Convention

I went to Marscon this weekend; it used to be a small, relax-a-con. No big guests, good con food, a few no-pressure panels, lots of gaming and socializing. (yes, astonishingly enough, geeks do socialize.)

There were over 900 people there this weekend. Which was cool. Lots of great costumes. I did not costume. I wore snarky or geeky t-shirts and had my face painted. I am the slack. It's traditional.

I brought in a bunch of promo materials for Shifting Steam (about 150 postcards with the cover art) and left them on the tables - along with dozens of other people who had books, cons, games, music, etc to advertise. And because I am cheap, at the end of the Con, I went 'round to gather up anything that was left so I could use them later.

There were less than a dozen.

So... if you happened to find your way here because of a postcard, hi! Nice to meet you. Please feel free to check out my Facebook fan page. I post interesting links, Very Dirty Words of the day, and snippets of my work in progress.

I went to 2 writing workshops, one that was great and the other that I had to leave early because my husband's sugars dropped alarmingly. I'm not sure I learned anything precisely new, but it was interesting to see the basics from a different perspective. I already know I write shoddy first drafts. As a matter of fact, I've been working hard to learn how to allow myself permission to write shoddy first drafts! I met a couple other writers and ended up talking editing with a friend's brother. (He's currently an artist, of the pen and paper variety and is trying his hand at writing... In the midst of that discussion, I pointed out that Hunger Games is, indeed, written entirely in the present tense. Which my friend had not even noticed, which indicates that present tense story telling can be done well.)

I also attended a really interesting panel on LGBT in sci-fi/fantasy/horror and got to talk a bit about my favorite stories, the Liaden novels, by Steve Miller and Sharon Lee. If you haven't read them, I highly recommend them!

Anyway, it was a fun con (mostly) and I got to talk to a lot of people, including the very talented Jonah Knight. Keep an eye on this space, he and I have done some talking about doing a collaborative contest, and I'll be giving away some copies of his music.

And... now back to the writing projects.... of which I have entirely too many!

Word Count for the first 15 days of the month: 4,123 / 4,175 so I'm just about on track