Gone Conventionin’

WonderCon is around the corner; the first (or second, perhaps? I’m not sure if Emerald City Comic Con counts for everyone) big comic book convention of the year, and an old familiar haunt for me. After taking last year off – having just moved to Portland and having neither the time nor the money to be able to go back to San Francisco for a weekend – I’ll be back this year, in part to report for CBR (and other places of which I can’t speak, just yet. But soon) and in part to further provide proof that my public speaking skills are embarrassingly poor by appearing on David Brothers‘ Comics Journalism panel on Saturday evening (Strange but true: When the panel was announced, I was still with io9. By the time the panel happens, I’ll have been gone from the site for two weeks and feeling like a fraud for being listed with that credit), and I have to admit: I’m really strangely nervous about the whole thing.

It may be because last year’s San Diego Comic-Con was so overwhelmingly strange and… well, overwhelming; five days of constant everything that left me and everyone else I know who attended in a state of shell-shocked daze. That my last two cons have been SDCCs may have colored my idea of what it means to do a convention, and turned the idea into something terrifying. Or, maybe it’s that this con will be my first as a freelancer who’s looking for work, as opposed to writing for io9 or writing for fun while having a day job that pays the bills (Will I have to… *shudder* network?!?). It could be either, or both; it could even be the knowledge that I’m sure I’ll say something stupid on one of the panels, for all I know. But there’s something about the whole thing that makes me as nervous as I am excited about getting back to SF and seeing all my friends again.

Here’s hoping this is just some kind of Karmic Radar Wire Crossing, and that WonderCon actually holds all manner of wild and wooly excitement for me, and I come back next week full of work, optimism and randomly upbeat futurism. Or, at least, that I don’t manage to piss off even more comic professionals.

Back on Tuesday.

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4. That Goes In There, And That Goes In There
5. The Echo Of A Burst Of A Shell