I'd figure I better do a recap of my week in St. Louis, attending Penned Con. I had heard about Penned Con last year and knew that was going to be one thing I would want to do in the future. As it turns out I won tickets to go to Penned Con!
I was glad that I went after not being able to go to UtopYA this year so I did really catch up with some great authors that I had met the year before. If you don't know Penned Con is co-founded by husband/wife Amy Miles and Rick Miles. While I had the pleasure of meeting Amy, her husband was running around making sure everything was running smoothly.
I met some new and old friends along with finally meeting up with authors that I've been friends on facebook for over a year. I tried to pass out my blogger card as often as I could but it was hard among the chaos! I attend not just the two day Penned Con, I also attended Teen Day which was nice and met some new people during that. Then as you would know I drag my mom with me toward the end of Teen Day because there was a private book signing and I picked up most of my pre-orders books. To think I only started out only making three pre-orders I came home with a lot more.
NOTE: Invested in a rolling suitcase or a cart/wagon. Trust me your arms will thank you.
What I did this year apart from attending my first book convention was wearing my Cat ears, yes I wore Cat's ears that I had since elementary school and it still fit! People pretty much knew me on the spot without really having to look at my name tag.
Some advice that I learn from the authors on panels
"Write what you want to read . . . don't always follow the trends."
"Only you can write your story."
"Write . . . Write . . . Write . . ."
Those key quotes I take to heart, because no one can write my stories. Trends? Why would I want to follow Trends where my books might only get minimal recognition? I want to be outside the box and outside of the Trends. I think it's best that no matter what our book consists of that it might have already been done by other authors, yours is unique in its own way.
I know writing is a craft and you can't rush it, while the book that I've been working on since late 2013? I've done two edits/revisions with it and gain about 5,000k during my recent revisions. I know it's not quite done but I'm hoping that it will be very soon and then figure out the plan after it "done". I am trying to work on book two of this book series I have but I'm still learning and plotting out what book two will consist.
I love being back in St. Louis, it's been 9 years since the last time I've been here and of course it is chaos like there were different bridge that we never took and our GPS couldn't find certain streets or we couldn't find certain streets. But we made it!
Out of all the authors that were there, Denise Grover Swank was the one I was most excited to meet. I love almost all her books and by what I mean almost I mean the books I haven't read yet by her. I took home the entire Rose Gardner Series (almost went home missing Ripple of Secrets but I got it!) Then towards the end of the event I brought the Off the Subject Series just because.
I had to track down Mindy Ruiz because she's KILLING me with the wait of Lying Cheating Heart the 2nd book of her Game of Heart series. But she told me that it's almost there! Coming out in September!
I have said this before leaving for Penned Con is that my facebook friend list will grow after Penned Con is over and it's still growing as authors recover from Penned Con, catch up on work and social media and all that other good stuff.
I love connecting with authors, readers, bloggers . . . I love having a common interest with people because I don't often find it. I hope down the road that I'll meet someone that will love all the craziness that I have with my books and authors/blogger friends and know that is part of my personality.
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