Windgate by Wyndham Round Rock

Turns out I’m not afraid of being alone in a creepy hotel room. (The ghouls, phantasms, and phantoms have all been accommodating.) This king-sized bed is my element. It’s the lounge filled with strangers that scares me: laughter growing to a cackle, individual speakers cutting through the crowd walla, referencing authors I really ought to know by now. I’m at the front desk checking in. I can’t see them, but I’m casting them in my mind. I just know they’re covered in conversations starters: Clever horror t-shirts, sleeve tattoos that tell stories, and then there’s me still rocking a wallet chain I bought in the 90s. Now I’m looking at the mirror thinking I really should’ve learned to accessorize before I came down here.

After a long flight and a long drive all I want to do is amble across the highway and get me some Taco Bell. Daddy needs his guilty pleasure comfort food and he’s willing to hike through the 102 degree Texas sun to get it… But that wouldn’t be making the best use of my time here. I should be networking, talking fiction, and inserting business cards into hands.

I’m going to assume that fleeting moment of social anxiety is a natural part of con and that the only remedy is fear aversion therapy. So. Here. Goes.