Last
week, in “My Amazing Life,” I wrote, “From out of the blue, I’ve even been offered a guest
membership to a Science Fiction convention, and invited to speak on some of
their panel discussions. Needless to say, I regard this as an unexpected
honor.” This is an edited version of the email I received.
Dear
Mr. Dunham,
“We’d
like to have you attend and take part in our program of events. If you
attend, you will receive two full three-day memberships, for yourself and a
guest. We will ask you to take part in our programming events, and we
will include your name in our publicity material.
If
you express an interest in the convention, we will send you a questionnaire and
list of programming topics when they are developed.
If
you have any ideas for panel discussions, or are interested in giving a
presentation or demonstration, please let us know.
Even
if you choose not to attend the convention this year, please feel free to join
these [online discussion] groups. We’d love your input.
We
hope to see you at our next convention.
Very
truly yours,
P.S.
If you are truly unsure of your ability to attend at this point in time, I’m
more than willing to accept a firm “maybe” for now.
After
attending this particular convention for the last decade or so, my wife and I had decided to give
it a rest, as we’ve never really connected with the folks there. But after such a gracious invitation, how
could we say no? I’ve written about the
convention, and the special guests who have attended, numerous times in this
blog. Even if I don’t get much feedback
for my daily entries, it was nice to think that someone from the convention had
noticed my posts and thought, “Say, he and his wife haven’t signed up this
year. He’s writing about us, he’s
promoting us on the Internet, and he’s got interesting things to say.”
My
only concern was that they might have misinterpreted my recent series, “Men In
Black: The Condor Incident” as fact rather than fiction, and I would arrive to find that, under my biographical information, they had stated that I
was a former Condor researcher. In order
to make certain that hadn’t happened, I called the man who sent me the
invitation, and asked him why he had invited me.
“Hold
on a second, let me look at my files.” After
a minute or so, he said, “I’m not sure.
Maybe we got your name off a list.
Did you attend the World Fantasy Convention?”
“Yes.”
“Have
you written something?” he asked.
“Yes,
I’m a writer, but I haven’t published anything yet. I do have a blog—“
“No,
it wouldn’t be that,” he cut in immediately.
“Sorry for the misunderstanding.”
Right.
Maybe
not such an honor as I originally thought, then.
I know my life is still wonderful, and I have much to be thankful for. In life, such mix-ups are bound to occur. Still, sometimes it may not seem so amazing.
Dragon
Dave
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