Grandma Goes to the Con

What’s a nice grandma like you doing in a crazy place like this?

No, I’m not talking about Beyond the Veil. I have way too much respect for the authors who blog here to say that—not yet anyway. To be in the company of the awesome people who hang out here is an honor. I just hope I can live up to the challenge. I’m new to this author gig, and I’m still having some culture shock.

No, the crazy I’m talking about is the world of fantasy/science fiction conventions. It’s a world I’d ventured into a few times prior to getting published, but it had been a few years. When a friend of mine pointed out that since I write fantasy and horror romance, the Con scene was a place I should be. It sounded like a good idea, so granny went to the Cons.

Okay, I admit it, I’m a grandma. I used to try to hide the fact that I have a few gray hairs, but I’ve decided it’s not necessarily a bad thing. 1. It shows all you young people that we ain’t dead yet. 2. It shows that older people need love too. 3. It proves that paranormal knows no age limits. 4. Now you know that grannies can cook up scary stories right along with the rest of y’all (yeah, I’m Southern too, and so are my stories).


As for the convention scene, it’s definitely crazy. But it’s also an amazing experience. And to go as an author was fantastic. To give you an idea of the pros of Cons (insert snort), here are a few of the highlights for me. 1. The Con goers know what Samhain is. Most of the time, when I tell people Shadows of Evil is through Samhain Publishing, I generally get a blank expression, or the person says, “What kind of word is that?” At a Con, it’s much more likely the person’s eyes will light up and they’ll say, “Oh, how cool!” And since Shadows features Wiccan-type witches, it was the perfect house for the story. Which brings me to the next point. 2. They know what Wicca is. The story centers on a haunted house. No problem. 3. People at Cons think haunted houses are good things. Related to that, people who go to Cons like scary, as a general rule. 4. Con goers tend to love dragons. I have a novella out called Keepers of Legend. You guessed it, Keepers features a dragon. And lastly, and in my opinion, the most important characteristic of Con-goers is that the vast majority love to read. And whether or not they ever read any of my books, it does my heart good to see so many people who love to read. Very encouraging.

So the Con experience has been a good one for this Southern granny. And as for my first Beyond the Veil experience, it was pretty dang awesome. Thanks for having me.