OK, here’s the full on Balticon report. Or at least, a major report.

This year’s planning was out of this world. Very few times where there wasn’t something I wanted to attend. Several times when there were conflicts. But if that’s the worst problem? You know it was a good convention.

Just some of the panels I went to: Star Wars Costuming, Season of Lost, Long Hair in Fandom, Podcasting, Beading, Reading with Catherine Asaro, blogging, belly dancing, farscape, gaming, so on and so forth.

I bought two new games. Unfortunately I took my good con buddy, Hal, into the dealer’s room and asked him to help me pick out a game. WOuldn’t you know it? He showed me about 10. Darnit! I managed to get him down to two so I bought those. One is a building castles game that he says is awesome and very easy to learn and a lot of fun to play. The other is San Juan. San Juan goes with Puerto Rico. A friend of mine emailed me a while back and told me to get Puerto Rico. But I can’t ever find it, or it’s more money than I have at the time. Too many games, not enough time. San Juan is apparently a quicker card version of Puerto Rico. Since it doesn’t have all the small pieces it will be better for playing while we sit here in limbo land as well. 🙂 I look forward to learning to play these new games and having some fun!

I also bought a stack of books. I bought a Catherine Asaro book in her series. A few years back I picked up one of those little booklets at Barnes and Noble themed toward sci fi and fantasy. It was reviewing the latest Catherine Asaro book that sounded totally fascinating. At the end it said “Book 7” and I was like “DANGIT” ROFL But I read a slew of them and they were great. So when I found out she was going to be at the con I got real excited! So I had to get a book for her to sign!

Tee Morris was there as well. He was at Galaxy Con that I went to last fall and I totally wanted his books but didn’t have the money last time so I got one of his books at the con and had him sign it. Billibub Baddings and the Case of the Singing Sword. He’d given me a sampler and boy was it fascinating! He also gave me a sampler of his other book, Morevi. I’d have probably been wanting that one as well but he said he’s podcasting it and so I decided I’d buy it later for him to autograph but I’d download it for now and save the dollars for other purchases. Why? Because we like audiobooks and I figure this way we could spread things out a bit. Plus my husband was interested and with that commute? Audio really does work well. I highly recommend checking into Tee Morris.

I met Tony Ruggio (sure hope i got that name spelled right) at Galaxy Con with Tee and he was with Tee at Balticon. I snagged two of his many books this time as well. He’d also given out samplers. Very good. He wrote a conspiracy theory trilogy about aliens in the white house. WOOHOO. I got the first two. There’s another I want which is vamps in the military. All in due time!

I met a new author who had samplers that I tore through and loved. Peter Prellwitz. His Shards Universe is awesome. Check it out at http://shardsuniverse.net He’s got a ton of short stories and a novella there. Two of the three books are published in print. The third is in ebook format. So I bought the two and plan on getting the third in ebook format.

That’s a lot of new books added to my entire shelf of “To be read”. Woohoo. And the authors are great. So that’s cool as well. It’s so much more interesting when you read a book and you know the author.

In other news I found out that Tee and Tony are greatly involved with a con in Richmond next April, Ravencon. Oh yeah, we’ll be going. I told my husband and he’s real excited!

The Masquerade. I still can’t believe that I didn’t have a costume. However I’ve been plagued with an idea for a costume so I’m already designing. Need to get to work. It’s fancy. I saw my favourite vampire, Marty Gear. He was sad I wasn’t in the masq but was happy to hear I brought the rising generation… Caramon and Joram! He met the boys and was just great with them, as he always is. I love Marty. I was sorry to hear his wife recently fell ill and my prayers and thoughts are with them. Any way, the costumes this year were wonderful. Very interesting! The kids competed in Japanese garb. We named them “The Samauri Twins” and it went over real well. They were recognized the entire weekend with great excitement by people! And? They were awarded “Best in Class”!!!!! I wanted to cry. The first year I went to Balticon I entered in my Ozma of Oz costume and also won Best in Class!

I met a bunch of wonderful fans. The kids made some friends. I’ve got a few new buddies for us and the kids who are interested in sci fi and fantasy! YAY! You can NEVER have too many friends of that sort in my opinion!

Oh, another fun thing! I promise this will be the last in this majorly long entry! There was a great great Harry Potter spoof play that was AWESOME! I so need to order it on DVD. The boys got to be in it for just a hair. So we went through this manic attempt to make robes and scarves (which were mostly finished) for this. The boys were awesome looking. The play itself was a laugh a minute! Very enjoyable.

OK, that’s long enough… right?

Till next time!