Wondercon Recap (Part 1)

Before I forget!

My parents arrived last Thursday to look after the kids. Scott and I got on the road Friday morning and drove the scenic, and sometimes fragrant, I-15 / I-210 / I-5 route to San Francisco.

I took a lot of very bad pictures with my phone and sent them to Facebook. Some of my camera photos came out marginally better.

I took this for my children. Some of them have never seen snow. This boggles my mind.

We reached Oakland as rush hour was winding down and were surprised by how relatively rapidly we made it across the bridge.

Approaching the Bay Bridge. I couldn’t see Alcatraz from the car. I wanted to.

This was our hotel, just a couple of blocks from the Moscone Center where Wondercon took place.

WHY didn’t we go up to the top and take in the view? I am kicking myself now. We were so busy the whole time, it just never occurred to me.

After we checked in, we headed over to The Thirsty Bear to say hello to our pal Mike Costa. This is the best part of cons, in my book: the chance to spend time with our writer and artist friends. We hung out there for a while with Mike, Rebekah Isaacs, Christos Gage, Amy Reeder Hadley, and Mike’s friend Josh Hauke, who writes a webcomic for kids, Tales of the Brothers Three, that I’m looking forward to checking out. Because restaurant noise drowned out the introductions, we didn’t actually catch Amy’s full name and it wasn’t until the next day, when we ran into her on the floor, that Scott realized she was Amy Reeder Hadley the artist, and then he geeked out adorably because he’s a huge fan of her work.

Saturday morning we breakfasted in the hotel, where we had the privilege of paying an insane amount of money for eggs, bacon, and burned toast. Burned! Really! Then we walked over to the Moscone Center, got our badges, and took a first walk around the floor.

It was nice and empty, at that point. Later in the day the con sold out and there were wall-to-wall bodies. Note to self: next time, shop for the kids early, before the crowds get thick.

No line! Should’ve grabbed the chance.

We ambled the aisles and encountered some friends and other familiar faces in Artist Alley, including fellow San Diegan Eric Shanower (Age of Bronze series, Oz graphic novels, and many other works); artist and total sweetheart Joel Gomez; and the talented Hope Larson, whose graphic novel, Mercury, happened to be the book I had brought along for the trip. (Scott stole it from me and finished it before I did. But I got my chance on Sunday evening, and it was very good—a sort of eerie and mysterious tale that weaves in and out of two time periods in Nova Scotia. Very cool.)

Eric Shanower signs a book for a fan.

I lingered a while over the handiwork of this nice woman at Blue Moon Designs, whose handsewn bustles and other goodies made me a little swoony.

A weird thing about digital photography is that I can track what we did each day by the timestamps on my photos. iPhoto tells me that we left the con at 11:30—Scott’s panel wasn’t until the next day, and we had decided to spend part of Saturday exploring San Francisco since it was my first time there.

Don’t fret, Jean Grey! We’ll be back.

We went back to the hotel to drop off our swag. The red-brick church next door is St. Patrick’s, where we went to Mass on Sunday morning.

For the next few hours, Scott and I wandered around San Francisco. We walked up Powell Street, which we’d been warned was a little hilly.

It only *almost* killed me.

This post is getting really long. I’ll be back later with Part 2.