By Sunday at b-con, I’m usually pretty punchy. This year was no exception. Another well-documented phenomenon in b-con physics is the “black hole bar effect.” This is why it’s so hard to achieve escape velocity no matter how late it is or tired and burn out you feel. You fight your way to the perimeter, determined to call it a night, but the next thing you know the gravitational sling-shot effect has funneled you back into the center of the bar. This mysterious force is particularly powerful on Saturday nights.
Despite the late night in the black hole, I still managed to get myself up Sunday morning for the free book feeding frenzy. I didn’t sign up as an author and didn’t want to brave the crowds to try and score five free books that I’d need to squeeze into my already overstuffed suitcase, but I was curious to see how it would work out.
It was nuts!
Best moment of the morning was Anthony Neil Smith tossing his free book tickets off the second story walkway into the rock-concert crowd.
Afterwards, Jon Jordan was talking about taking a field trip to a local comic shop and invited me along. I had to get packed up and check out, since I needed to be at the airport by 3pm, so I bowed out. Unsurprisingly, I found they were still there in the lobby bar when I returned. I guess the black hole bar effect is still hard to break, even during the day.
I was still waffling about going along with the large group by the time they broke free from the bar. I did have a little time to kill, but not all that much and didn’t want to get stuck out in the wilds of Indianapolis and end up late to the airport. In the end, I’m really glad I went because a) I needed to break out of the habitrail and breathe some real non-recycled air and more importantly b) that was really the only time I got to spend with Peter Rozovsky. Last year, it seems like I spent more time hanging with him than almost anyone else, and so this year I felt severely deficient in the Rozovsky department.
The punchline to this little outing was that the comic shop was closed. We wound up wandering like lost souls through the huge Borders down the street, but I did end up buying Volume One of The Walking Dead, which I read on the plane to punish the uptight yuppie broad in the seat next to me. She deserved it. She was reading Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
All in all it was a great con. Looking forward to San Francisco 2010.