We at TNB love our readers. Seriously. We are thrilled that each and every one of you reads our work, whether you comment or not.
We enjoy comments because it allows us to interact with you. Your feedback verifies that we’re not just shouting into the aether, it sometimes provides validation, and it sometimes encourages us to think about topics in different ways.
You know what else provides feedback? Face-to-face meetings.
Most of us aren’t exactly public figures. A few times every year I break that mold and set up tables in convention dealers’ rooms. There I sit, behind tables full of books (generally science fiction/fantasy, mystery, or horror) and wait for people to come by for purchase or conversation. My wife, who sometimes writes here as MrsMaryLou, is typically there also, as is our daughter.
We keep a cookie and treat bowl stocked at the table, by tradition and to encourage people to linger around the wares. They MIGHT be Deep State Cookies.
Next week that happens again. It’s FenCon, a science fiction convention in North Texas, and the writing guest of honor is Larry Niven.
Larry Niven is best known in the science fiction community as the man who wrote Ringworld and the Known Space series. He’s best known in the political community as one of the two authors (with his friend, military historian and battle tactics expert Jerry Pournelle) whose Space Defense Initiative plan helped Ronald Reagan beat Russia in the Cold War.
So, if you’re in North Texas next weekend, you can meet a man who wasn’t “a member of the Reagan administration” but actually worked with Reagan to get a defining piece of policy through. And you can meet up with a TNB family. Whether you decide to do so or not? That choice is yours… because here, we like freedom.
