KeyCon Ends and I Begin
The weekend was utter chaos! I had a blast! I haven’t been to KeyCon since 2000 and I haven’t attended a con of any kind since 1987’s World Con in Brighton, England.
So what did I do? First off, we (author Marjorie Roden and I) left home around 7:30. We got to my t-shirts around 11:00pm. A couple of hours nap later, we were on our way to Winnipeg, Manitoba, I was driving. We had another nap in Balgonie, Saskatchewan (I actually slept for 3 hours straight!) and one somewhere just inside the Manitoba border. It was a long haul for me, but we arrived at the hotel around 2 pm Manitoba time. Laurie met us at the door, and we were directed to the vendors’ room, the Marketplace. Once we got our hotel room, we went to the Marketplace to help set up our books.
My first panel was at 6 pm. It was a discussion on the fate of paperback/hardcover books versus ebooks and audiobooks. Casia and I included the audience in the discussion and we decided, more or less, that audiobooks wouldn’t hurt the sales of paper books or ebooks.
After the discussion, Marjorie went to see what was happening elsewhere and I went up to the hotel room to sleep.
We did some shopping Saturday morning after checking in with the Authors of Manitoba booth where our books were displayed. My second panel was at 2 pm, and discussed where we got our ideas from and how did we manage to keep finding them. I learned a lot from my fellow panelists.
The third and final panel was Sunday morning which was a reading from Der Reizen, a reading by Dakota Senese, and one by Marjorie Roden. We stayed for the panel discussion on The Secret to Writing is Writing.
I was quite nervous doing the panels and probably talked more than I should have. Would I do it again? Of course, hopefully, next year, if I’m allowed. It was a lot of fun, all things considered.