Come to WindyCon 43!
No pressure! It's an invitation, not an order.(edited to add website info: http://www.windycon.org/ ) Windy Con is one of several great local cons -- local being Chicagoland, it's currently residing in scenic Lombard IL -- and I'm here for the second time this year. There are great panels and programs, and tons of interesting things to experience, but as usual I'll be spending most of my time where I'm comfortable: in the Retail Zone. I'm helping at the Games Plus table in the Dealer Room.I'd love to meet and say hello, if nothing else. You want to talk books? Movies? Gardening & baking? Fabulous and fantastic. Me, too!I have physical real books at low-low-low convention pricing-- THREE DIFFERENT TITLES!--I have a pen so I can sign them, and this year there are SIGNS and LABELS and other professional-type business swag scattered about the table.I'm kinda proud of my display, meager as it is, and I am having a blast giving out bookmarks and postcards to all and sundry who pass by.Day 1 highlight: chatting with someone who bought print books last year at the con, then went out and bought the ebooks of all the stories in both series and was checking to see if I had anything new yet. (I know for sure because he was checking titles against his Kindle--I made sure he knew Weaving In the Ends is a compilation...) So I promised I would finish Prodigals and then we talked about Heartwood, and other con attendee came by and we all chatted superpowers and society issues and epic fantasy, and it was <swoon> phenomenal.Maybe someday I'll be jaded and totally over learning that someone liked my wordings, but that someday is not now! So, yeah, I want to sell all the books this weekend, but my weekend is made. Yes, there are pics. Down there. At the bottom of the post.My next goal, inspired by packing and prepping for this weekend's adventure? Committing to first designing and then coughing up the painfully large amount of cash for a Real Booth Banner. (I expected to have one ready for this year's WindyCon, but like so many other plans this year, it's been detoured and delayed by an assortment of alarms, excursions, and other traumas.)Anyhow. Goals: Booth banner. Buy my own booth space. Get onto panels. That's my trifecta for 2017. You saw it here first.My big retail goal/dream? Be organized enough to invite OTHER AUTHORS to come to a con around here and share a table with me. Because that would be beyond fun. Baby steps, though. Baby steps.And now, photographic evidence of MY EPIC SECOND CON TABLE (with Rich from Games Plus modeling his much larger gaming fun display) & MY FIRST FAN PIC.