One Final Taste

Or maybe semi-final.  I have two teasers lined up, but the Chinatown trip is SO fun, I'm not sure if I should spoil it.

But... somebody wanted another teaser, to tide him/her/it/they/uh through the last painful month until the release.  I give you... GERTY GOAT'S FAMILY FARM.  A sweet and heartwarming slice of life scene for Penny, with no excitement.

I needed a certain kind of restaurant for kids, and I asked my most prolific fan artist for ideas.  Welcome to an entire scene based off of this picture:

THE ANNOUNCEMENT

Woo!  Editing is OVER!  Complete!  Finished!  Oh, thank you, Tesla.

Book three of the Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm A Supervillain series will be released on February 8th, with preorders expected to be up by January 10th.

Now that I've gotten a range of feedback, I feel confident you'll love it.  I think this crowd in particular will be interested in Claudia and Marcia's arcs.  A whole lot of stuff you thought I've forgotten comes back in this book.

Puppeteers

I generally like to let you folks speculate, but I'm spotting some confusion in the speculative threads.  Let me provide a quick history of the Puppeteer invasion!  All of this is deliberately contained in book two, but I went to no effort to make it clear, either.

Ca. 1900CE, the Puppeteers found our solar system through the teleport gate network.  The Earth contained at least one intelligent species, and the Puppeteers felt that it was their moral duty to uplift humanity from barbarism into their definition of civilization.  The best way to do this was gently, through undetected genetic manipulation, and they created two intelligent biotools to oversee this process:  Harvey and his unnamed partner.

Those two made contact with some scientists, mad and otherwise, on Earth.  They formed a partnership, the Red Panacea Clinic, and took advantage of the teleport gates to make a base in the asteroid belt that had direct access to Earth.  They began designing a non-catastrophic method of altering humanity to no longer value themselves as individuals, and instead focus on valuing all life as a whole.

It didn't go well.  Both Harvey and his partner were damaged, rendered insane by Puppeteer standards.  Harvey became obsessed with one particular experimental subject, treasuring the elements of her identity that would cease to exist if she were civilized.  His partner became obsessed with the mad science bioweapon development hobby he learned from their human contacts.  They arranged (metaphorically) to have our solar system lost in the paperwork of the Puppeteer civilization, so they would never have to finish their job.

Fast forward about a hundred years.  The teleport gates have been used for two major refugee escapes from Earth, one just before each World War.  Harvey managed to cover those up.  Humans go poking at the gate on Kalyke, and the Puppeteers notice.  They are reminded of the existence of humanity, and determine that the gentle, subtle attempt at civilizing humanity has failed.  Harvey is recalled to Kalyke to monitor the gate, which is about all his damaged self is good for, while more direct action is taken.

The Puppeteers invade the Jupiter colonies, with the intention of moving on to Earth.  As Harvey honestly reported, they do not have anything they consider weapons, and they do not deliberately kill any humans in the invasion.  Humans are instead infected with clumsy biotools that forcibly civilize each individual, rather than the gentle evolution the Puppeteers would have preferred.  The Jupiter colonists not only did not want to join Puppeteer civilization, they fought back violently.  They were completely outmatched.  Io Alpha was lost first, and then Europa Station.  The Jupiter colonists learned to fear 'meat puppets', Puppeteer-civilized humans who considered their own lives expendable if they could be used to spread civilization to more of humanity.

This all happened very quickly.  Weeks, a couple of months, tops.  Almost immediately after the Puppeteers invaded, the Conqueror Orbs followed.  They have a serious feud with the entire Puppeteer civilization, and one of their strongest programmed priorities is wiping out Puppeteer biotech wherever they find it.  Puppeteers have no 'weapons', but they are capable of violence, if it benefits life in general.  Their biotools and civilized humans attacked the Conqueror Orbs in suicidal rushes.  Io Alpha was destroyed.  Europa Station was hit by Conquerors and destroyed before the successful Puppeteer attack against it had even finished.

Remmy was one of the civilians evacuated both times those stations fell, by the way.  Her father did not make it out of Europa alive.

The Conquerors won the three way fight against humans and Puppeteers.  While they hate the Puppeteers, their priorities are a little weird by human standards.  After destroying all active Puppeteer forces, they did not bother to scour the nonsentient, automatic biotools left on the otherwise lifeless stations.  Those tools cleaned up the bodies and went into hibernation.  The Conquerors put a guard on the teleport gate so that the Puppeteers could not use it, but did not destroy the installation that had grown around it.

No, after stopping the Puppeteer invasion, the next Conqueror priority was to subdue the heavily armed and thriving intelligent life form on Earth.  They relocated the Orb of the Heavens to the Moon, and started to invade the Earth.  Thanks to the presence of large numbers of super powered individuals in the human population, that invasion failed.

Neither the Puppeteers, nor the Conquerors, noticed that there was life in the gas giant Jupiter, weird balloonlike tentacled beings who were powerful telepaths.  Harvey only noticed when the Jovians found a super powered telepathic human they could make contact with, because the Jovians immediately took her over and used her as a relay for their own powers.  As far as Harvey is concerned, telepathy is just a kind of biotool control signal.  Increasingly desperate to find some way to free Juliet, he sent a signal from the Red Panacea Clinic to the human the Jovians had taken over.  He was willing to risk just about anything at that point.

Instead, three tweens playing super powered hooky showed up, rescued Juliet, and gave the Jovians access to the kind of biotools that the Puppeteers had used to forcibly civilize humans.  You've seen the rest!

I hope this was interesting and helps with your speculations.

(Footnote:  The things that kept hatching and attacking Penny and her friends on Io Alpha were, indeed, cleaning tools.  They were set to absorb all biological material, and as such intended to eat any human, living or dead, that they encountered.  The Puppeteers would find that a tragic, repulsive accident, and would have tried to reprogram the cleaners not to, if they had been around.  They want to alter humans, not kill them.  Harvey was unable to reprogram the cleaners because Juno's presence nearby interfered with his signal.)

I Guess A Teaser Would Be Pointless

Book three, tentatively titled Please Don't Tell My Parents I Have A Nemesis, secretly subtitled The World Will Be Saved By Tech Support, but actually in my soul titled No One Wants To Hide Their Super Powers, is done.  It is written.  I have shipped it off to my beta readers.

No, you cannot be a beta reader, although I think it's super sweet some of you want to be.  It has to be people I know well enough to really understand their reactions and what those reactions mean.

If you have any questions or want any spoilers about it, let me know.  All I'm sure of from early reactions is that people really, really want to see a thirteen year old girl suplex a 6'10" metal supervillain.

UPDATE!

 My brain went 'pbbbt' after finishing the book.  It took me until today to realize I made a mistake.  THIS book is Please Don't Tell My Parents I Have Henchmen.  (The other two titles remain correct.)  The NEXT book, book four, is Please Don't Tell My Parents I Have A Nemesis.  That's the one with the heart of gold / heart of steel conflict.

FNAF4 - I Finally Figured Something Out

Another post where gaming nerd and writing nerd intertwine!

I have previously written about how impressed I was by Five Nights At Freddy's 2, and the story it revealed, and how that story was developed and displayed.

Five Nights At Freddy's 4, though, is a bit of a puzzle, to me and to the fandom in general.  Today I saw someone replaying it, and now that I've seen the rest of the game I put things together.  My own personal life experiences gave me insight into it.  It's been a bit of a revelation, and I have to share it somewhere, so I'm throwing it at you people.

The little boy who is the protagonist of FNAF4 is physically and emotionally abused by someone who lives in his home, presumably an older brother.  This becomes very clear towards the end of the game, especially when said brother and friends stuff the kid into an animatronic's mouth and it kills/maims the poor boy.

But at the beginning of the game, this wasn't clear yet.  I didn't have the perspective to know what I was seeing.  Now I understand that the cutscenes are all about abuse.  The first day just seemed weird.  There's talk about him locking himself in his room, but he tries to get out and can't, and cries.

What happened is, his older brother locked him in, and told his parents that he's throwing a tantrum.  On two of the days, his brother jumps out at him wearing a Foxy animatronic head.  The child is terrified of big, clunky animatronics, and people in suits that can pass for them.  His older brother uses this to terrorize him, including abandoning him at Freddy Fazbear's so the child can stew in terror.  The child isn't afraid of the characters.  He has Freddy toys and loves them.  He's afraid of animatronics, and if you think about it, that's not a very surprising or unreasonable fear for a small child!

So, putting all that together was nice, but it wasn't the big thing.  Once I knew all that, it let me answer one of the biggest questions in the Five Nights At Freddy's series:

What the Hell is going on in the FNAF4 gameplay?  What is this supposed to represent?  It's not believable that horrible nightmare versions of the animatronics are attacking the kid at night.  Are these nightmares?  Visions from the afterlife?

Nope.  FNAF4 is a physically abused child simulator.  I have been there.  I try to talk around the abuse issues of my childhood, because people would get the wrong impression and think my parents (good, loving people, who I like and am grateful to) abused me.  I certainly don't feel like dragging out all the details to the public.

But suffice it to say, I spent the years of the boy in this game in a household with a physical abuser, as the primary victim.  I can tell you that the game perfectly, beautifully represents what this feels like.  Your parents are gone, and you know, you KNOW, he's coming to get you.  If you can see it coming, you can hold it off for a little while.  Nothing is safe, the abuser is a giant monster, and you can be attacked from any direction at any time.  In this child's case, the abuser is a distorted vaguely cartoony death robot, who prefers to leap out at him from surprise rather than attacking directly.  He's, like, five.  That's what this looks like to him.

(I have no proof, but it would fit a lot of things together if the older brother worked at Fazbear's.)

This is grim stuff, but they're grim games and the final cutscene of FNAF4 is one of the most grim things in any game.  I'm incredibly relieved to have solved a mystery and that I now understand the last, weirdest entry.  With any luck, at least someone who reads my blog will also understand and be satisfied.

Undertale Discussion - Asgore Dreemurr

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

IF YOU HAVE NOT FINISHED THE UNDERTALE PACIFIST TRUE ENDING, THIS WILL REVEAL ALL ITS SECRETS.  DON'T DO IT.

ALSO THE FACT THAT I'M WRITING THIS SHOULD INDEED BE CONSTRUED THAT I LOVED THE GAME.

Quick Question For My Blog Readers

Do you guys want me to post brief passages now and then from book three, if I think they contain no important spoilers?  There aren't a lot of bits like that, but I stumbled across one and thought I'd ask.

Have Some Progress

I have carefully analyzed the last two days' progress.  I see no spoilers I consider meaningful, nothing that would give away the rest of the book's secrets.  Mostly it concerns world building, one of the few expository sections I ever write.  My blog goers seem to like that stuff, so here it is.

The First Scene Of What Is Currently Chapter Eight

Also, here is a photo of a bush shaped like a ham.

STOP BEING SO AWESOME

No, don't stop.  But that comments section was getting kinda full.

You guys have had some really good guesses on some things, but not so much with Penny's powers.

Here.  Have some fan art.  This is a character from the third book, drawn by one of my alpha readers who totally adores her.

The third book is finally coming along okay.  I wrote the big Bull Reunion scene that I've been looking forward to for a long time!

The Teasing Teaser

Chapter three of the third Inscrutable Machine book.  This is all you're getting until it's finished and published, so make this last!  I'm hoping that rather than satisfying you, it will make you crave the rest of the story.  I chose these three chapters because they're sort of the book's 'part one', setting up what the book will be about - as much as that ever works with my books.

The Very Long Third Chapter

Enjoy.  You do enjoy reading these, right?  I'm enjoying writing them.  I'll admit it - this whole chapter was a hoot to write.

The Pictures I've Been Too Lazy To Post

Uh... moving is hard?

I've been collecting photos for awhile, mostly from my wildly failed trip to UtopYA, and never got around to posting them.  So here they are, and any other photos I had in that collection!

Here's the Curiosity Quills table in the dealer's room at UtopYA.  I spent most of Thursday and Friday there.  What do you not see in this picture?  CUSTOMERS.  The con was practically deserted.

This was directly across from me.  Every time I looked up, it was SIX PACK ABS.  That was entertainingly ironic, because these photos don't convey just how incredibly few men there were at the convention.  It took divine grace to position the one straight male author right across from the one steamy women's romance novelist.

The convention was a total loss from a business perspective, but I met a lot of other CQ authors, and they were the most wonderful women.  They had a room party Thursday night, and while I did not get a photo of them shouting profanities at the top of their lungs while laughing, I do have these:  The SO of one of the authors attempting a thing he heard about where you can open a wine bottle by putting it in a shoe and thumping it against the wall.  It did not work, so he went and got the downstairs bar to open the bottle, which none of us had thought of.  I think that means he wins!

So, there was no business Thursday, and a few people Friday who told us what everyone says at cons - that they would be back to buy on Saturday.  That's how it always works at conventions.  Well... UtopYA, in its infinite wisdom, closed the dealer's room on Saturday.  That left us CQ authors up a creek, and I went sightseeing with Vicki Leigh and Gail Strickland (the two most awesome women in the universe, by the way*) in Nashville.  This is them, posing beneath a gigantic gold-leaf statue of Athena.

Not kidding about the statue.  Nashville has a life size replica of the Parthenon, including a reproduction of the lost statue of Athena.  The gold leaf is real.  The ivory is not.

Photo with humans in it, so you can see that it really is quite a large statue.

Interior detail on the shield.

Ducks.  Always hiding.  Watching me.

But vastly better than all of that, I offer you this:  A birthday present drawn for me by one of my friends.  I'm trying to figure out if I can size it to be a banner here, or something.  Hopefully, at least some of you have read enough of my books to know what you're seeing!

*Okay, maybe not, but only because I know some truly spectacularly awesome women.  Vicki and Gail were pretty badass, trust me.

Please Don't Tell My Publisher

Spaghettis with it.  I'mma post the first three chapters of the new book as teasers.  From my experience, it can only hook people to want more.  Here is...

Chapter One
Chapter Two

And I'll put up Chapter Three when it's ready.  Plus, you get to see the awkward, pre-editing first drafts!

Inside Out: Not Really A Review

I went and saw Inside Out for the second time today.  The second time in three days, and after the first time I came home and wrote an entire chapter.  So, yeah, I loved it.

BUT.

For anybody going to see it, just keep in mind that it's way less silly and way more serious than advertised.  There are heavy duty Feels, and lots of them.  You know the first ten minutes of Up!?  About a third of Inside Out is like that.  Very heartwarming at the ending, but MANY FEELS.

Oh, and I just mentioned writing a chapter.

So, yeah, I'm officially working on the third book.  I'm wondering if I should sneak chapter two, and maybe three, up here.  My publisher won't like it exactly, but if it's no more than that they won't especially fuss.  Personally, I think it's a good advertising hook.

Book vs. Movie, it's Howl's Moving Castle!

Some poor fool left a copy of Howl's Moving Castle lying on the table, so I stole it and read it.  It's very rare that a movie is better than the book, but I seriously loved the movie and I wanted to check it out!

I can't tell you which is better, because they're so different, but I can talk bout how they're different, which to me is a neat topic.

Like I said, the movie and book are very different.  The stories only vaguely resemble each other, with most of the major characters being at least recognizable, and Sophie's curse and Howl's deal with Calcifer being almost identical.  Since those two drive the plot, you can at least tell the book is the source of the movie.  This isn't like, say, Who Censored Roger Rabbit, where the movie (thank goodness) throws out everything but a few character names and starts over.  It isn't like Jackson's Hobbit movies or the Rescuers (or Peter Pan, or Mary Poppins, or... well, anyway, thanks, Disney) where the movie is the opposite of the author's intent.

Instead, they're... different.  What's the same and what's different?  Well, that's what interests me.  The book and movie have very similar beginnings, but as they go along the story diverges more and more.  Most of the movie's conflicts and events, like Howl's opposition to the war or Suliman trying to trap howl, aren't in the book.  The book focuses closely on Howl's conflict with the Witch of the Waste, and with Sophie's personality and her status as oldest of three sisters in a fairy-tale world.  These issues barely get walk-on parts in the movie.

Miyazaki blatantly uses the movie to push his own moral messages that aren't in the book.  There is only one brief mention of an upcoming war in the book, and Howl makes a lot of money providing services to the military.  The anti-war message in the movie is entirely Miyazaki's.  So is Sophie's hard-working patience and Howl's gentle, kind spirit.  The characters in the book are much more grey morally, with Sophie being angry and bitter, and Howl being a selfish womanizer.  You know the 'little mouse' sexual harassment scene in the movie?  In the book, it's Howl that harasses her, but he backs off when she doesn't like it.

What does Miyazaki take from the book?  This is the most fascinating part of all, to me.  It says a lot about Miyazaki, who was a manga artist originally.  He took images.  Suliman sitting in her chair bolt-upright in an opulent room surrounded by serving boys?  That's a vivid visual scene in the book, but the woman isn't Suliman and her relationship with Howl is totally different.  The appearance is copied almost identically.  In the book there's a wizard fight with a big swirling black cloud that is cut in half by lightning, with something leaping out.  That's Howl fighting the Witch of the Waste.  No airships or military wizards are involved.  Calcifer blazing up into a huge multicolored mass?  That's in the book.  The melting blob servants?  Those show up in the book very briefly in one scene.  The book is full of gorgeous imagery, and the movie only resembles the book at all because Miyazaki took those images, which usually meant keeping some shred of the book's story.

Oh, and there are no airships, no steam powered cars, no steampunk anything in the book.  Those are all Miyazaki's loves that he added for his own amusement.  He made them fit beautifully, but they're very much not part of the source material.  Everything military in the movie is a creation of Miyazaki, with no presence in the book.

So, yeah, I enjoyed studying how the book was adapted, since it came out so different.  What about the book itself?

I liked it.  The tone reminded me of that S. Morgenstern classic, the Princess Bride.  People live in a fairy tale world and know the rules of a fairy tale world.  It's not funny, but it is light.  Sophie and Howl are interesting people with an interesting relationship.  It contained only one terrible flaw to me.  In the book, Howl is from our world.  It's a horrible, immersion-breaking trope, and it seems completely pointless here.  Still, the book is a pleasant enough read that it wasn't hard to get past.

Howl's Moving Castle:  Book or movie?  Both, because they're different stories, each one worth your time.

Unanswered Messages

Okay, so!  I thought you folks deserved an explanation for why I have been so inconsistent answering messages left here.

I'm a flake.

That's it, really.  I could put qualifications in, but why obscure the basic point?

It may be useful to those who really want to get my attention to know HOW I'm a flake.  I get super-focused when I'm writing, or when some major life event is going on.  If a miracle happens, I'm able to drag myself away once or twice to post something, but mostly I just disappear.  Then when I get back, I post something during the scramble to catch up.

It's pretty common, by the time I have attention to spare to start answering messages, for me to have missed a whole slew of them.  It's not because I'm not interested in the messages.  On the contrary, the comments I get here TICKLE me.  I'm just a flake.

Now you know, and knowing is half the battle!

Fan Art Roundup!

There is nothing an author loves more than fan art.  NOTHING.  It means that you liked our ideas so much, you wanted to make them your own.  Even when we're running screaming from pornography, we're skipping a step because you CARED enough to violate our sensibilities.

I figured it was time to gather together the fan art I've been receiving and show it off.  I am still a tiny name, and I don't get much, but it all makes me happy.

Most of it is from one person, my alpha reader Nicole.  Most of that are OCs of her own.  So, I guess I'll start with Wild Children.  I am not including Wild Children OC pictures here, which I swear I get more of than anything else by far.  Well, I'll throw in one, because Agouti Rex tried to Wild Children his own OCs.

Here is your I'm More Artsy Fartsy Than You Rant for the day:  Gosh darn it, people, I'd be more flattered if more of you noticed that Wild Children are almost never classic anthropomorphs.  I was so in love with the idea of random pairings of animal and human traits!

And yet, still, I treasure every picture.  Notice I have that one carefully stored forever in my fan art folder to show you folks.

Okay, I'll throw in one more, because this comes from Dana, who inspired Wild Children in the first place.  Funny story - she hadn't read the book yet when she drew this!

In the Not OCs section, I don't recall Wolfgang being this pudgy.  By MaeraFey

Jinx's story seems to be really popular, and I have two pictures by people trying to draw the Weaver of Pain!  One by Agouti Rex, and one by Nikki.  Sorry, Agouti - Nikki's is waaaaaaaay more accurate.  Still, I love the Weaver's design, and seeing anybody draw him is a PIP.  A PIP, Sir!

Those are the Wild Children pictures.  Nikki really really really liked Heartfelt from A Sidekick's Tale, and drew TWO pictures of her!

Next in this wandering, cold-induced fever dream of a post is Sweet Dreams Are Made Of Teeth pictures.  Oh, hey, I repeated the word 'dream' by accident.  I'm really out of it.  But check out these Coys!

Those are by Nerissa 'Queen Shubidu' Fuller and Pepfav.  The latter holds the title for actually drawing Fang closest to how he's supposed to look.  People keep wanting to make him a fluffy wolf.  He's more of a bulky silhouette of a dog.

Ooh, wait.  I almost forgot this, by my friend Ben!  It's probably the first piece of fan art I ever got!

Okay, so, so... Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm A Supervillain art!  Bad Penny by RiddleBanshee, eClaire by Phantom Dragon, and a giant crowd scene by Elyandrin!  Phantom Dragon is working on a picture of Juliet and Harvey, but I don't want to put it up until they've finished the book and learn more about Harvey.  Heh heh heh.

Oh, hey, there's a picture of Penny by Nerissa again.

And her interpretation of Goodnight, from 'Summer of Lob', the story of when Bull met Evolution.  I'm about 2/3rds done with that, if only I can shake this disease.

And now the moment you've all been waiting for - fifty million pictures of Remmy by Nikki, who loves Remmy more than life itself!  I was getting these one after another the whole time I wrote the book.  It was awesome.

Unfortunately, my fans... do not love Remmy.  So this was Nikki's response to the early reviews.

I'll finish up with my favorite piece of fan art, which is from Nikki.  Her interpretation of the Walpurgis Night scene from Wild Children.  Evocative, isn't it?

Random Book Review - Redemption In Indigo

I'd like to thank fellow author Albert Berg for pointing me to this book.

Today (okay, not today, like a month ago and I was too busy to write this), I read Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord.

I recommend it.  Like always, there are caveats.  The tone is 'verbal folk tale', which like fairy tales some folks will find too stilted.  It is creative, reproduces the feel of verbal folk tales well, and generally fun.

NOW FOR THE SPOILERS

As above, the book attempts to reproduce the tone of verbal folk tales, specifically the stories of the Caribbean which were a mishmash of the religions of slaves from all over.  This is an ethnic legend set I'm unfamiliar with, and all I recognized was a nod to Anansi from West African religions.  Karen Lord is a sociologist, so this is actually her area of expertise.  I get the impression she did a bit of recasting herself, but it was wonderful to be immersed in another culture's myth system.

The most interesting parts, to me, was the first third of the book, where the heroine leaves her odious husband.  It follows the world-wide folk tale pattern where he comes after her, and she has to come up with clever trick after clever trick.  The wonderful twist is that he's an idiot, and she has to come up with tricks to keep his stupid acts from completely humiliating him.  That would embarrass her in turn, and she doesn't want their breakup to be hostile.  She just wants to get away from a bad marriage.  She's very merciful and compassionate.

After that, the book becomes a little more traditional.  In facing the corrupted chaos spirit, she enters a modern American story pattern.  It's still handled in an unusual way, where the conflict is handled very passively.  He seems to win every battle, showing her time and again how she's wrong, but that she continues to care reawakens his own compassion.  That proves to be the real story.

Because it was more like a modern American novel, that part was less satisfying to me.  The clever and unusual twists also make it slower.  That was really the worst negative of the book.

I'll counter that with the best part of the book.  The oral story telling voice is perfect.  The narrator sometimes stops to chat with you about stuff.  Once in awhile that disrupts immersion, but mostly it has the feel of listening to your grandmother tell you a bedtime story.  I really liked it.

So, to sum up, neat book, unusual in format, but that strangeness is also fascinating.  I recommend it.

Chi Fi: So Many Costumes

I have returned from Chi Fi, a tiny first year convention up in Chicago.  A friend of mine had an extra ticket, and invited me.  He had a prepaid vendor desk, and I would provide company and sell the small handful of my books I had lying around.

Note to all considering going:  From an organizational standpoint, the convention was a shambles.  Attendance was miniscule.  Entire concerts happened with no audience because there was no schedule posted.

I had a wonderful time, because the very few people there were the nicest, most intelligent, most cool and interesting I've met at any convention, ever.

This is my pictorial of their awesomeness.

SUDDEN DETOUR.  This is a shirt sold by the booth across from us!  I bought one for Dana.

There were no ID badges.  All they had were these wristbands.  I have to say, this was the con's promise, and they DID deliver.  Many fandoms were united, and we were all gloriously one.

The first corset of the convention!  Not the last.  There were SO MANY corsets.  It was wonderful.  This nice lady stopped to chat several times.  In fact, anybody you see photographed in front of our table probably stopped to chat several times.  I left this one uncropped to show you our table.

Something awesome was revealed to me at this convention.  When adults buy my books for tween girls, they buy Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm A Supervillain.  When the girls are unsupervised, they gravitate to Wild Children.  I tried to obtain photographic evidence.

Notice this woman's hair.  I couldn't get her to bend over and let me just photograph the top of her head.  Her hair had cool swirls.  It must have been Hell to arrange that every day of the con, but she did.

EDIT - This lady asked me to include her twitter if I put up her photo.  At least, I'm pretty sure it's this lady.  I had trouble remembering who gave it to me.  Anyway, her handle is @Kcrowemcp, but do note there is NSFW stuff on her feed.

Check it, there's some writer named David Webber who has his own fan military.  They had a booth.

Random elf.  You know how it is.

I guess these guys are patriotic or something?

Another customer!  Or... maybe she's just the kid I flagged down for a random photo.  To be honest, it's completely blurry who I sold what to.

One of many, many, MANY Jedi.  I only photographed one, but they were every freaking where.  There was no point to having a whole stack of Jedi photos.

I love this dress, and I love it front and back.

Cosplay of Elizabeth from Bioshock Infinite.  I was in love.

And then she put her jacket on, and looked even more adorable.

I took a few photos of random well dressed gents.  This is one of them.

My policy is to insist on photographing every teenage girl in a fez that I see.

This girl in the Homestuck costume was AWESOME.  She's standing next to her mother here, but she dragged her mother physically over to my table, whining and begging for her mother to buy her Wild Children.  And then they posed for photos.  This is one of my two favorite memories of the convention, and photographing the lounge singer Hollywood Monroe would have been impractical.

This lady had style.  I needed no other reason to capture her soul with my devil camera.

HAT.

These young ladies represent Midwest Anime-con.  I was ordered to watch the Puella Magi Madoka Magica movies, and despite my misgivings I shall.  My policy is to do anything a girl with candy in her hair tells me to do.

This is probably a character?  It's a well dressed woman in an eyepatch smoking a cigar.  If that's just how she dresses, that's more than good enough for me.

Is there such a thing as Too Steampunk?  This guy is trying.

Again, no idea who this is.  A woman in a beautiful white dress was sitting in a chair, so I took a photo.

This is Jen.  She cosplayed as Kim Possible at the convention, and we talked for HOURS.  So friendly and sweet!  I know her entire family history, now, how they shop, what she knows about kicking people in the knee, her parental issues, everything.  Man, was she great.

Remember Elizabeth?  I asked her Bird or Cage.  She chose Bird!  Notice the super tasteful way she covers her cleavage in the closeup.

A luchadore succumbs to capitalism.

There was a ball pit.  At one point it was used to dispose of a body, but this is not that moment.  I left this photo extra large for legibility.

Meow?

In retrospect, Finn and Tank Girl would LOVE each other.

Just, you know, an ordinary Saturday lunch.  I don't know any of these people.  I just thought they looked cute.

THIS.  This wonderful young woman bought Sweet Dreams Are Made of Teeth, my very last copy of the old cover.  Then she came back to buy Quite Contrary because she was loving it.  She praised my genius effusively.  Also, she knows, like, eight types of martial arts and can break parts of you that you didn't know you had.  Once you put the raven on her hat, she became the Perfect Woman.

Some character from Kill la Kill.  Taking this photo, I realized that I've watched the series, kinda liked it, know exactly who she is and what she's wearing and the sword and all, but damned if I know the name of ANYONE (or anything) in the series.

Another super well dressed man.  I took a lot of photos of him, and none turned out.  This was the best I could do.

Another hallway, another pretty dress.  I couldn't even come close to photographing them all.

This girl is probably with the other candy maids, but who knows?

YOU'RE A WIZARD, HARRIET.  Photographed primarily for Dana, who loves Harry Potter.

I'm not 100% sure this photo is ethical, because I'm not 100% sure he ever knew I took it.  I'm at least 95% sure he wouldn't mind, so I'm goin' ahead and posting.

More really fabulous dresses.

At some point in any con they let the succubi in, and it all goes downhill.

Fortunately, a vulcan showed up to kick ass.  She burst into hysterical laughter seconds after I took these photos, but that photo was too blurry to show.

The general consensus was that I had photographed this woman's dress before, but I don't think so.  Maybe her, but not this dress.

Her friends did The Wave while I took photos, and it was so adorable I had to photograph them, too.

I felt thoroughly chastised by this gentleman, and left the gaming floor forthwith.

Gandalf got no respect.  Seriously.  Joke after joke after joke.

I didn't know what was prettier, the girl or the costume.  I keep forgetting who the character is.  Maybe I just love 40s fashion.

Seagulls on the way back.  Because seagulls.

No photo I took in a moving car could capture the vast numbers of windmills on this wind farm, but this photo looks kinda nice.

And that, for the moment, is that!  Back soon with speculations about genre.