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My final “Author Event” for 2016 was MileHiCon48, in Denver. It was the fifth Author Event I’d been to. I’d done two library events, my first Comic Con, an RMFW Con, and MileHiCon. Prior to this year, the most promotion I’d ever done was two events. This event marked my third time at this Con, and it was probably the most fun I’ve had so far [at the Con]! Every year seems to get better and better!

I’d arrived just before 1:30 at the Hyatt Regency, at the Denver Tech Center (DTC), on Denver’s south end (which is continually advancing toward Castle Rock) and made my way to the Hyatt Regency’s restaurant, Root 25. As some of you may have seen, I detailed my culinary experience on FB. I had a wonderful server, named Leyla, who I came to calling “My Enabler.” She’d highly touted the brick chicken (forget it’s official menu name) with a molasses sauce, which I subsequently inhaled and which Leyla had joked “It never had a chance.” She then went on to “enable me” into…ummm…cheesecake. Yeah. Similarly dispatched.

Hence: “My Enabler.”

We ran into each other several times over the weekend. Her and two others (Angela and Traci) on the Root 25 staff were extremely attentive, friendly—at times even humorous—and efficient in the performance of their duties, and I just want to give them some well-deserved shout-outs. Everyone there was “on their game,” though the three I mentioned were who I personally dealt with each day. The Con always gets the attention, but my dealings with the Hyatt staff were also most deserving of shout-outs (and they sported cool hats, too)!

Also while having my first meal at the Hyatt, I’d struck up a conversation with another eating alongside me, a guy who’s a Gamer. His name is Ross Watson, and he’s the Managing Director of Evil Beagle Games. Anyway, Ross mentioned that he remembered me and I said I thought I’d also recognized him…but he also said he remembered me because last year I’d been walking around the Con with a mannequin head!

Ha! How cool! Much like my pseudo-stalker Sheri, from RMFW this past September, I’d again been “recognized in the wild” for something I’d done…um, in a good way! Later this past weekend, another had also mentioned the same thing to me, so Becka had really made a good impression on MileHiCon47!

This year’s panels were more lighthearted for me. I was on more fun stuff, and not having dystopian issues and serious shit all up in my grill, like last year. In fact, I’d withdrawn from one panel this year about “who’s running everything,” as in the ultimate conspiracy theory. I just don’t want to “go there” in my life anymore. I researched it for two novels, wrote the books, now I’m done with it.

This year, I was on three, “lighter issue” panels:

• A Gentle Critique of Critique Groups
• The Afterlife: Good, Bad, Cliché
• Guilty Pleasures: Best Bad Stuff I Like

Though the “Guilty Pleasures” panel was fun and hilarious, “The Afterlife” panel was my favorite panel. I was on it with Connie Willis, Warren Hammond, and Robin Owens. Another was supposed to have joined us, but never showed. I loved this panel! It’s what I deal with in all my fiction. We talked about whether or to we believed in an afterlife and what we thought one might be like. Talked of ghosts and cemeteries and books and movies that had some of the best of the portrayal of the topic. One of the funnier things talked about was from Connie Willis who said that she got the following idea from another…that as she (Connie) approaches the afterlife she is going to start making a list of all the stuff she won’t miss! That sent the room into laughter. What a cool idea, huh? Instead of pining away for what you will miss when you die, why not point out some of the stuff—people and crap—that you absolutely will not miss! “I’ll never have to deal with that guy again!” kinda thing! What a cool idea!

I really loved that this panel was programmed! In fact as the room filled up, I was actually stunned at the interest! As I voiced this to the audience, a lady in the front row shouted out “We all want answers!” I thought this was great to include with all the hard-science panels, because last year I was on the “Closer & Further Than You Think” panel, and an actual scientist, when approaching the topic of souls and the afterlife said he wouldn’t touch that [topic] with a ten-foot pole! Really, I thought? That is precisely what we need to be doing—and more of it! Technology is not everything! Don’t allow it to outpace our souls! Our Humanity! Our consciences! Anyway, as to the matter of the seriously packed room, I was later told that maybe it was so packed because Connie Willis was on the panel. She is a huge draw and at least one other panel I attended that she was on was also packed…but not as much as this one (see the short stories, below).

I did two book signings, a “single-table” one with C. R. Asay, whom I first met here at last year’s MileHiCon, and a mass autographing with the rest of the authors. At this conference I sold five books. Definitely up from one last year!

Of the sessions I attended as an audience member, I really loved two of them:  “The Reading Game” and “Short Stories: Lifeblood & Experimental Laboratory of the Genre World.” The Reading Game is like the dating game but for books and readers, and it’s a really fun event! Three authors are on one side of a barrier, while a reader is selected from the audience and is on the other side. We learn what the reader is interested in, the host selects from the group of authors the best fits to what the reader is interested in. The reader closes their eyes as the three authors take seats on the other side of the barrier. The reader then opens their eyes and starts asking three questions of each author. Based on their answer, the reader selects an author, and they get a free autographed novel! How cool is that? I was one of the authors last year, during its debut appearance, and I had been selected by a reader, with my supernatural murder mystery, The Uninvited. It was so much fun! Anyway, this year I got to watch others I know get the same treatment. It’s such a cool event!

The other session I really liked was the short story panel. The past year I’d gotten back into my own short stories. I’ve been going back over all the stuff I’d written over the years and am posting the better of them (which is not saying much in some cases, perhaps!) for free on this site. I’ve kept them as close as possible to their original form, with little editing. I wanted them…warts and all…as I’d last left them. Why? Not sure. It sounded like a great idea one morning at 3 a.m. last year to revisit my younger mindset and efforts…then—as I’m doing now—go over those and pull the best of those and edit the heck out of them, and release them in print and e-books formats, which I’ll be doing for 2017. Anyway, since I am currently in the short story mode, I really wanted to attend this and hear the haps on it all. It was not disappointing! It was a packed room that went “sauna” real fast, because of the overtaxed ventilation system. But we all stuck it out. It was enlightening, engaging, even humorous! One thing that always gets me is how many seem to look at short stories as test beds for novels, and I was so glad to hear Connie Willis say, yeaaaah—no. You’re wrong. Sure, they can be all that and more, but they are their own legitimate form. This I heartily agree with! Carrie Vaughn also said another thing of interest, in that there’s also been some cries of the death of short stories, but what they’re all seeing now is an actual resurgence. Where are all these declarations coming from?! They must make for good copy, but (to me anyway) always appear incredibly trite. The remaining panel members were Jennifer Campbell-Hicks, Sam Knight, and Ed Bryant, who was also the moderator.

On Sunday, I’d been talking with Sue Duff, and she’d been giving me all kinds of cool information about updating my pricing, etc., while behind me was going on all this noise and commotion. I finally told her I had to check out what was going on, and it was the Avistrum Battle Chess Match. It was pretty neat, so I watched some of it. I am not an Avistrum fan, but it was fun to watch!

There is so much more to mention, both people and events, but I don’t want to name names and risk missing anyone. It was so nice to meet you all! I met many from social media that I had never physically met! Met friends I used to see once or twice a year, but his year, having done five events, met them every couple of months, and that was really cool! Thank you all for making MileHiCon48 what it is and for being who you are! For making the world a better place with your energy and efforts! It really is amazing at how much writing and energy is put toward it all that is out there! The same can be applied to most anything, but wow, it’s truly staggering when you stop and think about it. Think about how much time and effort you place into you effort-of-choice and multiply that by the world population. It’s a crapload of effort and energy being pumped out into life! So, where does all that energy come from and where does it go, since it cannot be created or destroyed?

Yeah, just think about that….

And I had to post this shot of my friend, Laura Deal! Doesn’t she look great? This was on the panel, “What Killed It For You?” About what made you throw a book across a room. That was a pretty lively discussion!

Well, there’s one more thing I have to mention, and I hope I don’t embarrass the individual, but it really pleasantly surprised me! At the end of the en masse book signing on Saturday, Ed Bryant came over and chatted a bit with me. I had met Ed, geez, 20-25 years ago? Man, has it really been that long? I’m really not sure anymore, but he and John Stith used to run a critique group at a local university here, and I had gotten into it. I think we actually first met through a Pikes Peak Writers Conference that led to me finding out about the critique group. Anyway, I eventually left the group, the group is no longer active, and Ed and I had quite infrequently run into each other over the years, physically and electronically. Well, since attending these MileHiCons, we’ve renewed our contact. Ed is a great guy, dry and witty. Unassuming. Talented. Articulate. A great writer. He’s one of those guys who says stuff, and you sometimes have to pause and buffer what he’d just said, realizing he’d just said something incredibly insightful or humorous! Well, at least I do, don’t know about the rest of his more familiar friends. Anyway, I mention all this not to drop names and all, but because the legendary and esteemed Edward Bryant Jr. asked me for my autograph!

Wow.

Floored me. I was quite taken aback.

I hope I’m not making that up. Was it a dream?

Had some big, famous dude actually asked for my autograph?

I hope it wasn’t some hypnogogic hallucination brought on by all the excitement and exhaustion and inhalation of body-sweat bouquet (mine and others)! Thank you, Ed, for your most kind gesture! It’s weird how “little things” like that from your fellow writers can affect you! It is always a pleasure seeing and catching up with you! And thank you so much for “keeping it real,” which is ironic given what it is you do for a living….

MileHiCon48?

Freaking ausgezeichnet.

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