Game On!

Where's Rowan? Find me at Yaoi-Con wearing this hat:

And follow these rules to win fab prizes. From October 29-31. That's now!

Where's Rowan? (Yaoi-Con 2010 edition)

Katrina Strauss was way generous and sent me a bunch of stuff to give away along with mine, so I figured now was as good a time as any to post the rules of this year's "Where's Rowan" game. But first, the glorious hat that is the key to victory and--dare I say it--seventh level happiness. I speak, of course, of the Urahara/chibi-Gaara impossible to match with anything baseball cap:

Oh yes, it's spiffy. It even has quite the extensive backstory in that it was made during a phase where for some reason people were sending me plushies left and right, chibi-Gaara got the traditional bucket hat, drama ensued, and eventually there was even a photo taken with Gaara wearing THIS hat. It's convoluted and only really makes sense in my mind, but the bottom line is that this hat possesses magical powers and can win you prizes. These prizes, in fact:

I tried to make sure I put one of each in there, but I've got a *lot* of prints in varying sizes. You may have noticed some sparkling Blue Ruin and Sleight of Hand love mixed in there-- those are what Katrina sent. :D

The CDs I'm giving out are "first chapter" CDs, in they contain the first chapter of all my currently published works, plus a copy of my short story "A Picture's Worth." I'm also giving away one trade paperback copy each of Lone, Warm Rush: Chasing Winter, and Want Me.

Nice, yeah?

Rules:

1. Finding the hat is pretty much it. Look for it at Yaoi-Con 2010 either on my head or attached to my messenger bag.


2. Once you find the hat, walk up to the person with it and ask politely "Are you Rowan McBride?" If they say no, keep walkin' because it means my idea wasn't as original as I thought and someone else painted their own Urahara baseball cap. If it *is* me, then I'll probably flash a big goofy grin and you'll win one of the fabulous prizes listed above.


3. I'll be posting many of my locations in real time via twitter, so keep an eye on that page for an advantage.


4. Contest begins when I yell "Game On!" on this blog, my website, twitter, and on my newsletter Friday, October 29th 2010 and ends Halloween day.


5. Have fun!

Yaoi-Con musings

This Halloween weekend I’ll be in San Francisco for Yaoi-Con. Gotta say, looking forward to it. Fate has set it up so that I get to meet up with an old friend I haven’t seen since college. I also have plans to meet a lot of new friends face-to-face for the first time. Plus there’s an impressive list of people I plan to outright stalk. Conventions rock.

And, yes, I do plan to play Where’s Rowan? while I’m there. The rules will be similar to last year when we played at DragonCon. Yaoi-Con’s a lot smaller so I won’t be posting every move I make on twitter, but I’ll tweet the highlights because I have a lot of prizes to give away and this is the…what?...third or fourth year we’ve played and no one’s ever found Rowan. I have high hopes that the streak will be broken this year. With my luck it will be while I’m letting someone else try on the hat.

What prizes have I got this time around? I’ll list the details in a later post, but good ones. Plus author and friend Katrina Strauss is sending me some swag and how cool is that?

So, any of you guys going to the con? What events are you looking forward to?

Michael Finally Grows Up - Chapter 8

Chapter eight of Michael Finally Grows Up is done and posted. I wish I had something clever and insightful to say as to why I up and decided to write more of this story after, oh, a year and two months, but the truth is I was feeling it and so I jumped in. XD

Avery’s voice is always a lot of fun to write for me. I hope you enjoy getting reacquainted with him:

http://rowanmcbride.com/stories/mfgu/

Fun Stuff: Cosplay

Is "Fun Stuff" better than "Feed the Fun"? I dunno. Moving on.

If you read my previous post you know last month was hella hectic for me because the family had descended. Proof of how frazzled this had made me can be found in the typo I made in the title of a newsletter I sent out last month. {sigh} Embarrassing. But overall being with the extended fam was a lot of fun, things have settled in the last few days, and now I'm in recovery mode, so let's move on from that as well.

Dragon*Con starts this weekend. I don't get to go this time around so that's a bummer, but my favorite thing about any fan convention is the cosplay, so I thought I'd post a few of my favorite images from deviantArt. I hope you enjoy them too.



TZP: The Lost Woods by *Adella on deviantART

This dude's body isn't photoshopped--he spent six months with a personal trainer to look like Link. Now that's dedication to a character.

***


Code Geass R2 - Mutuality - 09 by ~shiroang on deviantART

I never get tired of good Geass cosplay.

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X: if we could stay together by ~Aoinagaru on deviantART

I love X. And fanservice.

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The Doctor and The Batman by *blackjack157 on deviantART

Bizarre team-ups rock too.

Heh. Limericks.

Haven't been online much because the fam has descended. I'm talking parents, grandparents, cousins (and their families), aunties, uncles, brothers, nephews, nieces. If they don't drink, they shoot, if they don't shoot, they cook, if they don't cook, they dance, and if they don't dance, they, uh, write, I guess. We all, without exception, play dominoes. This is the state of my life at the moment.

I totally missed the start of the Goodreads M/M Romance Group 1-year Anniversary Celebration. I would have missed the whole thing if I hadn't received an email letting me know it was time for me to mail out a prize I'd donated. But thanks to that email I got to drop in on some of the fun. I even got to play in a limerick contest yesterday and it floored the hell out of me to find out via another somewhat random email that the little sucker made first place. I chose Lynn Lorenz's "Pinky Swear" as my prize, so assuming no one snapped it up before me and assuming I picked from the correct prize list, I'm looking forward to a good read.

The celebration's still going on. Drop in and have some fun. Also, if you have a minute, pray for me.

Posting the limerick below. The prompt was "Pain."

There once was a heart in my chest
Until you ripped it right out of my breast
Now there's no dawn
As the pain writhes on
You stole my love *and* my death

Sean Scott's Buff Muscles

It occurs to me that the above blog subject reads like the title of a story. Damn. I really need to finish something.

Last week I was doing that thing where you look up people you admire on twitter on the off chance that they’re there. I found Sean Scott, whose stories I’d been reading since before I started posting my own. If you’re into muscle fiction and you don’t recognize the name, you might be more familiar with his pseuds Aaron Strong and Derek Flex. If you know any of those names, you know he writes good stuff.

He did, indeed, have a twitter account. I hit follow. That was that.

Until a few hours later and I get an email from the man himself telling me he’s a fan of my stuff. I freaked out. Didn’t reply for three days.

I mean, where does he get off, telling me he’s a fan? I was his fan first. Doesn’t he know how bizarre that is?

When I did write him, it was something to that effect. I don’t handle pressure well.

But lucky for me he’s nice and more, uh, centered than I am. And his website is not just nice, it’s niiiiiiiiice. With stories and pics and blog posts and videos. All of it geared toward the grownup crowd and all of it hawt.

www.BuffMuscles.com

Registration required to see some of the content, but it’s free and fun. It’s easy to get immersed there. A lot of my friends haven’t heard from me in, hmm, about a week now. XD