Recap of Fandom Fest 2013

I am finally getting back into the swing of things after Fandom Fest. With all five of the kids at home for the summer it has been hard to get anything done. But, I wanted to update you guys on how Fandom Fest went a few weeks ago.

My sister was able to go with my this year to help run my booth and it was nice to spend some time with my sister without all my kids around. So, we left on a Thursday morning. We had to drive four hours to the air port and honestly, this was the smallest airport I’ve ever seen. The terminal had four gates all in the same room. That was it. We were actually a little afraid that we were going to have to ride in a tiny little puddle jumper. The plane was small, but not tiny.

So anyway, two airplanes later and we landed in Louisville KY at about 10:30 pm. As soon as we walked into the lobby of the Galt House we ran into some friends. We quickly got checked in and went up to our room to deposit our things so that we could go have a drink.

Friday morning we woke early and had to go check in for our vendor booth and guest passes. This all went smoothly and I was surprised to see the vendor room looking ten times better than the year before. The entire placement of the vendor room allowed for way more traffic than last year.

One thing I did not like, I do understand the reasoning behind this, and the need for more space, but the convention was in both The Galt House and the convention center. The convention center was located two blocks away from the Galt House so we had a crap ton of walking to do over the entire weekend.

Instead of going through a play by play of the entire weekend and writing a novel, I will just give you the highlights.

Things I liked:

~The vendor room, as I mentioned before, was amazing this year.

~Meeting everyone and spending time with my like minded friends is always awesome. 

~There were a lot more celebrities walking around this year compared to last year. I had a blast meeting all of them. And Michael Rooker (Merle from The Walking Dead) even took his picture with Lisa Morgan and myself outside the hotel when we saw him on the sidewalk.

~The literary track was amazing, the convention it’s self had some organizational problems, but the lit track was amazing.

~ I sold more books this year than I did last year and gave away all of my swag.

~ I got to meet Stan Lee! I also got to see Norman Reedus again and Michael Rooker for the first time. When we got our Dixon Brothers picture taken, Michael Rooker said “I remember you.” And we were like, “Oh, you do?” and then Norman Reedus said “Why, why, what happened?” And then Lisa told him that I accosted Michael Rooker on the street. Which was not true, I simply walked arm & arm with him for about thirty seconds and then he agreed to take a picture. No accosting necessary. Other celebs I met this year include, Sean Patrick Flanery, Joey Lauren Adams, Brian O’Halloran and Lew Temple (who swore up and down he knew me from somewhere.) There were others walking around all over the place as well. It was awesome.

All right… now let’s talk about a couple of things I didn’t like.

~ The staff at the convention had no idea what was going on. You could ask five people the same thing and get five different answers. There was a TON of confusion about where things were located and absolutely no signs leading people in the right direction. The maps were wrong too.

~ I really think that Fandom Fest was not prepared for the amount of people that showed up. It was reported that they expected about 20,000 and the building had about 40,000 people in it at one point. The fire marshal actually came in and shut down the photo op room for a while.

~The long lines were expected. However, at the end of the weekend it was a massive clusterf**k. They didn’t have any of the photos ready on time and were telling people that they could leave their photos and go online where they could pay ten bucks to get a digital copy. This was just wrong. So many people had flights to catch and places to be and were told they wouldn’t be getting their photos that some paid hundreds of dollars for.

All in all it was a great time. The convention itself had hiccups, but I personally had a freaking wonderful time. I got to see people that I had met the year before, I got to meet new people, I got to mingle with fans up at my booth and panel with fellow authors on awesome topics.

I am not sure if I will go next year, mostly because I live on the other side of the country and it costs me thousands of dollars just to get over there and in no way, shape or form would I be able to recoup the costs.

Below are some pictures from this year’s Fandom Fest.