C2E2 Reflections

4/27/2015 02:48:00 PM Lexie Dunne 6 Comments

There’s an interesting part of going to cons that always amuses me, which is that as a writer, I spend a lot of time by myself, glaring at my computer screen as I try to get the voice in my head to sound great on the page. And yes, I step outside of this to talk to people on social media and friends, but at the end of the day, they’re not lying when they tell you writing is very solitary. So on the very opposite end of that spectrum, you have conventions. Where you take a bunch of people whose work involves them to stay by themselves, and you put them around and in front of hundreds of people. And truthfully, I love both. They both allow me to be funny and vain, in very different ways.

C2E2 was a never-stopping whirlwind for me. There were always at least two things I wanted to be doing at the same time, and I had to accept early on that it was going to be impossible to clone myself and enjoy all of it because sadly, I am still not Tatiana Maslany, even though Tatiana Maslany is all of us. And a crazy amount of stuff happened, so I’ll just go over some highlights:

I officially became the stranger handing out candy on a public bus and telling them my book was free.

Additionally, candy was a great thing to bring to the convention. I had some people buy my books and get them signed, which was crazy awesome, but I also had a lot of people come up to get free candy and talk to me a little. So I officially turned into a creeper.

Panels are great fun to be on, and I actually learned a lot. They put me on two. The one on Friday was Gallows Humor and my main impressions of that were that it was very dark in the room, that Tim Lees is incredibly British (he thinks Americans are polite; I think the term he was looking for was passive aggressive), and that you can get away with telling an entire room full of people that their pain is delicious to you.


My panel on Saturday was Reinventing the Heroine, which none of us really understood the title/summary for, so the moderator (who gave me crap for Superheroes Anonymous and the way it ended, and it was glorious) decided we’d just do our own thing. It was a blast. Charlaine Harris was incredibly fun, both at the signing and in the panel, and I really, really liked the other panelists. Two of my friends caught me playing my Strong Female Character drinking game, and we had some great discussions about the state of lady characters and how much farther we have left to go.

Signings! Oh my god, people came up and bought my book and I got to chat with some really awesome people (other authors included). Anderson’s Bookshops were the ones handling stock for the book, and I did sign quite a few copies of Superheroes Anonymous that didn’t get sold, so maybe put in a request here or keep an eye out. http://www.andersonsbookshop.com/autographed-books

My friend Plu bought my book and I got to sign it! Check out the swag, too.

My friends! Kelley Grant, Bishop O’Connell, Tim Lees, and I are all published through the same program, so we all went to each others’ panels and heckled the crap out of each other supported each other like the professional, mature adults we are. They put Kelley on a panel with Patrick Rothfuss, Peter V. Brett, and Naomi Novik, which absolutely filled the room. Bishop was on a panel about Science Fiction (which is great because he’s fantasy) and Tim and I got to make the room laugh on Friday.

My view allllllll the way from the back!

Other panels, too. I popped into the Brain Scoop panel for a little while and learned a great deal about the Field Museum, and Mary Robinette Kowal had a great panel in which I learned so much about Regency and she read from her new book. Naomi Novik owned all of the other panelists in Geek Geek Revolution, and Jim Butcher’s panel with Patrick Rothfuss was a pretty great time. In addition, I got books signed by Novik and Butcher, two of my long-time favorite authors, and that was definitely a highlight.

The cosplay! There were so many Peggy Carters wandering around and it was beautiful.

The swag! Yeahhhh, the Penguin/Random House booths basically had a new free ARC on the table every time I went by. I am having flashbacks to being that nerdy kid with the fifteen books from the library right now because my bag yesterday was FRICKIN HEAVY.

My friend roos was the Hulk, so we painted her green.

The friends! Getting to meet Kelley and her husband Brian was absolutely amazing. A couple of great friends of mine and I were conned out on Saturday night and left early to go experience some Chicago deep dish. Little did we know we’d run into Kelley and Brian in the elevator, also on their way to find deep dish, and have a really great meal with them! I also got to hang out with some friends from the Avengers fandom, and David Pomerico (the head editor of my program) took all of us writers out for drinks. It was so neat to talk to all sorts of people and to make those connections.

Brian and Kelley at Lou Malnati's!

Sadly, the promotion to download Superheroes Anonymous for free is over, so I’ll need to find a new way to start up conversations with strangers. I still have a few postcards and some pretty neat swag left, so I’ll be doing some giveaways very soon. But in the meantime, I need to go hug my dog for an uncomfortably long time so she remembers why she wasn’t actually that sad to see me go on Friday.

How was everybody else’s weekend? Anybody got any cool stories or want to know more? I can dish. Just let me know in the comments!

Stay sexy!
Lexie