Last Two Comic Book Conventions of the Year

Star Wars Days Table for Kids

 I’ve had to slow down on the number of comic book conventions I attended in this last year. I work a regular day job Monday through Friday with a long commute. And as much fun as comic book conventions are, they are work too and they often involve travel time. I need my weekends to catch up on house cleaning and errand running and sometimes hiding in a corner with a cat on my lap, a cup of coffee at my elbow, and a book in my hands. So sometimes I’ll tell my husband to go on without me and have lots of fun. Usually, our son will go with him when given a choice. I can blame him for picking to get up early and work a table over whatever chores he knows I’ll lay on him if he stays.

 

My son with his newly purchased headband

I did go to the last two of the year though. The first one, Star Wars Days, is organized and run by a local Boy Scout Troop. This particular Boy Scout Troop petitioned to be the 501 Troop and then contacted the 501st Legion in their area to be involved with their event. The 501st Legion is a worldwide cosplaying group dedicated to Star Wars. And the convention that the Boy Scout Troop puts on is amazing. They have standees of many characters for photo ops. There are droids zipping around. The 501^st Legion is there in full get up. And they have a Jedi training center in the gym. The young men are running around the whole weekend taking food orders from the vendors, providing directions, and helping out with every little task that they can. It's so much fun.

We go as part of the Artway Alliance team. At the con, we provide classes throughout the weekend that kids can attend. My husband did a class on drawing aliens. Since this wasn’t a regular table gig and space was limited, I found an out of the way place and worked on edits and writing in between a little Christmas shopping with the vendors and catching up with some friends that I haven’t seen in a while. My husband has been with Artway Alliance for about four years now. They provide afterschool artistic activities and classes to local schools as well as attending cons like this all over the place.

Holiday Cosplayers

The second con was the Richmond Comicon at the Raceway. Our very first comic book convention as vendors was this con. Over the years the people there have become family. My son is one of their volunteers. We almost always have our podcast Role With Us as one of the panels where we run a live game. My husband either has a table where he sells his artwork or run’s a kid’s section where kids can come and sit and color or draw for a bit. Sometimes he’ll have classes, sometimes he’ll do commissions or both. They had a scavenger hunt for the kiddies and we handed out prizes. In addition to the podcast panel, Gary Cohn asked me to be on a panel with him Robert Sodaro, James Noll, Ray Felix, and Chris Otto on Self-Publishing.

Despite the snow and the fears that so many in this area seem to have when it comes to that stuff we had pretty good attendance. And the afterparty was so much fun. It was neat to see holiday themed costumes. So until 2018. I’m conned out. LOL.

Coming soon. Wow, cover art. The most amazing cover art for A Little Side of Geek. 

A Geeks Life Trilogy

So for the last year I’ve been hard at work on a trilogy that follows comic books conventions and the people that work them. All the books are set in Maryland, DC, and Virginia. The first book A Little Side of Geek. Has been submitted and hope to hear within the next few weeks whether or not I’ll get a contract offer.

Proud geek and comic book artist, Morris Proctor wants nothing more out of life than to live it in semi-seclusion with his devil cat and gamer friends. Despite what his well-meaning family thinks, he’s perfectly content with his status-quo. The last thing he wants is to date another non-geek hell bent on changing him.

Then he meets his adorkable new neighbor, Theo Boarman, who doesn’t know Star Trek from Star Wars, but everything about heating up a kitchen, and who tempts him like no other.

Theo has spent the last year recovering from the loss of his parents and trying to play both roles for his teenage brother, while working to keep the family restaurant afloat. Dating is the last thing on the menu, especially with a man who views the height of dining is shoving a packaged meal into the microwave.

But if Morris gives him one more shy smile, or flaunts that kilt he wears so well, Theo will be forced to convince him that a hot summer fling is just the recipe to let off a little steam.

Neither of them count on their fling becoming this serious, this fast. When two worlds tangle, it’s anyone’s game, and it’s up to the lovers to decide to take a chance on their perfect match.

I’m working on a first round of edits for the second book A Whole Latte Sass, which follows Morris’s best friend, cosplayer Felipe Suero and his silver fox Trask Briscoe who owns a comic/gaming store in Richmond called Old Dominion Magick Den. Once the edits are done, I hope to get it off to beta readers and I’m about 10k into the third book A Heap of Trouble, which follows convention promoter Brenden Wade and his step-brother Dakota Nye, trouble maker and podcaster and the man Brenden has been in love with for half his life.

Stay tuned!

Pandora Blog Tour

More Information

April 18 - MM Good BookReviews Get a glimpse of the man who our heroes rescue and learn a bit about how Noyes came to be.

April 19 – DSP Publications Death and Love in Pandora

April 24 - Kimi-chanExperience  Pandora and the families we create

April 25 - Genre Talk at The Novel Approach 

April 26 - Love Bytes From Near Future Dystopia to SciFi

April 27- Interview at Tammy's Two Cents 

April 28 - ScatteredThoughts and Rogue Words This Scaredy Cat Ludite wrote a SciFi Horror

May 1 - My Fiction Nook Riff and Zed: Flawed, Damaged Characters Who Help Each Other Heal

May 2 - Kimmers' EroticBook Banter Excerpt, take a peek at a stolen moment between Riff and Zed

*Please note that the dates or subjects may change.

Enjoy!

Coming Soon - Pandora - April 25th

Pre Order

Haunted by the screams of the men he murdered, ex-Marine medic Riff Khora is serving a life sentence on board a prison ship. Seeking more punishment for his crime, he strikes a deal with the corrupt Captain Vidal—an exchange of pleasure and pain—and forges a new life leading the team that surveys space wreckage for salvage.

Ship engineer Zed Jakobsen’s psychometric abilities make prison a sentence worse than death, and the barrage of emotional stimuli is an unending torment. His only regret is that he didn’t kill the monster who sent him to prison, and only a glimmer of hope to escape a judgment he doesn’t deserve keeps him clinging to a brutal existence.

When they board derelict ship Pandora and discover a lone survivor, the hell of prison life plunges into abject horror. An epidemic of violence and insanity consumes their ship, driving the crew to murder and destruction. Mutual need draws Riff and Zed together, and their bond gives them the strength to fight a reality they cannot trust. But Vidal possesses the only means of escape from the nightmare, and he’s not letting anyone leave alive.


My newest release a sci-fi/horror is coming to DSP Publications on April 25th. This is a complete 180 from my sweet historical Other Side of the Line. Riff and Zed are more anti-hero than hero, bent on survival, but they forge a real bond that goes beyond need. I hope you check it out.