Peter is having a grand time out in California at the convention.
He’ll probably tell you all about it either here or in the CBG down the road. So I am not going to post anything related to his trip. I am going to post something about conventions and my experience over the years going to conventions.
I attended my first Science Fiction convention when I was 14. It was a local one day convention called MiniCon. It had authors of both comics and books, a movie room, and a dealers room. The dealers room was an eye opener for me. I didn’t know that there was that much STUFF related to my hobbies or that many people interested in the same subjects I was. I also got my first autograph in a book. It was Michael Bishop and I still own the book. From that point on, I went to conventions.
My first out of state convention was a ChattaCon where I made new friends there that are friends to this day. Some of them even came to my wedding. I started participating at conventions by volunteering. I was a gopher, badge checker, art show flunky, any job that needed doing I did. Somewhere in there I started costuming and it snowballed into running costume contests. Eventually I agreed, for better or worse, to be the Tech Director for DragonCon. It was an education to say the least. Along the way I met a lot of really great people and made some cool friends including my husband (I think I’ll save the “how we met” story for another day. We met at a convention.)
Now I go to conventions as a professional since I am an associate editor at Del Rey Books and work on the Star Wars series with Shelly Shapiro. It is possible to make your hobbies and interests into a full time job and conventions helped me to get where I am today.
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