Sixteen Years of Virginia Dragon's Fang Marks
A happier tale.
After ten years of near misses, I *finally* got to meet Duncan in person. :-)
faireraven and acroyear70, old friends from Faire, were there Tuesday night because they couldn't make the separate gathering of friends Wednesday. Happily, they by sheerest coincidence happened to know jsbowden and R from other local geek circles. Small world. :-)
The Wednesday night gather was for Markland/Faire folks, to which constellation of friends faireraven and acroyear70 belonged, that universe silmaril first introduced me to long ago. But the rest of the Tuesday night merry gathering -- Duncan and Viren and jsbowden and his wife -- belonged to the constellation of friends silmaril and I had first met in. A circle of friends which had begun gathering in northern Virginia more than fifteen years ago. :-)
It was, in fact, in Arlington and Baltimore and Washington DC that the very first gatherings of regulars from the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan occured, beginning in 1994. Beginning even before I personally knew what Usenet *was*, let alone began lurking on the group (1996), let alone beginning to attend rasfwr-j gatherings of my own. There have probably been almost one hundred such gatherings now, all across the country, all across the world, including so many captured in the diaries of my friends, and many captured in my own. Sixteen years. And going strong.
It is, as annewashere once said: Long Live the Darkfriends. :-)