And totally exhausted. It was a blast, despite scheduling chaos, double-booked rooms, and of course the unique charms of the Escher Hotel (aka Hilton Rye Town) complete with the dimensional portal (which now goes from level 4 to level 4 courtesy some renumbering of rooms).

I’ll do a more detailed report later, but some of the highlights:

– World-building for Historical/Fantasy fiction in the gazebo area beside the swimming pool, with 20+ people crowded into a space intended for maybe 4 for a free-ranging discussion on how things like geography, culture and such interact and how that plays into world-building, why Esther Friesner likes the SCA approach to the Middle Ages, and the difficulties of building a world from the ground up.

– Dracula vs Undead Porn with K.T. Pinto with questions about whether undead porn was bad per se or was the problem that it was being marketed as either urban fantasy or paranormal romance (consensus from the audience seemed to be that yes, the books in question had become undead porn and were certainly not marketed that way).

– Catching up with some old con friends, and making new ones (Hi, Lawrence!).

I’m looking forward to next year, and trying to nag a few more of my friends to be there.