Hello, Mr. and Mrs. America, and all the ships at sea.

I was at AnachroCon this weekend (I bet "AnarchoCon" would have been funnerer. Ha...Blogger didn't like "funnerer" for some  reason.), a fourth-year steampunk convention. Steampunk...what you get when goths discover brown. A con that Phileas Fogg would run.





It was a fun romp, despite being away from home on my birthday. Yes, I have dodged El Reapo for another year. (While typing, I comically transposed a couple of letters of "Reapo", and the Dread Dormomoo agreed that it was good to have dodged him as well.)  However, I did have a delightful meal Saturday night, paid for by a lovely and talented young lady author, Kimberly Richardson. Yes, I know...I HAVE A SWEET LIFE!!!  (Lest misunderstandings arise,  we were chaperoned by her other, Allan Gilbreath, whose business I am courting, and by the artist Mark Helwig. Go see his stuff.) We ate at The Mad Italian in Chamblee, whose food is far better than their website. Friday night Mark asked if I wanted to try the restaurant. We had calzones, and tried a local brew whose name I cannot recall (no, that's  not why...) I had the fresh spinach calzone with pepperoni, and it was so good I immediately ordered a second to put in my cooler. I ate it cold for breakfast the next morning, It was amazing even cold. Well, Mark and I both evangelized about it the next day, and so our foursome wound up there Saturday night after the dealers room closed.  Uber-noms. OK, when the check came, both Kimberly and Allan pounced on it, and Kimberly won. What a sweetheart!

The food was not the only thing, oh, no. The conversation was hilarious, sparkling, and would have flown on Jack Paar. One thing I learned is that Italy has bowed the knee to the Great Old Ones, and looks forward to the return of Cthulhu, and the rise of R'lyeh.



Also, they like soccer.

The con was fun, with lovely Victorian-tech costuming. Our sales were up 25% from last year's, which means we did half-to-one-third what a similar anime con would gross, Such is the way of con-dom. SF-type cons are not the venue for us, sales-wise, but the networking opportunities are excellent. Anime is where the fan dollar is.

AnachroCon has an edge over anime cons, however. Being a small Southron SF con, their hospitality cannot be beaten, in both the comestible and potable categories. The con was (by my lights) drama-free, although because of the size of the venue, they had to have two dealers rooms, which they justified by having the smaller room be for "Artisans", them wot makes their own stuff.

Con organizers: NEVER have two dealers rooms. Being in the Other room is generally death. I've been a huckster for thiry-two years, now, so i say with some authority: One dealer room only, please.

Hey, Michael...can you stand a weekend with this?