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Gen Con things I want to remember #2: happy times at Booth 1841

1. Reunions and meet-ups are two of my favorite con activities. I got to do lots of both today! Color me with all the happy colors.

  • I got to meet someone I'd only known from online interaction, which is a thing I love doing and we had a fantastic chat. Then a wonderful friend from my Borders days (HI TOM!!!) dropped by and that was beyond fabulous too. To top off the fun cake,  a friend of another wonderful friend from Borders (Hi, Nicole!)  came by to deliver greetings and grab books.
  • Daniel Govar, the artist who's done many fine character commissions for me, and who designed my incredible Dawnrigger logo, is here for his first Gen Con, so I visited the "Art Show" to say hello. I'm going to have a real colophon logo for my books soon. HAPPY SQUEE!
  • Turns out the fantastic professional editor I hired to do Sharp Edge of Yesterday who I've been conversing with by email is here at the con, so today I GOT TO MEET HIM IN PERSON. So cool. He's as awesome in person as he has been by email, and I was able to have a simple conversation about process details that would have taken me hours to get composed properly into text form.And in that "this world is so small, wow" moments, I learned today that one of my friends from the game store (HI RETT) knows my editor (HI JOHN) from another professional venue.
  • I got to have a delicious dinner and long, enjoyable evening chatting with my Ghost Town writing parter (HI BILL) and with an author I met at WorldCon a couple of years back but hadn't seen since (HI MISTY!)
  • Friday AM the re-connection with continue. I'm going True Dungeon adventuring with some of the gaming friends responsible for setting my feet on the path to writing my first novel. After that gaming fun, I'll head over to the vendor floor for the day.

2. Connecting with people brand-new to me is another exciting part of con-going for me, and Gen Con has provided plenty of that too.

  • I admired someone's phenomenal hat of pins and provided her with a sticker, and that led to a great convo about life, the universee, sexuality, contemporary fantasy. I got to recommend books by authors I know (HI HANS & LAUREN) and got some recommendations in return.
  • I got asked questions about writing process by another writer, and that conversation was a lot of fun, plus I got to share my love of Habitica as an emotional-load-lifter. Good times indeed.

3. My fancy new book display saw a lot of traffic today. A goodly number of bookmarks went into people's bags, and I made some people happy with my freebie Unity stickers. I guess the message "Love is Positive" is one folks like to see.

  • Thanks to various visits full of kindness, my baseless fears of selling zero books all weekend have been washed away. Onward to the greater challenge of "Can I sell enough that I can empty one of my storage boxes?"
  • I forgot to take pictures with anyone. But I DID remember to get emails for sending ebook editions to go with the con sales, so...progress?

4. Other random things I want to remember thinking about.

  • There were some nice costumes, but not a lot, at least not on the exhibitor floor. I didn't get any pics of those either. Maybe tomorrow.
  • And I was too busy soaking in all the changes and new things to post anything to social media. Maybe next time when I'm not SQUIRRELing at everything. Maybe.
  • This was a lot for one day & tomorrow might be even more action-packed.

Good times indeed.