My decades of not doing shows is evidently forcing the remaining “Byrne Bashers” to some degrees of desperation. So many of the tales are utterly false, being set at conventions I have not attended, or in shops I have not visited.

A new theme (at least to me) involves people who have declared my general jerkiness only to find I was standing behind them in the hall or on the elevator. One even had a fellow “pro” badmouthing me and then realizing I was sitting at the same table! (Invisibility is not generally one of my superpowers.)

There are even a few who have turned the rubber stamp I use to sign reprints into a BBB story. Apparently I do so disparagingly, even dismissing the work itself as crap. My own work! (Missing from these stories is my habit of bringing along my comp copies so I would have something to sign by hand for those who had brought only reprints.)

There’s a degree of irony here. One of the reasons I stopped doing shows was to reduce the BBB stories. But fandom, it seems, abhors a vacuum.