Miscon 24: Review

For the second year in a row now, I've attended Miscon and had an even better time. Although I was under the weather, my beautiful friend Amelinda welcomed me with an awesome gift that completed a childhood memory. It was a good omen for the rest of the weekend, the theme of which turned out to be Dragons, kittens and wolves.

Several authors were there with some great panels and booths: #1 New York Times Best Selling Author Patricia Briggs, indy comic writer Josh Wagner, (who will be doing a Seattle reading in the near future)and children's author Kevin Olsen who introduced a new short film this year The Legend of Springheel Jack as a promotional for his new book of short stories.

A brown wolf and white wolf showed up in amazing, full body body costumes - next year I hope they can get all the wolves together for a picture. Not to mention the cutest little faerie sister and a grim reaper sort with really fantastic make-up!

There were some really excellent combat demonstrations out in the courtyard area, the one I saw featured Dragon. I was amazed he could do anything so fluid in all that armor!

This year the cover art for the program book (which I thought was beautiful!) was done by Patricia Clemens and I picked up a new CD by filk musician Eben Brooks which is pretty good. It is of traditional Irish/Celtic music, of which I am a great fan.

By the end of the con, I had adopted my own horde of dragons from award winning sculptors Gordon & Peggy Hayes at Unicorns n Dragons. I tried to adopt Jack the kitten but he was spoken for. Nevertheless, he made friends with my new dragon, Peppercorn.

Heather, from Gems of the Goddess was my wonderful neighbor with beautiful, healing crystal jewelry and eclectic publisher Fairwood Press was across from me. I bought the poetry book Waiting My Turn to Go Under the Knife from them and it is in my reading queue.

Of course no convention - especially not one in their hometown - is complete without the boys of Zombie Tools! Awesomely forged weaponry for the apocolypse (and a bunch of cute guys!)

It is a smaller-sized convention so tends to have really great panels with good access to the special guests and pros. Stress is lower and people are more personable due to reduced crowd sizes and on Sunday they even have a community BBQ for attendees!

If you've never been out to Miscon, give it a try. Missoula is beautiful and nestled in its own little unique valley.