Whereat I Have Been

I spent all last week at the Rio Hondo workshop, which I ran with the able assistance of Maureen McHugh.  The company was excellent, the critique smart, and you’ll all be seeing the workshop’s stories appearing in magazines and anthologies over the next couple years.

And, not least, the food and drink were really excellent.

I wasn’t online much last week, because, well, I was running the workshop, but also because the workshop was particularly intense on account of, um, a Plague that fell upon our house.

Someone who I shall not name attended the Nebula Awards the previous weekend, and brought from thence an outbreak of norovirus, or something like it.  Over the course of the week five of the twelve attendees succumbed, while the rest of us spent our time swabbing stuff down with Clorox wipes and wondering if any random abdominal gurgle signaled that we were going to spend the next twelve hours worshipping the porcelain throne.

Fortunately I came through unscathed, like the heroic champion that I am.

The twelve survivors in the photograph are James Patrick Kelly, Paolo Bacigalupi, Jen Volant, Diana Rowland, Alex Joblakow, Molly Gloss, Maureen McHugh, Oz Drummond, Charles Finlay, Walter Jon Williams, Rick Wilber, and Carrie Vaughn.

[photo by James Patrick Kelly]