DragonCon wrap-up

Hey all,

It's hard to believe one week ago I was in the middle of DragonCon, one of the largest sci-fi/fantasy cons in the world. With more than 60,000 people converging on downtown Atlanta for a long weekend of programming, costumes, celebrity guests, vendors, games, etc. etc. DragonCon is INSANE and yet insanely awesome and it's definitely my favorite publicity event I do every year. If I wasn't an author I would totally just go there for fun.

This year I was celebrating the release of Shattered and it went amazingly well. I met so many amazing readers - many who had picked up Scorched last year at DragonCon and were excited to return and get a copy of the sequel. I sold out of the copies that I brought with me and sold tons of copies of Scorched as well. Next year I'll have the third book of the series, Smoked, which will have just been released. It's kind of awesome how the releases of this series tie in so perfectly, time-wise, with DragonCon.

Scorched and Shattered and The Camelot Code on sale at our booth!

I also spoke on eight different panels - on all sorts of topics - including vampires, urban fantasy, anti-heroines in YA fiction, the Twin Peaks TV show (25 years later!), and other writing related topics. I think the Twin Peaks panel was my favorite because I could be a fan-girl instead of just an author. People actually dressed up as Twin Peaks characters in the audience which was awesome, too. I also loved the panel I did with Sherrilyn Kenyon. That woman could read the phone book and be fascinating. :) I adore her.

Twin Peaks panel was packed and such great cosplay!

Another favorite was Princess Alethea's Traveling Sideshow. We were officially part of the YA Track this year and I think we made the most of it! Diana and I wrote and performed a skit called THAWED: A YA Literature Retrospective, as told by the characters of Disney's Frozen. Yeah!

We even dressed up for this one - doing Elsa and Anna "bring back summer!"

Which brings me to the best part -- COSTUMES!

Here's the rundown of mine:

ELSA from Frozen in Beach Wear.

Queen Regent Cersei from Game of Thrones

Jacob was a dashing Jamie Lannister - check out the gold hand!

With Diana Peterfreund aka Zarina the Pirate Fairy. (Which is an awesome cosplay!)

And Babydoll from the film Sucker Punch!

I am ALWAYS going to do costumes with swords from now on!!

Anyway, I could go on and on and may add to this later but my daughter is waking up so I have to go! In all, it was an AMAZING time and I am already planning for next year!!

MARI