JordanCon 2011: A Concise and Orderly Report of the Events, Part 4

So I’m kind of half-dead with what I strongly suspect is the dreaded Con Crud right now, but if I don’t finish this right away I’ll forget everything that happened, so here we are. I apologize if this is not the world’s most scintillating con report conclusion ever.

(If you missed them, click the links for Parts One, Two, and Three of my con report.)

So where were we? Oh yes, the costume contest. Which I don’t have pictures I can link everyone to right now (though if you have a Facebook account you can look at the album con-goer Joel Phillips kindly put together at my request), but JordanCon photographer Lisa is in the process of editing the official photos, so I should have a more universally accessible link for you guys in a couple of days. And of course, anyone who has pictures of their own and is willing to share, please feel free to link them in the comments.

If you can see Joel’s album, you’ll likely notice in there a rather startlingly familiar face, which is actually Richard Fife doing an amazingly good Robert Jordan. And yes, he got permission first from Harriet, who not only consented but walked in on his arm at the start of the contest. It was both amusing and faintly eerie at the same time. The two guys dressed as Rand and Mat are (a) hilarious and (b) in possession of some of the best WOT costumes I’ve ever seen, in my opinion. They had a Perrin with them too, but he’s not in Joel’s pictures, unfortunately. (Probably off brooding somewhere.)

And no, I have no idea what’s going on with the toilet papering of Rand in some of these pictures; this was a part of the Ice Cream Social I apparently seriously missed. I was kind of late getting there because the thoroughly awesome Marisa Grooms, daughter of the similarly awesome Brother/Cousin Wilson Grooms, had offered to do my hair up in some amazing configuration that I would never in a million years have been able to achieve on my own, and I am here to tell you that one must never pass up free fancy hairstyling, people. Thanks again, Marisa, you rock.

So the silent auction and, er, ice cream eating were in full swing by the time I arrived, and most everyone seemed to be having a marvelous time. As mentioned earlier, re-reader Jay Dauro bought me a drink, and I spent some time chatting with him and his lovely wife, as well as well as Linda
Taglieri and April Moore, who was charmingly nervous that I wasn’t going to like her because of who she was dressed as! I grinned and told her that Cadsuane might not be my favorite character, but she has the best accessories. And she did, too; her version of Cads’s paralis net was amazing in its attention to detail. Really excellent costume.

And then I did what you generally do at these things: drink, wander around, talk to people, drink some more. Brandon pwned everyone at the epic Magic: The Gathering game which had been going on seemingly continuously the entire con so far, the Grooms once again proved their mad dancing skillz, and Jason attempted to continue our throwing things… thing by lobbing a French fry at me, but only succeeded in hitting himself. Mwahaha. Of course, he got me with a pen later. Or, er, earlier, I can’t quite remember. We are, clearly, very mature and stuff.

And—yeah. I chatted and hung out, cooed at Programming Director Aubree Pham’s ridiculously adorable daughter, admired Director of Operations Rachel Little’s astounding Forsaken icon henna tattoo, courtesy of Crimson Art Henna (seriously, the artist we had there was awesome), played pool in the hotel bar, and just generally had a lovely time. So lovely, in fact, that it was 4:30 AM before I finally went to bed.

The next morning, therefore, was… not so lovely. Especially since I had to get up early enough to pack up all my crap and check out of the hotel. Which I managed to do, blearily, and stashed my luggage before wandering about to see what was left of the con.

Brandon was, shockingly, playing Magic, either again or still for all I know, and several people asked me to sign the dedication pages of their ToM copies, as I think collecting all the dedicatees’ signatures is now WOT fandom’s version of Pokemon, heh. This was made much easier by the fact that almost all of us were attending the con—except for Bob Kluttz, which was very sad-making. Grump.

I also bought a couple more books, including Jana Oliver’s The Demon Trapper’s Daughter, which looks very cool, and How to Write Magical Words, which is a compilation of blog essays from the writing advice blog David Coe runs with several other authors and which I very much look forward to reading. I attempted to attend Jana and David’s last panel, too, about writing historical fiction, but my stomach was having none of it, and I gave up after the second time I had to duck out.

Fortunately, though, my innards had settled a bit by the time Brandon, Harriet and David started their pitching critique panel (on how to pitch book ideas to editors), which was probably the single most useful and informative hour of the entire con, in my opinion. Excellent stuff.

I was a bit sad that I couldn’t attend Matt Hatch’s Last Theory Panel Ever, for obvious reasons, but it was time to catch a plane. So I hugged Harriet and Maria and Alan and Wilson and said goodbye to everyone I could find, and that was the end of JordanCon 2011 for me.

Thanks to everyone who had anything to do with putting this thing together and/or making it awesome, especially Jennifer Liang, Jason Denzel, Aubree Pham, Richard Fife, David Coe, Jana Oliver, and, of course of course, Team Jordan. Y’all are all officially the bizzomb, and I look forward to seeing most of you again next year or maybe even sooner.

Here endeth the con report! And now I’m off to take more medicine and collapse. Cheers!