Wow! I thought MysticCon was amazing! RavenCon was just as awesome! Lots of Steampunk, GREAT DEALER'S ROOM, amazing writers...And I got to meet one of my favorite authors of all time, Kevin J. Anderson! He is so down to earth and great to talk to. He signed 4 of my favorite Star Wars books (including the Jedi Academy trilogy, one for each of the boys)! I have never been so in awe... Geek out does not begin to describe it. Although next time I might rethink the statement "I started reading your books when I was 9..." Yeah, that tends to make people feel a little old I think. But he took it in stride!
We even got a surprise visit from my cousin, Gina, who is not normally a "Steampunk". I managed to tackle her and get her into costuming though and then we hung out at the 1984 party and Baen Barflies parties that evening into the wee morning hours. It was a blast!
We even had some serious fun at the Klingon party Saturday night. Met another chainmailer and traded tips too. Didn't get to do any gaming at this Con, mostly because the panels we wanted to go to were scheduled during the same times as the games. There were so many Steampunk panels! We didn't even make it to all of them... David Lee and Hatten Cross were there too and so we got to hang out with them for a little while Saturday evening.
And of course they had a Masquerade! The boys entered as Han Solo
& Luke Skywalker and received participation awards (they don't judge
the kids costumes at RavenCon). Shade and I entered as Steampunk
Dorothy and Oz The Great And Powerful Steampunk. I won Best Costume,
but only because I designed Shade's costume too. That's 3 wins at 3 Con
Masquerades in 3 months with 3 different costumes! I must be doing
something right... Speaking of...There were two debuts for us at RavenCon. The first was the Steampunk Cheshire Cat, a costume I'm working on for DragonCon... and the second was a big surprise. RavenCon attendees got a sneak peek of the big project and it was very well received! We're so excited to debut it on 4/12/2013. Not telling... very hush hush... ;) And of course, Daniel Silverman was there and shot pictures of us and the boys! Daniel does awesome work, doesn't he? If you'd like him to shoot your pictures (and he's got some great original graphic art for the backdrops) you can email him at TheArtcanist@artcanist.com.
The only negative to RavenCon was my boys' complaint: No video game room. But they did have an anime room so the boys hung out in there for awhile and seemed content.
There are so many pictures from RavenCon and I'm so ridiculously exhausted from the trip home that I think I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story... So here they are!
~Shimmer~
