DragonCon 2011

DragonCon always defies description. It's one of those 'you just have to be there' sorts of experiences. It's every fandom in SciFi/Fantasy/Paranormal converging upon Atlanta with a costumed vengeance. A swarm of geekery and fabulousness, ridiculous and out of this world, DragonCon is exhausting and over-stimulating, thrilling and then sometimes just scary. Like, you know, oh... OMG WEEPING ANGEL.




As always, DragonCon for me is a mixture of business and pleasure. The pleasure is, I'm an uber-fan of certain franchises as you all know (Harry Potter, Doctor Who, and lots of Tim Burton being at the forefront) and the interests that drive my fandom also drive interests and themes relative to my books. And I love geeking out with friends, while still staying true to my job; writing fantastical fiction.




Want to know how I balance these two? The Daily Dragon interviewed me and my beloved author friend Alethea Kontis! Check us out, and how we manage "pro" and "fan"!

On the business front, I got to do readings and signings and sell a bunch of books (Thanks, Larry Smith Booksellers!), network with convention organizers and editors and all that fabulous stuff. And see beloved friends and readers I only see but once a year. Due to my love for Mr. Burton, I got to speak on a Dark Shadows and Nightmare Before Christmas panel (Nightmare is my favourite movie of all time if I was only allowed to pick one), which was great fun, a Scary Fairy Tale panel discussing all our favourite 'once-upon-a-time' themes and how they've been changed and rearranged as well as how we as authors have made them our own brands of spooky-fabulous. Also our "Things that Go Bump in the Timeline" panel allowed the authors to discuss how we use paranormal in our alternate histories.

My aforementioned and pictured dear and fellow fantasy and YA author, Diana to my Anne of Green Gables, Alethea Kontis, brought back her popular Traveling Side-Show where I got to read "At The Doorstep" featured in Candle in the Attic Window: An Anthology of Gothic Horror - a short story that introduces Mrs. Northe from the Magic Most Foul world. That went over very well. And it's up for Pre-Order! Can't wait until November 8th when DARKER STILL: A Novel of Magic Most Foul releases? Go forth and learn about the forces behind my upcoming world!

And yes, oh yes, there were costumes. Which I take very seriously. (As does much of the convention.) As you know from last DragonCon and my rather passionate "Being Romana" post, I pride myself on a darn good Romana II from Doctor Who. This year, the challenge from editor Stephen Segal was Romana's Destiny of the Daleks outfit. The pink coat. You all know I don't wear pink. But I don't turn down a Romana challenge. So, for the love of the Doctor, I bring you the unprecedented me-in-pink, the DragonCon Parade, where I walked with the Doctor Who contingent. (First photo credit: Sarberry)


By the way, I should mention that the first line of my "Being Romana" post is "You never forget your first love". My only purchase at DragonCon was a T-Shirt with a Tardis that says: "You never forget your first Doctor". A shirt has never been so true. Nor do you ever forget the love of your first robot dog.
K-9!!


Romana eyes The Master warily, as she should.







My Romana II alongside Romana I - isn't she great? Aren't we pretty Romanatastic?






















A Theril from Warrior's Gate! Romana's destiny in E-Space is glimpsed...
























Editor extraordinaire and Peter Davison clone (and he who dared me into the pink coat) Stephen Segal in his Doctor "4.5" outfit:
























And let's not forget the Yule Ball and my Narcissa time. I was alas without my Lucius, Draco and Bellatrix as had been planned, and so my awesome Aeternitas friends and I all got together to make sure they all knew how much they were missed. But at least The Dark Lord was there to give orders:










And Unbreakable Vows were Vowed.
(Vladimir Snape / Platform One frontman Vows the Vow)




And a good time was had by all.

NOW KIDS, BACK TO WORK:
Just before DragonCon I finished up the rough draft of Magic Most Foul book II, title TBA, and now it needs some love and editing. So I'm off to another deadline, in the meantime, check out all my upcoming new work!
-"At the Doorstep" In the world of Magic Most Foul, featured in Innsmouth Press' CANDLE IN THE ATTIC WINDOW : An Anthology of Gothic Horror
- Get ready for my Steampunk novella, "The World of Tomorrow is Sadly Outdated" to begin serializing at Doctor Fantastiques Show of Wonders! Subscribe here so you don't miss it!
-ALSO, "A Christmas Carroll" (Strangely Beautiful #2.5) featured in A MIDWINTER FANTASY will be releasing in print in October! The pre-sale is currently 24% off at B&N!!

Huzzah!

No srsly guys I mean I really love Doctor Who...

In a lively Twitter girl-fight yesterday about who would win Doctor #10, I protested that I (an elder in this fight) had been in love with Doctor Who since I was 7 when the show ran on grainy reruns on PBS in the 80s and thusly I would win by sheer numerical loyalty. I even referenced my passionate 2010 DragonCon post about cosplaying Romana II from the City of Death episode as proof of my undying devotion and fact that K-9 and his nose laser would SO TOTALLY side with ME in a fight.
See?!







During this smackdown I realized that I never ended up posting the photo of our cosplay trio from said referenced DragonCon event, a trio that includes none other than one of my fave editors in the world, the uncannily Davison-like Stephen Segal as Doctor 4 into 5, and his oh-so-awesome dad Stu as The Master.

So here you go:












(I love how only The Master looks knowingly at camera):

I think we're pretty fabulous.

I've been challenged to cosplay Romana in her pink coat outfit from Destiny of the Daleks this year at DragonCon. *sigh* I mean, I never turn down a Doctor Who challenge, but really? A Goth girl in pink AND white? With BROWN boots?! That's SO not fair.

RIP Sarah Jane Smith

RIP Elisabeth Sladen. Sarah Jane Smith. Feb. 1 1945 - April 19 2011












Beloved Companion of The Doctor. Bold adventurer of your own. May that beautiful blue box in the sky be bigger on the inside indeed.

You will be missed more than I can say. You've been with me nearly all my life, and the universe I love so dearly, The Doctor's universe, is less bright without you. But the heavens are all the brighter for your being there.

Being Romana

There's nothing so powerful as your first love.
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I attended DragonCon 2010 this past weekend, and while I could tell you about how wonderful the Fantasy panels were, how impressed I am by my amazingly talented friends old and new, how awesome the costumes were, how much ridiculous fun I had, all of which are utterly true, (and a fabulous rundown and picture of me can be seen at Publishers Weekly's Beyond Her Book) I'm going to focus on one particular moment of my weekend that outshone the rest. If blogging about Verdun, France was the most powerful thing I've blogged, this may be the most personal. And definately the geekiest.
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For one evening, a little seven year old girl from rural Ohio got to be recognized- for just a moment- as the woman she wanted to grow up to be. The fictional woman she so desperately wanted to be. Only conventions like DragonCon can make magic like that come true.
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Long before my 12-year-old self fell obsessively in love with The Phantom of the Opera and that, along with innumerable other 19th century tomes, would go on to define my aesthetic and literary fascination with the Victorian Era, long before Harry Potter changed my life and I fell into what would become my greatest cosplay love of all, Narcissa Malfoy, there was the first and what has been the longest running of my fantastical love-affairs; Doctor Who. I'm a 'legacy' fan of the BBC show, loving it all along, warts and all, long before its admittedly fabulous redux. All Whovians have their Doctor, (usually the one they first began watching) and their Companion. My Doctor is #4 (Tom Baker), my companion, Romana (#2 as played by Lala Ward), the novel lady Timelord and companion who regenerated. I was somewhere around 7 years old when my father began taping the Baker episodes on PBS as they aired in America in the 80s to watch the next day (they came on too late for me to watch in real time). I'd hear the theme song in my room as I tried and always failed to fall asleep, frissons of excitement coursing up and down my little body in thrilled seizures. The next day I'd watch (and often re-watch) the episode, enratpured by sci-fi/fantasy worlds that had my already overactive imagination firing at top speeds. The theme song still has that same effect; a cherished muscle memory.
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I know there were other Doctors and many other Companions, even another incarnation of Romana herself but no one could compete with my Romana. The blonde. The intelligent blonde, the sweet and sometimes fierce lady Timelord. She was poised and confident, she was an equal, she was an asset, she was a hero, and she traveled through the whole of time and space (way more exciting than Ohio) with The Doctor (coolest guy ever) and wore really pretty dresses (swoon). What more could an awkward, geeky little blonde girl like me want in all relative dimension in space?!! Of course I loved her desperately and would have given anything to be her and to live her adventures. Even for a pretend moment. I'd never gone as her for Halloween. Because no one would know who I was and it would make me sad to have to explain it all the time to people who could really care less. Enter DragonCon into my life and the equation differs.
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It's not like I'd forgotten any of this when I put on my costume Saturday. What I was unprepared for was what it would feel like. I looked in the mirror and I'd become a childhood dream. It hit me like a ton of bricks. Very squealy bouncy little girly bricks. Before you question my sense of reality (which is admittedly strained, but bear with me) please remember I'm an actress as well as a writer- I do live and make my living in fake worlds. Putting on the costume was always the final transformation into becoming my character. While I wouldn't take that character out into the world, when on stage - and ALL the world of DragonCon is a stage, I am the character. It was being recognized upon the DragonCon stage as Romana that hit home and had me beaming. Going up and down escalators amidst the endless, streaming parade of elaborate costumes, meeting gazes and people snapping fingers at me exclaiming: "Romana!" and me grinning and replying (in British accent) "Very good!" or "of course!" - and both of us strangers being ridiculously pleased with ourselves for knowing and being known, agreeing that her choice to go off and fix E-Space was a damn shame for those left behind (though the full canon makes her as awesome as she deserves), and all of us thinking for the thousandth time how much we love this convention where unabashed geekery is rewarded, cherished, and entirely unapologetic.
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I desperately thank my many friends with me that night, who kindly humoured me, let me slip in and out of a British accent and play the part that I had a hard time eating dinner and not playing (For an actress who hasn't had time to be on stage in a little while, my 'on' and 'off' switches are fairly rusty). Due to the fact we all had a long and passionate Doctor Who discussion, these were some of the only people on earth who understood the careening, uncontained, bouncing energy of an ecstatic little girl who'd caught her adult self at a loss to contain. I've often been told when I'm truly excited about something I could single-handedly power a small country were I plugged into a grid. But I have to keep that enthusiasm veiled if I'm to cope in this world. I've had a long history of being told to "calm down", a long history of being told I'm annoying to people who just don't have, or want to know, that kind of excitement. That's often been painful, so while I now fully own and am proud of my ability to be enthusiastic, I've built some walls. Not a bad thing, walls are protective. But when in the safe company of loved ones and again with trusted friends, sometimes those walls can tumble down and the sunlight bursts through. Really bright light. I said that evening; "Very few people see this. Unveiled." It was understood. Such experiences can create innocent, pure yet profound intimacies. Suddenly new friends have known each other for years.
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All of that volanic energy. All of that consuming obsession kindling bonfires in my storyteller soul. All my love for fantastical worlds, unrestrained travel, tumultuous, wild adventure and endless possibility. All of it has had to find a healthy place to go, an outlet that won't leave me restless. And so I've learned that the course of action that makes me happiest in all this world- a world I cannot travel through via a blue police box- is simply writing books. Fantastical books; bigger on the inside. Books where good companions are the most vital part of the story. And with all of that raw, unwieldy, unfiltered, sometimes thorny energy that can grow both weird and wonderful roses; I regenerate.