I don’t normally do after action reports for conventions. Conventions or a chance for me to spread the gospel of my awesome stories, talk to other authors, and have some fun. Usually I’m on a panel or three and I’m staying up way too late and pretending I’m an extrovert–Spoiler, I’m not.
I was at Fantasci last weekend (March 21-23rd). It is the con’s second year and my first time. And I can’t express how much fun I had. A huge percentage of that was that there were people there I knew that I missed, other authors, friends, fans, and mostly my con family. But it was also getting hugs, getting to talk to people face to face, and mostly feel human.
Often I think we forget at the heart of it all we are social creatures and the last year has really been hard on all of us. But just getting to talk, to tease, to get hugs, and see people I’ve missed over the last year was just what I needed.
I could list people for hours and still not include everyone. I learned a new game, I got to talk to authors I want to emulate, I traded marketing tips with others, visited Baen offices, and mostly I recharged that battery I hadn’t realized I had drained. Networking is never going to be something I do effortlessly, but I’m going to keep working on trying to be a good author that other authors want to have in their networks.
Otherwise I just finished another short story, which means there should be two up for sale here in the next month or so and I’m writing away on Draft Luck. I’ll get back to work now.