOL
We went to a very fancy, old timey pub, and I had seafood chowder which was great, and again alcohol, and I hung out with Hester again and Sara Norja and Karolina Fedyk and Sein Gawain Lin and others.
There was some kind of talk of getting something else after dinner, but it was about 10pm at that point, and we all just headed to our lodgings. I got home around 11pm and collapsed in bed, desperately needing to spend some alone time with the internet and unwind, and eventually I went to sleep around 2am I think.
The next morning I got up at 9am to make it to breakfast, then got my shit together, packed, and left for the airport, to get on a plane to Edinburgh and meet
roga and another friend for 5 days of Fringe!
Anyway, I still can't believe I how much I did and how many people I met at worldcon. Please remember I AM AN INTROVERT. I was basically OUT OF MY MIND by the end of it, my god. JFC.
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