Saturday,
February 21, 2004
ConDFW III: Day the Second
Being, well, busy, I realized when I got home Friday night that I really didn't have enough chapbooks for my signing Saturday afternoon, so I stayed up until 3:00 AM making four copies of each chapbook. Needless to say, when the alarm went off in the morning for my 10:00 AM panel, I was not quite what you would call compos mentis. As a result, I slapped the OFF button, reset it for another two hours, and went back to sleep. I don't like skipping panels, but I wouldn't have been a panelist, I would have been an inert lump sitting at the end of the table.
The alarm went off at 11:00 AM, and this time I was able to get up -- whee! Got dressed and ready, told the dozing Lyndon that I would pick him up later (as his Jeep was acting dodgy and he didn't want to drive it all the way to Richardson if he didn't have to), and headed down to the con. I got there slightly late for "What Is Paranormal Romance and Other Cross-Genre Quandaries?" with Lee, Carole Nelson Douglas and Renee Brown, but they made room for me at the end of the table and we had a good time talking about how the blending of genres is hot again (there have been a number of new lines opening for SF/Fantasy-romance recently) and how we juggled genres. Lee, bless her heart, asked me to explain the plot of my FR novel, and Carole told me later on that I did a great job promoting it at the panel and I'd better hurry up and finish it. I need more time, drat it all!
After
the panel, I grabbed a quick lunch at Burger King and a quicker snack in the
hotel restaurant with Julia, Sue Sinor and Katherine Kimbriel, then hung out
in the lobby gabbing with Steve, Derek James and Bill Ledbetter from FutureClassics
and worked on my knitting. I always try to bring some handwork to a con, because
it's a great thing to do with your hands while you're talking to people -- as
I'd promised to make a pair of socks for a friend of mine, this was the perfect
occasion to work on them, and people kept coming over to see what I was doing
with all those needles.
3:00
PM rolled around, and I headed off to the reading room to share the hour with
Selina Rosen. From now on I want to be paired with Selina Rosen for readings
-- not only is her stuff an absolute hoot and a half, she's also an appreciative
listener, and 75% of the people who came in to hear her stayed to hear me (I
think it helped that I read my story from FBOTA), which was extremely nice.
Immediately afterwards, she ordered me to go off and get my fencing gear, because
we were meeting with Jeff and Tracy out behind the hotel to fence. Yay! A bunch
of people gathered to watch as we worked with live steel, another group used
heavy weapons and a third used these nifty foam replica swords that had been
on sale in the dealer's room. Steve and Rhonda Eudaly got some good shots of
us fencing, and Selina said that I'm starting to get good with an epee -- I
explained that I'd been practicing with Jeff's SCA group on Wednesday nights.
Regular practice DOES make a difference!
A
fter
fencing, I had to dash back in, run a rake through my hair and dash down to
the lobby for my autographing session. I was the only one there, and it's a
good thing -- I was a mite sweaty, yes indeedy (not smelly, mind you, just sweaty).
Nonetheless, there was a steady stream of friends and other congoers (including
Ladykatt!), and I sold two copies of FBOTA, two chapbooks and one copy of Fundamentally
Challenged, the CD anthology Jeff had edited. All in all, a pleasantly remunerative
time, so I was quite pleased.
I then headed back to Plano to grab Lyndon, and we stopped for a quick dinner at Wendy's before returning to the con. Lyndon immediately fell into another game, so I spent the evening hanging out with the usual suspects (namely Selina, Julia, Lee, Rachel, Jeff, Robert, Amanda, Rhonda, Glen Sixbury and other Yard Dogs) and wandering around the room parties. I finally returned to the lobby and my knitting when I realized I was just too damn tired to sit in a hot, crowded room and try to hear people over the babble (it didn't help that my ears were stopped up, as well).
But
sitting in the lobby during a con is an adventure in itself -- one of the couches
was immediately dubbed the male casting couch, and Rhonda took pictures of a
number of male guests draped across it while a bunch of people talked about
everything under the sun. That's one of the pleasures of a con, after all --
the great conversation.
After much chatting, knitting and ogling of various men sprawled on the casting couch, it was time to head home and collapse once again. A drawback of being broke is that we couldn't afford a room this year, but then again I really prefer sleeping at home anyway.
TOMORROW:
a fanfic panel, and shopping!