While at Westercon63, I boldly cornered the famous James Hay (if you don’t know him, you should go to ConDor or Gaslight Gathering his new SteamPunk convention) to ask, humbly on bended knee (really!) if he would permit me to abscond with his “Tall Tales” idea for use as a panel at other conventions.

He allowed as how the idea wasn’t original to him and that he had no objection to my doing so.

I like the “Tall Tales” panel as a sort of counterpoint to The Delphic Oracle. In “Tall Tales”, each participant bails themselves out of the last cliffhanger their predecessor put them in then builds a deeper hole for the next participant — all in good fun and always with hilarious results.

There was a catch, however. The catch was that I agree to return to Conjecture (1-3 October 2010) this year. The latter was pretty easy as I’d had such a good time with Bob Sawyer while at Ad Astra earlier this year, that I do not at all mind repeating the experience!

I had a lot of fun at Westercon63.

My highlights were “The Delphic Oracle” which was, once again, a rousing success. Saturday night saw “Are You a Werewolf” competing against the Masquerade which isn’t ideal. All the same we managed a good 3-4 rounds before we broke.

My biggest thrill was in meeting Seanan McGuire who is not only a famous filker (she was filk GOH) but also an author of no little renown (she’s up for the Campbell Award as best new author). She’s quite an intriguing person and, after Werewolf, we spent several hours talking. If you get a chance, you might want to check out her website. I look forward to meeting her again soon and gabbing away.