Can-Con

Hello My Imaginary Friends,

This past weekend the entire JenEric family went to one of our favourite conventions; Can*Con. The people were lovely and the event was wonderful, but boy am I glad it’s over.

It’s definitely the most stressful convention for me. Most conventions, my job is to stand there, look pretty, and sell coffee. At Can*Con, I’m also an author and need to talk about my books and my experience. Often times, with people I respect and am in awe of.

This year I had a panel about multiple point of view narratives with Tanya Huff and Kevin Hearn. Both amazing writers and extremely intelligent panelists. I think, to my surprise, I didn’t come off as a complete fool, so yay. (A personal fanboy moment was when Tanya chided me for not mentioning my Aurora nomination.)

Took a deep dive into multiple POVs at the Who’s your Hero Panel today. Thanks for the insights @KevinHearne @TanyaHuff @EricDesmarais @KVJohansen @CanConSF pic.twitter.com/VCuOcol326

— Colleen Winter (@ColleenWinter3) October 20, 2019

I also had a signing with Charles De Lint. I spent half the time chatting with people in line to talk with him and half the time chatting with him. He’s a really nice person and we chatted about book formatting and support structures.

Now all that was stressful but awesome. Unfortunately, all 4 of us came down with a cold just before the convention. So doing a convention with a 3 year old and a baby while being sick was… exhausting.

Despite all of us being exhausted, we decided we needed to go to the Aurora awards banquet (we were both nominated but didn’t expect to win). Keladry wanted to dress up and we were just too darn tired so we didn’t. We were the schlumps in t-shirts and jeans but we had a great time.

On the Sunday I had a reading and took Keladry to ensure I had an audience. To my surprise, there were three other people. At least one of which was there to hear me read. Yay, I have a fan! Thanks S!

Doing conventions with kids is hard but totally worth it. Adrien mostly slept, but Keladry was as good as possible. She listened, didn’t touch things, and only melted down a few times. I’m really proud of them.

Doing conventions with kids isn’t easy, but what makes it infinitely better is doing it with people who love them and like to entertain them. S. M. Carrière being the godmother spends a lot of time helping us at almost every con. Nathan of Renaissance was amazing despite being busy 99% of the con. Heather Chambers was absolutely fantastic with Keladry. She drew with her, played, and spent lots of time laughing.

There are more people that helped then I can name.

Thank You!

To everyone who helped, chatted, bought something, listened to me read or rant, or just made this convention amazing. Thank you so much!

I’m exhausted but happy.

Thank you again,

Éric