Hello folks!

I’ve been meaning to get this out for days, but I’m enduring the second most stressful time of my entire life. Good stress, yes! But stressful. The first most stressful time of my life was when we were selling Tempest Rising, and like that time, I’m doing a load of awesome things that are sort of killing me.

Like winding up the semester at the same time I do a huge convention, buy a house, move into that house, and release a book.

I’m not whining! I know how lucky I am to be able to do all of these things. But they’re still MAYBE gonna kill me. Luckily I’m being helped out along the way by all my awesome friends, both old and new. There’s nothing like busy times to remind me how lucky I am to have my tribe–a tribe I plan on growing in Pittsburgh, when I get in my new house.

But all of that is for a different blog post. THIS blog post is about the 2013 RT Convention, and how great it was! I’ve gone to RT now for four years running, and it gets better with each year. This year I was very busy, with four panels in total: two “craft” panels for aspiring writers and two “reader” panels for fans. My first panel was bright and early the Wednesday the convention started, and I worked steadily through till the huge signing on Saturday, when the con ended (at least for me).

It was a lot of work, but it was also fun, of course. I love hanging out with my peeps, and the nice thing about my recent con schedule is I’m seeing the same friends at everything. So even though we live in different parts of the country, we’re able to feel like we’re all part of each others’ lives. And they’re so inspiring, funny, creative, warm people. I come away from these things feeling like I’m ready to tackle the world.

Which is good, because I’m sort of planning on doing just that this summer. 😉

So here are some highlights from the trip. Kansas City turned out to be RAD, although it SNOWED. So my #amwalkies were curtailed, which sucks as that’s normally the time I get to indulge my traveler’s soul and really see a city I’m visiting. But we still got out, and Pierpont’s at Union Station was one of the best dining experience of my life (and I’ve had good ones). We also had an AMAZING dinner at Nica’s 320, which was a super fun Cajun-Asian fusion joint. We went because they had a cocktail called a “Necromancer,” and we stayed because they had a huge beignet menu, including stuffed beignets. Our awesome server also didn’t bat an eyelash when we said, “Do you have a cocktail called a ‘Werewolf?'” He said, “What is that?” We said, “We don’t know, but it probably has bourbon.” He thought about it for a second and said, “Yes, would you like a Werewolf?”

They were delicious.

Here are some pictures.

Now I’m off to take some very rainy, wet walkies before I have to robe up for graduation. So excited to have this semester over with! The rest of this week will see me packing, frantically, then the big move to Pittsburgh.

This summer is mine, just to warn you. All mine.

It’s gonna be incredible.