Comicpalooza 2025 was a blast!

Wow, this year's Comicpalooza was fantastic! It's always fun to attend a fantasy convention, but Comicpalooza is enormous, and there's so much going on that it's hard to take it all in. I had a corner booth again (man, those are definitely the way to go) and we were within a stone's throw of the indie wrestling guys and the Full Steel Combat guys, so there was no shortage of excitement for us. Celebrities such as Hayden Christianson, Cheech and Chong, Adam Savage, and many others were in attendance this year—super cool!

Load-in for the convention was on Thursday, so I stuffed everything in the back of my VW Sportwagen and hustled downtown as early as I could manage. When I arrived, I was amazed to discover a huge line of vendors already ahead of me! It took me over a half hour to get in and they promptly directed me to park by Exhibit Hall A. "Um...I'm down in Exhibit Hall D. Can I park down there like I did last year?" I asked. "Nope," came the reply. "It's full. Park in A." I sighed and parked as directed. It's a looooong walk to Exhibit Hall D, but since I'd packed so carefully, I only had to make two trips after checking in. Sidenote: you need to present the QR codes you were emailed so you can get your vendor badges, and mine nearly filled up the whole printed page. They laughed when I handed them over and thanked me for making them easy to see. Since I've done quite a few events by now and I'm more efficient each time, it took only a short while to get the booth ready for action. Bring on the weekend!

The next three days were a blur of costumes, disco music, good friends, and smiling fantasy readers. I brought a bluetooth speaker for the first time and we danced ourselves silly the whole weekend, lol. I loved seeing people walk by and then suddenly start bobbing their heads or even dancing as the music hit them. We had many familiar faces from previous Comicpaloozas drop by and I was thrilled to make lots of new acquaintances, not to mention all the people that bought my books! Several old friends made appearances as well, thank y'all so very much for stopping by.

As an indie author, one has to believe in the quality of their work enough to get it out there. That said, many of us suffer from no small amount of imposter syndrome, regardless of what our friends and family might say about our books. "They're friends and family," we reason, "they're supposed to be supportive! What if they're just being nice?" And so, we agonize over our work, try to make it the best it can be, and desperately hope that it's not mule puke when we publish.

Having readers come by the booth specifically to buy the next book in a series in person is wonderful. Having others come by just to tell you how much they enjoyed your books (and ask 'When's the next one coming?') is a huge thrill. And having still others act skeptical until they flip your book open to a random page, stand there reading for several seconds, and then utter a surprised, "Oh...oh, I like this! I'll take the whole set!" is enough to make any author positively giddy. And so I'm encouraged once again, and feel good about the fact that my books are probably not mule puke.

My next scheduled event is in Katy, TX, on Saturday, October 11th. It's the Tex-Indie Author Book Fair, and it'll be held at the British International School of Houston at 21003 Franz Rd, Katy, TX 77449-5730 from 10am to 5pm. I sure hope to see y'all there!