Another year, another C3. This is going to be a quick post.

This year’s conference was fun, as it always is./was. I consider myself lucky that I stumbled across it and have become part of it. It feels like visiting friends and family.

Even though I’m an introvert, I still enjoy seeing and chatting with people I know and meeting new people with whom to interact. Still, I found myself spent each day.

This year’s Guests of Honor were SJ Roman and the collaborating duo of Julia Vee and Ken Ken Bebel. Their keynotes were great and inspiring. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to spend any time with them. Hopefully, they’ll be back.

The panels were great as always and a good mix of topics. I moderated two panels this year: AI in Writing, and Animal Characters. The AI panel had some lively audience participation. In the end, we agreed AI should never be used for creative work, but for research and maybe marketing. The Animals panel was more light-hearted and fun.

I was also a panelist on short form fiction and characters panel. This one focused on writing characters in series and sequels.

On a different topic, each year, I auction GoH books signed by all the attending authors, plus some other goodies including some of my beer and mead. This year, the conference made around $300 from the auction, which goes to help fund next year’s event.

Speaking of mead, last year a lot of people were curious about mead and my mead specifically. This year, I brought a bottle of my cranberry mead and my beet mead. We had a “tasting” during one of the autograph sessions. Surprising to me, but the beet mead was a runaway hit. I expected the cranberry mead to be the favorite, it being more mainstream. Several people asked if they could buy a bottle of both. No, I don’t sell it and won’t.. But I may continue to do some tastings in future C3s.

I sold a few of my books at the conference. That’s always a pleasant surprise given the conference is isolated and full of other authors.

Each year, the conference prints an anthology of attending authors’ stories. This year, the conference had a theme of “luck” for the anthology. My short story, “Bad Luck, That” made it in. It’s a Holmes and Watson mystery. For the first time, the anthology is available for purchase from Amazon and other vendors. If you’re interested, here is a link: https://www.amazon.com/Annual-Creatures-Crimes-Creativity-Anthology-ebook

So that’s a quick look at the C3 conference from my perspective. I had a blast and the organizing team did a grand job as always––no, I’m just a participant and not part of the C3 team.

Word up!