Babscon 2014 Re-Cap

I'm sure quite a few of you have wondered where I've been for almost a year. The truth is, I've been obsessing over paper but it's now a different kind. I still write and squeeze in books but my husband and I started a second business which takes up a good chunk of my day everyday.

We make papercraft and have gotten pretty popular with the Brony crowd (for those of you who don't know bronies are fans of the show My Little Pony). As a result, we've been traveling a lot going to conventions which is totally my kind of thing. We just got back from San Francisco last Monday and I wanted to recap the weekend.

The convention was April 17th which meant we had to get all of our boxes built by the 12th. This was a rough goal considering we had just completed Megacon back on March 23rd and we wanted to try to make 100 shadowboxes. I'll probably talk about what goes into making them in another post but suffice to say, most boxes take at least 3 hours to make.

So our boxes were on the way and by Thursday, April 16th, we were too. I got a pretty cool view from the plane on our 8 hour travel day.

We arrived at the hotel and Thursday was spent running around, familiarizing ourselves with the layout, trying to find the vendor hall where we would be selling our boxes and making a few last minute runs to the crafts store and K-Mart.

By the time Friday rolled around, we were already tired but we got up and set up our booth in record time. The issue was that the hotel had booked an event in the vendor hall right before we were suppose to open. We ended up getting in 2 hours late and had to scurry to get things out. Regardless, I think our booth looked pretty attractive.

Me showing off our booth

Apparently a lot of other folks thought it looked pretty good because we didn't even have time to set up the actually booth before folks had already bought out several of our designs! During the show, we had a few of the voice actors stop by and we'd made gifts for them so we got to give those away:

Peter New (VA for Big Mac) with his box

Nicole Oliver (VA for Princess Celestia) and her shadowbox

Cathy Weseluck (VA of Spike) stopped by the last day

Tara Strong, the VA for Twilight, came by the last day of the convention and offered to sign something for us. We were actually selling our last Twilight box at that time so we asked her to sign it for a 9 year old girl's birthday present. I bet she's going to have a great one!

Blurry photo of Tara Strong signing

We ended up selling out of most of our stock and got quite a few pre-orders which I am busy slaving away over now. The other really cool thing is that our one-of-a-kind charity auction box went for $1,100! We were shocked when the betting got that high and the proceeds went to the San Fran ASPCA and Suicide Hotline.

The awesome guy that bet on our charity auction piece!

Before I finish up here, I just want to say a few things since I know not everyone is familiar with this crowd. Being part of the YA crowd for a while now, I love the sense of community that it provides. Bronies are the same way. They are generally some of the most supportive, kind and creative people I've ever met. I know there's a stigma attached to them the same way there is a stigma attached to YA that the books are less than literary. And like our crowd, this simply isn't true.

When we first decided to start going to conventions, I was so shocked to find out that every pony convention going on around the world always hosts charity auctions that raise thousands of dollars for multiple charities every year. Seriously, last year I read a report talking about something like 120k for charities just among the conventions. That's not to mention all the other online causes these folks make. I love the passion there as much as I love the passion I feel around YA folks. =)

Now I can step off my soapbox and showcase some of the cool cosplays I saw there:

This is totally me in a wig I would kill to have as my real hair!

We also held a class on Friday night where we made little paper fillies with about 30 folks which was tons of fun. Needless to say, by the end of the weekend we were beat. We got to hang out with a ton of really cool vendors and some amazing guests threw a pretty rocking room party on Friday night too!

It's really hard to explain to the people I work with why I'm always so tired after these things. But when we go, we're on our feet for around 10 hours a day, talking with folks and smiling a whole lot. It zaps the energy out of you. Plus, I was trying to work on edits for the novel during part of that (which was totally not successful).

We're going to be going to about five more conventions this year so we've still got our plate plenty full. I love it though so I can't wait!

Do you guys going to conventions, pony or otherwise? What is your favorite? I think mine has been Megacon so far. Got to meet James Marsters (Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Spike) and John Barrowman (Doctor Who' s Captain Jack Harness) there!