I usually do one con a year as a GoH and try to make the World Fantasy Convention for business purposes. Last year I went to a worldcon for the first time in two decades. I may go again this year.
If you're crazy, there's two things you can do to make yourself feel better: One is to get yourself cured. The other is to make everyone you have to deal with crazy.
I have a bad tendency to get rapidly bored with my own material, so rewriting is hard for me. I mean, I already know the story and would rather read something new.
Growing up, I never gave a thought to being a writer. All I ever wanted to be was a traveler and explorer. Science-fiction allowed me to go places that were otherwise inaccessible, which is why I started reading it.
Getting inside the mind of a terrorist wasn't difficult at all. Even as children, human beings fabricate elaborate revenge fantasies. We're not a particular species. Check out popular video games.
Dawn was written well before 9/11. People speak a lot today about the banality of evil, but not all evil is banal. Some of it is carefully structured and well-thought-out. That's where the real danger lies.
We're all nothing but unified arrangements of atoms and particles, drifting around, enjoying consciousness every now and then for a second or so before splitting up to become bits and pieces of trees and stars and french fries.
Writing allows me the time to travel and see the world, which is what I always wanted to do. I'd really like to have been Sir Richard Francis Burton, but it's the wrong century.