MileHiCon

As you may remember from my previous post, Hubby and I went to MileHiCon a few weeks ago to celebrate having met there ten years ago.  MileHiCon is a scifi/fantasy/horror convention held in Denver every year.  It's primarily a literary convention, so you'll see a lot more authors and a lot fewer film panels than at other conventions.  I've been attending, off and on, since I was twelve.

I used to attend just for entertainment value, but in recent years I've been far more interested in panels that might help my writing.  This year, we went to some panels on the Future of the Short Story, Writing Believable Combat, and Writing Well With Others.

Joseph Paul Haines, Molly Tanzer, James Van Pelt, Eric James Stone,

and Cynthia Felice in the Future of the Short Story.

We also attended a panel on the best sci-fi short stories published prior to 1980.  As always, they suggested way more than I have time to read (or even remember, although Connie Willis was nice enough to make handouts of her suggestions.)

James Van Pelt, Gardner Dozois (Editor Guest of Honor and editor of Asimov's Science Fiction

from 1984 to 2004,) Van Aaron Hughes (local winner of the Writers of the Future contest,)

John E. Stith, and Connie Willis.

Historically, MileHiCon has had its best programming on Saturday (at least in my opinion,) but this year there were several things I'm sorry I missed on Friday and Sunday--including an hour with Gardner Dozois.  I really would like to have heard more from such an esteemed editor.

Author Guest of Honor Glen Cook, along with several of his books.  My father is a huge fan,

so Mr. Cook graciously helped me figure out a Christmas gift.

We had a fun time, and it was nice to feel connected to the world of sci-fi and fandom again for a while.  We had to take Kal'El with us due to his refusal to take a bottle, and he was as good as gold.  Apart from nursing and sleeping through some of the panels, he was very well-behaved and just played in our laps for the rest of the time.  Lots of people commented on how good of a baby he was--and he was quite generous with smiles as well.  I think he gave several people their baby fix for the week or month.

Our Future Trekkie posing with a Klingon.

We hadn't been to MileHiCon in a few years (especially since Zaxxon's birth, because it's the same weekend as his birthday) and I now realize that I miss it.  Perhaps in another year or two I'll plan Zaxxon's party the weekend earlier, book a room, and attend the whole convention again.  There are always so many good ideas and bits of advice to pick up.

Happy Anniversary again honey!