Coastal Magic Convention – Part 2

Friday morning started out with me setting out my jewelry, as I do a few times a year at conventions. As you might guess, as a full-time agent and part-time writer, I don’t have a ton of time for much else, but I’ve never learned how to relax, and so I must be productive at all times. Thus, when I’m not reading or writing or negotiating, I’m generally beading or scrapbooking or traveling. Every once in awhile I lay about on the beach, but even then I have a book in hand, market reading if not a client manuscript on my Kindle. Not that I’m complaining! I got into this business because I love books and twenty-three years later, that love has only deepened.

Shortly thereafter I had the privilege of participating on the Mystery & Suspense panel with Katie Reus, Tonya Burrows, Graylin Fox, and Jana Oliver. As you may or may not know, my latest release is a young adult suspense novel entitled Faultlines (definitely one of the books of my heart), though my previous series have also employed mystery/suspense elements. You have to write what you love!

That afternoon, Alethea Kontis, Hildie McQueen, Lisa Kessler, Deborah Blake, Mari Mancusi, Jana Oliver and I banded together for the Tea & Tiaras meet and greet. There were, of course, tiaras and other largess from each of us princesses, plus giveaways. We started off very well behaved.

But then, of course, things devolved….

Or evolved, as I like to think of things, because, as you all know, well behaved women seldom make history!

That night we had the Movie Magic Mixer. There were some truly great costumes, including Mari Mancusi as Jedi Rapunzel, Chelle Olson as Katniss Everdeen, Graylin Fox as a fairy queen, Paige Tyler as a Star Trek character… I wore the same goddess outfit from the meet & greet and decided that I was Athena from the Percy Jackson books/films so that I could stay in theme! We danced our booties off and had a great time with the selfie spots that Jennifer Morris and her team had set up! If only my camera had been cooperating, I’d have more shots to share.

Whoo, and that’s all just Friday!

Saturday started out with the Remaking Mythology panel (and others, of course, but I can only speak to where I was at any given time!). Alethea Kontis, Asa Maria Bradley, Deborah Blake, Gail Z Martin, Eric R Asher and I talked about merging mythology into our stories and had a darned fine time doing it!

This was followed by a very nice conference Lunch with an Author and then, one of my favorite events, one I both look forward to and dread every year—the Flash Fiction panel, where the audience throws things at us like post-apocalyptic vampire penguins and my fellow panelist throw out things like “scientific nipples” and…ahem, well, since I write young adult fiction, maybe I should leave out the rest, although I’m sure there are clips and perhaps a few write ups of some of the more outrageous elements! My notes below might give some indication as well. They certainly don’t do the panel justice, but maybe the looks on our faces will! (Most pics courtesy of Graceful Art & Photography. Flash Fiction panel L to R: Amy Lane, Julie Kenner, Dee Davis, Becky McGraw, Damon Suede, me, Kiernan Kelly.)

The book signing was amazing, as always, and once again I got to share a table with the wonderful Poppy Dennison. Dinner at Bubba Gump’s and a rousing few rounds of Cards Against Humanity finished off an awesome evening.

Sunday, Deborah Blake and I reprised our Mythological Jeopardy using our low-tech board and high-brow antics. (Well, antics, anyway!)

Then, with sadness, I bid Coastal Magic good-bye, and drove two and a half hours home… Or almost, anyway. Two hours and ten minutes in, give or take, my car started running rough and then making a terrible noise. I was just getting off at an exit near home and hoping to make it to somewhere I recognized when the noise turned into smoke and then an explosion like someone had set off a bomb beneath my car. I managed to steer it to the shoulder, but alas, my oil leak had led to a crack in the engine block and the car I’d been hoping to save for my son when he gets his license (any time now) was no more. We could possibly have raised it from the dead, but the repairs wouldn’t have been worth it. The car had made it twelve years and around 144,000 miles. Better it should die with me behind the wheel than our son. He’ll now have a much newer car coming to him when the time is right!

And that’s all I have to say about that.