Norwescon.

[icebluenothing]

So for this year's Norwescon, I was 1.) a pro, doing panels, 2.) in the Art Show, 3.) doing readings and selling my new book, and 4.) in charge of the Merchants of Deva party. Got all that?

I was not so good at the panelist part. Of my scheduled panels, I only made it to two of them. And one of them was my reading. Yeah. But the one panel-y panel I was on went well and was a lot of fun. I really like being a panelist, but it involves being places on time while there's lots of other shiny things going on.

Thursday I meant to make it to the con at a reasonable hour. I ended up realizing that if I went down in time for my first panel, it would involve driving down, and therefore dealing with parking, so I went down with retcon and hetaera15. Gave me more time for last minute things, like, oh, making more art. (Three of my ten pieces were put together that morning.) I also had a story to type up and several flyers to make, and between one thing and another, we got there just after midnight. I was dead freakin' tired, so needed to go right to bed, even though that meant missing ajka's dance. (Sad!)

Friday morning, my publisher helix90 whisked me away to tour the offices of our storage/shipping firm, Global Fulfillment. (Sounds like James Bond's cover identity.) I got to see the boxes of my book. This is really happening. I go over the book contract with them, we make some changes, and everything is signed. Yes, the book was printed before we had a signed contract. Yes, that's more than a little weird.

(I was a little distracted, most of Friday. Bad relationship issues with treebyleaf. I don't really want to talk about it; I just want to mention it here so that I'll remember, reading this later, that my weekend wasn't perfect.)

Friday night, after being violently ill at dinner (I can't recommend Dave's Diner; perhaps it was stress-related, but still), I did my readings. Both of them went quite well. The second reading, the one in the Deva suite, had a fairytale-theme that seemed to go over well, and this was the first time I've ever used a microphone for a reading. I really liked it -- I feel like I was able to do more interesting things with my voice once I could hear how it really sounds. Afterward, I sold a few books. My number-one fangirl, dreadangel, was first in line, which is just as it should be.

That night we had a party. We didn't mean to. We had been touring around the other room parties, got pretty damn drunk on the horrible -- HORRIBLE! -- "daquiris" at the Cult of Scott Bakula party, and ending up hanging out in the Deva suite. kespernorth came by, and brought some people with him, and then some more people showed up, and then people we didn't know showed up, and .... Eventually we gave into the inevitable, Riff turned on some music, and even though we had no alcohol or food, everyone seemed to have a great time. I found out later that the con dubbed it the "Black Hole Party", because people kept wandering by, getting pulled in, and never seen again. Heh. Con security showed up, but didn't shut us down. Rawk.

On Saturday, set-up for the Deva party went amazingly well. I don't remember it ever going so well, actually. And the party itself was, well, outstanding. I knew it would be. I wasn't worried at all about being "in charge" of this party, because I knew I didn't have to run it so much as just point it in the right direction. We've got damn good people who know what they're doing, and our new volunteers this year were great and enthusiastic. Judging by the comment cards we got, people love us.

Come Sunday, tear-down could have gone better than it did, but wasn't too awful. And I found out that almost all my art sold and a good number of pieces went to auction. Not bad. I'm definitely going to be doing this again.

We took advantage of the lovely weather Sunday and ended our weekend with a picnic dinner at Greenlake. The weekend may not have been perfect -- but it was damn close.

Comments

[cithra.livejournal.com]

OK, so I was lame and failed to get to Norwescon, therefore failed to obtain a copy of your book. What is my next best option for purchase?

heard great things about your party

[errhead.livejournal.com]

sorry i missed it this year, too busy channelling dionysus and setting a personal record for intoxicating the most people at a con

[ex-cirocco891.livejournal.com]

Echoing Cithra's question (I didn't know you two knew one another, that's weird). I looked at bloodletters.com and there's nothing whatsoever about the book, let alone ordering information, on your index page -- get on the stick!