NonCon report - finally

I recently went through a period of "I don't wanna post on LJ". My fellow Cancer and sister-from-another-mother mermaiden has told me that it's part of being a Cancer, that we occasionally withdraw into our shells and don't want to communicate. So I just decided to ride it out. Then I had a great weekend at NonCon and wanted to come out of my shell to talk about it... and then the week from hell hit.

So what I'm saying is that this post is a long time in coming and I need to write it, even though it's a week late.

NonCon is only the second con I've ever been invited to be at. However, it was the first that I was asked to be an actual guest at (one of three), and the first to pay for my travel expenses. They paid for me! Which meant that whatever I sold was profit! There was no way I was going to turn that down.

The con was at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY, a 5.5 hour car trip from Rochester. It was my first solo road trip of that length, so it was a bit rough because I love being able to talk to people on road trips. But I got to listen to music, and since our Outback has a cassette player I brought some old cassettes as well. Revisited my old Weird Al albums, and even found a tape of old guitar recordings I did back in high school (I actually recorded a couple of good songs that I had forgotten about). And I only got sort of lost once (ended panicking early and called Katie, only to find out that if I stayed on the road I was on for about a minute longer I'd get to where I was going).

The college is beautiful. Certainly made UB look like a pile of crap (not hard to do, though). I wish I had gotten to explore it a bit more.

The con itself was pretty small. The artist alley was in a section on the first floor of their student union, and the panels/workshops were in conference rooms on the second floor. But it was nice because we got con-goers as well as random students going from here to there, some of whom were actually interested in what was going on.

The high points of the weekend:
-Meeting a fan who has been reading the comic since the beginning and hanging out with her most of Friday
-Meeting some new friends, including one who is a bonified quidditch player (Vassar was the second college to form a quidditch team) and a fellow brony (there was much My Little Pony talk all weekend).
-Doing two panels, one on writing/self-publishing and one on webcomics. They were small, but that just made the conversation more intimate, and the people who attended were super interested in hearing what I had to say.
-The general feeling of people being interested in what I do. At most cons the kids who attend are excited about merchandise, but that's about it. The folks at NonCon actually seemed interested in my webcomic (and in some cases my novellas), and it really made me feel good about what I do.

I really hope they ask me to come back next year, and that Katie can come with me. It was a great experience, probably my favorite con since the first year I attended ConnectiCon.