This year, I was the Writer Guest of Honor. That really is an honor. Folks like Seanan McGuire, Glen Cook, and Gene Wolfe have held that spot.

But, I actually won the Open Contract Challenge, and my book will be out early in 2023.

The bad news was that my normal dog sitter couldn't take Caz.

at the 11'th hour I found a place for Caz to spend the Thanksgiving weekend. One of the tech's at his vet's office does dog boarding, and she had room for Caz.

This was good. The hotel is "pet friendly," but charges $150.00/visit for cleaning. That's about what boarding Caz will cost, but I really wasn't looking forward to taking him out for walks, or having him help in my presentations and readings.

So, about noon on Thanksgiving I took him over to the farm where he'll get a sleepover. I didn't get back from my weekend until late on Sunday, so I'll pick Caz up after work on Monday.

He gets an extra day on a farm!

I had a good Thanksgiving. After taking Caz to his sleepover, I went to a friend's house for dinner with her and her nuclear and extended family. I've met several members of her family before, so this was a comfortable gathering. After dinner I played Ecologies with her 14 year old daughter and got beaten by a hair.

Another friend and I headed out to Chambanacon after she finished her family dinner - it was ten-ish when we finally hit the road (I took a nap while I was waiting.)

Traffic is fairly light on Thanksgiving night, so we made good time and hit Bloomington-Normal about 02:30.

I went up to registration and the clerk said, "Good evening, Checking in?"

I replied, "I hope so. You should have a reservation for Flynt."

She didn't.

So I gave her the name of the convention chair-person. There were two rooms reserved under that name, one of which was occupied. The other had two beds, and we decided that was my room.

I took off my shoes before falling asleep and thought I was doing pretty good.

I slept much later than the cats would have let me sleep.

I spent the weekend with my usual whirling dervish of chatting with folks, participating on a panel (Care and Feeding of Critique Groups), doing a reading (A chapter from Promised Rewards, and my story from UFO #9) and a presentation (Putting songs and poetry into your story).

I got 9 copies of UFO #9 on Mon before the convention and sold every one I took with me. Having a book before Amazon can offer it is pretty cool.

A friend of mine makes catnip stuffed toys with lots of real catnip that she collected this summer. I purchased two of these, one for each cat, put them into a plastic bag and tied a knot to make the container airtight.

I was going to give these to the cats for Christmas.

I got home from the convention later than intended (traffic around Chicago), and just dumped my stuff on the counter and started writing up the report.

Next thing I knew, there's this rattling behind me.

Somebody had grabbed the bag of toys and was trying to figure out how to undo the knot that I thought sealed these things so the scent of catnip wouldn't get loose.

So, Mark & Miles got their Christmas presents early. Amazingly enough, they have each grabbed their own toy to play with, and aren't trying to take each other's toy away.