I've been home for five full days now. Five days. And my brain is still spinning with all the awesome, amazing, wonderful, batshit crazy things that happened at DragonCon this year.
It wasn't my first time going, but it was my first time in a veeeeery long time (we don't do time math around here for dang good reason), and boy did it not disappoint. I really want to include all the awesome things that happened, but there was SO MANY awesome things, both personal and professional, that I know I'm going to miss stuff. And that, right there, should be an indication of how amazing, how overwhelming, how freaking INSANE DragonCon is. Seriously, at one point during the con I was talking about how so and so happened two days ago. My friend looked me dead in the eye and replied, "That was this morning." LOL, the days are long AF, but they go by quick. So I decided to pick one professional bit of awesomeness, and one personal (that I'm very much still fangirling about).
First off, a huge thank you to everyone at Baen!!
I mentioned before that I got second place in the Baen Fantasy Adventure Award Contest, and I was super honored when I got to attend the Baen Traveling Roadshow at DragonCon and get my certificate in front of a ballroom full of awesome people. I also got to meet Shami Stovall (a legit badass and all around fantastic person) who tied for third place. In case you're wondering, I'm absolutely going to be framing that certificate and hanging it at my little writing nook, because talk about inspiration!! That griffin story is is living rent free in my head, and those characters will *not* shut up, so one of my planned projects for 2024 is to write a follow on novel.
Obviously, that was my professional bit of awesomeness. Now, on to the personal awesomeness!! So, I knew that Patricia Briggs, one of my favorite Urban Fantasy authors, was going to be attending DragonCon. Not only does she write amazing stories, she's also a horse girl and breeds Arabians. I too, happen to be a horse girl at heart. I told my friends I'd love to meet her just to tell her I love her stories and talk horses for a few minutes. Ya'll, it actually happened!!
I got to tell her one of my favorite books of hers is Dead Heat in the Alpha & Omega series, specifically because of the amount of time devoted to horses!! She was such a delight to talk to, and is truly an incredibly nice person. I'm not going to lie, I'm still geeking out about getting to talk with her, and probably will be for quite some time. There were so many other people I met that were just wonderful to talk to. I finally got to meet Jeff Burns from Super Geeked Up, though I'm pretty sure Marisa and I did nothing to shake his conviction that we're clones (I'm not the clone, I swear). I got to be on his One True Pairing panel, and we had a blast arguing about which characters were a better match for each other. And thanks to Marisa and the amazing Sue Phillips (Scifi Lit Track Director extraordinair), I got to moderate my first panel, and it was about Pern!! Ahhhhhhh!!!
Okay, I'm trying to rein myself in here, because if I go down this rabbit hole I'm going to have a ridiculously long post because so. Much. Happened. A friend asked me if I thought going to DragonCon was worth it from a professional author standpoint. Halfway through the con, I texted him: AAR when I get home. BLUFF: Get your ass to DragonCon next year!!
On the writing side of the house, I'm almost through SB3 edits. I've gotten all the way up to the final battle, which is the part I need to rewrite. When I originally planned this story out, this was meant to be the middle battle, so I need to punch it up a bit now that it's going to be a four book trilogy LOL. And. . . I better get back to it, because it's not going to fix itself. Until next week, folks!!
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