Dragon*Con summary

I’m way late with this, but it turns out I took well over three hundred pictures at D*Con and it took a lot longer than expected to sort and resize them. :)

The convention was a blast. Met a lot of interesting people, attended some wicked events (Rave? Me? Nooo), and saw a lot of truly amazing cosplayers. The high points for me were The Mad Scientists’ Ball, the AMV showing, and the Exploring the Final Taboo writing panel. At the panel I got to meet a lot of authors I respect for the first time in real life, including Kayelle Allen, Kiernan Kelly, and Ally Blue. I also got to meet new-to-me authors Fiona Zedde and Sascha Illyvich.

I’d never had the opportunity to attend a writing panel before, so I was sitting in the audience, avidly taking notes as well as txting Katrina Strauss (who couldn’t attend this year) bits and pieces of the subjects covered. I was surprised as hell when Kayelle Allen spotted me and announced me to the room as “the best M/M writer in the world.” I’m sure the expression on my face was very deer caught in the headlights as I walked to the front of the room and told the audience a little bit about my stuff. A friend of mine told me I sounded calm and collected, but that’s what friends do so I’m unsure.

My favorite moment of the entire convention happened at that panel. When I stood up, Kiernan Kelly pointed to me and yelled “I’ve been looking for that damned hat all weekend!”

I still smile when I think about it.

Aside from that moment, no one spotted the Where’s Rowan hat. I did get to give away most of the prizes, though, so that was a lot of fun.

The entire weekend still feels like one long day, and as such is a bit blurry. The sweet-tea peach vodka I tried for the first time had nothing to do with that at all, I’m sure—oh my god I LOVE Georgia!—but luckily I took tons of pictures. Sharing a few below:

Kratos

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Dr. Manhattan

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A bishounen in leather

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The Question

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Mmm, Spartans

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Doctor Who

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Hatta

Cool, yeah? Those were just some of my favorites. If you'd like to view the public gallery I've created for more of them, click over to my flickr account. There, a lot of the images have captions. It's currently 5am and I *just* finished that project, so it'll be interesting to see if I'm as clever as I thought I was after I've gotten some sleep. lol.

Excerpts, Awards, and Opinions

I have an excerpt up for One Shot! You can check it out, along with the blurb and other good stuff, on the story's page on my site: http://rowanmcbride.com/stories/oneshot/. Let me know what you think. :)

Lone has a page now for the Recommended Read stickers it has received since its release, as well as the various screencaps I couldn't resist taking because I'm a digital packrat and {sigh} a geek (although, on a totally unrelated note, my geek card has been taken away, upgraded, taken away, and upgraded again several times over the past week, lol). Check out the brand spankin' new awards page at http://rowanmcbride.com/stories/lone/lone_awards.html.

Thank you to everyone who's read Lone. It's had an amazing response and it was a pleasure building an awards page for it.

I'm holding a poll on my Yahoo!Group (the platform I use for my newsletter) regarding Want Me. You have to sign up for the mailing list to vote, but it's a very low traffic list (news only, my record being five updates in one month) and you can always set your preferences to "no mail." Whatever option you decide, I'd appreciate your input. The link to my newsletter is: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rowan_mcbride and the direct link to the poll is: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rowan_mcbride/polls.

I think that's it! I had a fab time at Dragon*Con. I'm planning on posting a more detailed update regarding the convention (plus pics!) on this blog in the next few days. W00t!