DCC Aftermath

So! Denver Comic Con (DCC henceforth) was pretty fun last weekend. This is DCC’s third year, and last year was a ginormous mess because the people running the convention didn’t expect the 60,000 people who showed up, and there was a lot of line standing (Friday was especially a mess, where people stood in line to get in to the con for several hours only to get turned away) and not a lot going on.

Luckily, this year DCC figured that they’d be ridiculously popular and amped everything up appropriately. They completely redid the lines to exchange tickets for badges and get into the convention. I showed up about when doors opened Saturday morning and only spent half an hour in line, which is a major improvement over last year (where I think we stood–not moving–for about two hours).

Additionally, they added a ton more panels and made it clear where lines to get into things were. They reorganized the dealer’s room and artist alley to fit more in and to make it easier to navigate. (And I see why I didn’t get a table–I think there were maybe three tables in the artist alley, and only two or three in the dealer’s room, selling books. The rest were selling comic books or graphic novels or some form of visual art.)

The unfortunate downside was that it seemed like some of panels were a bit stretched, like they felt like they needed more panels but didn’t know what to do. I think that’s true of a lot of cons, though, especially ones run mostly by volunteers.

But overall, I had a great time. I talked to a bunch of friends, including people I don’t see very often (including people I haven’t seen since last year’s DCC). There were a lot of neat costumes, and everyone else also seemed to be having a great time. Only a single person recognized me as Amy and asked for a picture, but oh well. (One of my friends thought I was Mary Jane from Spider-Man, which is actually a perfectly reasonable thing to assume.)

The best panel I went to was on anime openings from the 90s, which the panelists turned into a game, and everyone was obviously into it and having a good time, so there was a good energy in the room. And we went to the costume contest, which was kind of meh, though the comedian who was MCing was pretty funny at points.

All in all, much better than last year, and a good time overall.

Did you guys hit DCC? Been to a con lately? How did you like it? Would you go again?

Denver Comic Con, Cosplay, and Miscellany

So! It’s Denver Comic Con (or, as I shall refer to it from now on, DCC) this weekend and I’m of two minds.

1) I am really excited because it’s been a long time since I’ve gotten to really do a con.
2) I am a little annoyed because I applied for a vendor table for Turtleduck Press the instant the applications went live, and they fed me some line about not fitting the mission of the convention when what they really meant was “We got too many authors and small/indie presses and just kind of picked the ones we liked the best and/or who had already paid because they had a table last year, and we can’t have too many authors/publishers because we are a comic convention.”

Rargh.

Anyway, obvious not annoyed enough to not go, so here we are.

AND I am going to cosplay! I am excited because I haven’t cosplayed in four years. (Oh, geez.) I haven’t even made a costume since then except for a generic steampunk outfit for AnomalyCon 2011 and a uniform shirt I use when we play Artemis. Admittedly, I didn’t make anything for this costume because I am going as Amy Pond, but it’s still something.

(Let us take bets on how long it takes me to get annoyed with and abandon the wig. I have successfully worn this particular wig an entire con day before, but it was cooler then. Summer has come early this year.)

In other news, we did a test for putting Shards out as an audiobook, which actually went quite well. So that might be a thing that happens in the near future. We might do Hidden Worlds first, however, since it’s shorter, to try out the audio format and test out marketability and other things.

That’s it from me, for now! Hope you have a lovely weekend, Squiders!

Denver Comic Con in Review

So, this past weekend we had the good fortune to go to Denver Comic Con. It’s in its second year; we didn’t go last year due to me being hugely pregnant at the time.

The con had some issues–they got 50,000 people and were apparently not expecting nearly that many. But after waiting in a 2-mile long line to get into San Diego Comic-Con one year, I’m pretty lenient when it comes to con lines.

(Also, they’ve got a lot of unused space that they could be using for things like anime and movie rooms, but hey.)

My biggest complaint is that there was a number of empty tables in the artist alley, and I’ve been waiting for eight months for a table. I was going to set up one for Turtleduck Press, but alas.

Other than that,I had a great time. The panels we dropped into were interesting and entertaining, and there were quite a few about books and writing which, to be honest, are most of the ones I hit at conventions. (I do occasionally go to TV show-related ones, mostly scifi and Trek related.) And I got to do some writing networking, which is always a plus, including talking to people who had publishing presses similar to TDP. So hoorah for that.

There were a lot of people dressed up too, which I think is great. I used to be fairly into cosplay myself. (And maybe I shall be again? There were a lot of families are dressed up together.) Sadly, we couldn’t stay for the costume contest.

Right, overall thoughts. DCC went fairly well for a new con going through growing pains. They could use some better registration/line control, more use for their space, and better table allocation, but what they had was good, the people were friendly and helpful, and there was still a lot to do and see. Plus I got to network, catch up with people I hadn’t seen in years, and talk directly to some companies I have previously only seen on the internet.

I’m definitely going to go again next year, and if you are in the area or are looking for a good, reasonably-priced con, I recommend you do the same.