)This year's International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts went off with nary a hitch. I was thrilled to be able to hear SRD read once again from Runes of the Earth, and even more thrilled to be invited to join SRD, his daughter, and author Steve Erickson for lunch on Saturday.
The reading took place in the Wyndham Hotel Boardroom. In the session, hosted by Rick Wilber (who, btw, is a very cool modern-fantasy writer, especially if you're into baseball-themed books), SRD read first, sitting alongside Anthony Ha, the winner of this year's Asimov award for undergraduate fantastic fiction writers. What he read is entered as a spoiler below:
Spoiler
He gave us a bit of exposition of the temporal events that sweep characters between times within the land. The entire section was about Linden being caught in one of them (and I can't remember the exact names he had for them) and seeing Joan, with a white-gold ring on a chain around her neck, being tended to by Skest, and at seemingly random intervals, bringing blasts of power from the ring to destroy bits of material nearby, which might or might not have been pieces of time itself. Linden, through this section, begins to try to fight her way out of the temporal event, slowly conjuring up those who were with her... I beleve a Haruchai, and members of the Ramen as well as several Ranyhyn. Near the end, we were given to believe she succeeded in breaking out of the temporal event, but when they emerged was unknown. Also mentioned was the fact that Joan was where she was due to the loss of Roger (I seem to think by abduction). It was also a lot of fun to dash back to my laptop and jump online so Perry and I could both look up the word "formication." He used it a few times, and Perry said at first she thought her Dad was saying 'fornication.' 
I hung out with my friend Don, and with Perry Donaldson (all three of us are friends) and introduced them to the card game "Graverobbers from Outer Space," which we also played with Anthony Ha and another of the Asimov finalists. On Saturday, SRD asked Don and I to join him for lunch. He drove, (Inner Fanboy: I GOT CHAUFFERED BY SRD!!! OMG!!!) and we headed out to find a Publix that was reputed to have a good deli in it. We found it after a bit, went in, got food, and were looking for a place to sit, but they didn't have one. However, they had a patio furniture set in the entryway to the grocery store, and Steve Erickson suggested we just sit there and eat, so we did. We got many-an-odd-stare, but no one asked us to leave. Steve Erickson said something to the effect of "Well, no one's asked us to leave yet, so I guess we're not in trouble." SRD said "Oh, I don't know. Never underestimate the ability of trouble to find you." This brought chuckles, but ortunately, trouble didn't find us then, so we finished our meal and headed back.
Over lunch, we all chatted, and I discovered that SRD and I share a common appreciation for Joss Whedon's writing ability (Buffy, Angel, Firefly), as I'd done my presentation on Firefly for the conference and we got to discussing that briefly. All in all, it was a very nice, laid-back, causual lunch, and best of all, I managed to keep my raging fan-boy quiet throughout the entire thing.
So, that's all from ICFA-25. As always, I was just rapt when SRD was reading, and I wish I could remember more, but I was so swept up in what he was saying that I forgot to take notes.
-Jeff/Mouseglove
This was in Ft. Lauderdale right? Erickson, cool. Driven around by SRD waaay cool! 
Wild! 
(jk)
