Hey awesome,

We’re in Durham this week, and even the buckets of rain can’t smother my enthusiasm – it’s FantaSci! I love FantaSci, in no small part because of how many of my favorite people I get to see.

Also delightful: the creativity and fun of the panels – my panel schedule as of right now is full of awesomeness, and that’s not including the other panels I want to go listen to. It’s going to be a full weekend, is what I’m saying. If you're going to be there, here's where you can find me when I'm not on the verandah:

Friday:

3:00 – Out of the Hat

4:00 – Alien Archaeology

5:00 – Women as Soldiers

7:00 – Stress and how we manage it as creatives

8:00 – Swearing in Sci-Fi

Saturday:

3:00 – not me, but a special appearance by my fabulous husband at the husband edition of Care & Feeding of Authors

4:00 – Cats in Science Fiction & Fantasy

7:00 – 9:00 – 4HU Dining Out

Will I get to see you there? Do you have favorite conventions or nerd gatherings? I’d love to hear – I have three that I never want to miss (in order of how they fall in the year – FantaSci, LibertyCon and DragonCon), and here’s one of my not-secret secrets: I’m an extrovert. I’d love to go to more conventions and see more incredible fellow nerds! So please, tell me your faves!

On the theme of faves, if you weren’t up super late last night/this morning, you might have missed Kacey Ezell’s first Super Geeked Up – she and I joined Jeff, Francis, and their hilarious Super Goopers for many shenanigans and a potentially alarming number of belly laughs. You can catch the replay here – SGU is like Whose Line Is It, Anyway, but with far more geekery, and I have the best time there every time! Like at least one of these:

In writing news – Hit World: Valkyries is getting closer to completion – the last few stories are with their authors in editing mode, and then comes the fun of puzzle-piecing them together. I really love this one, and can’t wait to share these stories with you!

I’m also making progress on Salt in the Wound for Fallen World, got some edits of my own turned in for some other short stories, and also accidentally plotted out a sci fi trilogy. Just fell right into an outline. No idea how that happened.

On that note, I’m going to do some writing before I go hang out at the FantaSci hotel. If I get to see you soon, hooray!! If not, I hope you are having a lovely spring, and that I at least get to hear from you soon.

Til next time,

Marisa