I can announce this at last!

Diane and I will be guests at the first-ever US Discworld Convention in 2009. We've known about it for a while, but had to keep quiet until the Concom got all the details nailed down. It'll be at the Mission Palms Hotel in Tempe, Arizona, a nice hotel in a super location - we were there as guests of CopperCon last year and had a great time both at the con and outside it, since the hotel's conveniently located for various restaurants, a brewpub just across the road, a really excellent used-book store, and since almost all the Coppercon convention venues were in rooms around the hotel courtyard, there was no hiking for miles through the Arizona heat (it was hot - and I loved it!) to get from one panel to another.

The official announcement follows ( after the cut )

Having a convention in a college town is always a good idea, because students and fans have the same requirements: food and drink at reasonable prices and not so far from the campus or con that there's a risk of missing lectures or panels. This is going to be a lot of fun!

Don't forget, closer both in terms of distance (for European Discworld fans, anyway) and in terms of time is next year's UK Discworld Convention - see its own LJ community discworld_2008 for more information.