biancadarc.com Blog

Con Lag

I had the most amazing weekend at Lunacon! But I’m definitely feeling the effects of too little sleep today. It’s 11:30 here in NY and I just woke up. Oh, boy. In short, I feel like a zombie.

But to get back to the fun of the weekend, it was beyond my expectations. It had been about 15 years since I last saw Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon. I met them through a mutual friend in NJ, when they were newly married and full of the joy of being newlyweds. We spent a memorable day playing guitars and singing some of the great songs Misty has written to go with her books as well as some shared favorites by British musician, Chris de Burgh. (“The Tower”, “Crusader”, “The Girl With April in Her Eyes”, etc. If all you’ve heard is his old hit “Lady in Red”, you’re missing the real de Burgh!)

That one day from all those years ago is still a highlight of my college years. I loved her Valdemar books then and still do. Every once in a while I’ll go back and reread certain volumes of those books and they transport me back to those halcyon days in my mind. My college years were truly excellent. They were followed by the hardest work I’ve ever done – working full-time in a lab while attending grad school at night, building up a huge debt in student loans that I felt compelled to repay as quickly as possible. As a result, I worked like a dawg for years after, still going to grad school for another degree, totally burning out in an attempt to become debt free. Those were not such good times, although I achieved great success in the eyes of the world. In my heart, I was never as happy as those carefree days in undergrad. (See how melancholy and introspective sleep deprivation makes me? Sorry.)

Anyway… if you’d asked me last week what I would have experienced at this con, I would have thought it would be all about seeing Misty and Larry again – from a fangirl point of view. Sure, there was that, but I guess I forgot that I’ve changed a lot since those early days. I was unprepared for the welcome I received as a (fledgling) author in my own right. They’d set me up for a “signing” time and I fully expected to sit there, all alone, looking pathetic. In fact, when I arrived a little early at the table in the hallway where I was supposed to sit for an hour, there were three guys sitting there already, chatting. I was glad. They stuck around and kept me company for a bit and it turned out we had a really interesting conversation.

But then people started arriving, looking for my books. What a great feeling! Romance readers at a sci fi con! Then someone walked up, already carrying a big stack of my titles, wanting them signed. I almost blubbered like a baby. Seriously, it was really nice to know that some folks in the SF&F community “get” my work, even if it is marketed and directed in large part toward the romance audience.

Then there were the panels. I think the best of the bunch was the last. We talked about epublishing and ebooks with a great panel of people with experience covering the spectrum of the epublishing world. It was moderated by my friend, Michele Lang, who later said it was like herding cats to keep us all in line. LOL! She was right – we grabbed the topic and away the discussion went! It was a great discussion in which I learned quite a bit and was able to gauge the SF&F community’s reaction to the idea of ebooks, which is surprisingly guarded.

That fact continues to amaze me. As a former lab geek, I was absolutely THRILLED when my friend (who used to work at the Sci Fi Channel) gave me a copy of The Lord of the Rings to read on my Palm Pilot. This was way before there were ebook readers. It was before the movies came out. In fact, I was re-reading LOTR in preparation for the movies because I hadn’t read it since I was a teen. After reading the entire trilogy on my PDA, I was hooked! I looked around the Palm store and found these weird vampire books by someone named Feehan. I had no clue who she was, but I sure liked those sexy vamps. LOL. Then I branched out, looking for more ebooks and found Ellora’s Cave and the super sexy futuristics and paranormals they had to offer. I was a happy camper!

I’ve gone e in a big way, and will likely never go back to schlepping around piles and pounds of paper books. I prefer to buy e and will only buy print if I must. I figured the SF&F community would be like me, but I was SO WRONG. They’re just starting to see the advantages of ebooks and it’s still a hard sell to get many of them to even try. Wow. That’s totally not what I expected, but I guess it will catch on as people learn the advantages of being able to carry around your entire library on a USB drive.

So it was a great weekend, filled with good conversations with interesting people and a surprising feeling of being “worthy” to share my opinions on books, the changing state of the publishing world as seen from a relatively new author’s point of view and life, the universe and everything! I definitely have con lag. I barely slept in the toxic hotel that was undergoing renovation and caused allergies to arise the likes of which I have never experienced. But it was all cool and I can’t wait for next year’s Lunacon! If you’re in the area, you should definitely plan on it. It was great!!!