Ebony's Pearls

Back from ConEstoga. They are still using those horrid, nasty, vile sleep number beds. Next year, I'm bring my air mattress and sleeping on the floor, it will be more comfortable.

The hotel did not allow early check-in this year, even though I reserved for and had it confirmed that I could have early check-in if I paid an extra fee - I had them remove the fee when I checked out because I noticed they were charging me for it when they didn't allow me to have it.

The con was very good.

We had Shika with us, and she was exceedingly clingy. I think she thinks we are going to give her away when we take her places. Any place. Even if I take her to the park to play or take her out for a drive and a snack. Driving her all the way to Tulsa had her little paranoia quivers up.

I am now convinced she will never be a decent service animal. She lacks the temperament for it. She's smart enough to learn the alerts and she has the social skills to cope with people, but she stresses out too much when she gets away from home. I think she may be a Cancer dog.

I also think we aren't going to take her to non-family places out of town, which means no more cons, not even SoonerCon. It just stresses her too much, no matter how sweet and friendly she seems to others.

When we got home, she leaped from the car and rolled in the front lawn, then ran around smiling and sniffing all her favorite places. Right now, she's sacked out on the sofa on her back.

And now, back to the Con. We talked to many, many people, as we usually do. This year, most of the talk centered on Shika, because she is a darling little dog.

We attended several panels, not near as many as we wanted to because a lot were scheduled in the same hours as one another. I missed a number of readings because people wanted to talk about Shika and how Itzl rescued her, and then about Itzl's training.

I managed to buy a few books in the Dealer's Room, and oohed and aahed over the art in the Art Show.

Magic, the little black pom dog had an incident with heat exhaustion but was better by the time I found out.

I seemed to just miss the Therapetics people until Closing Ceremony, but I did get by to drop a donation in their collection bin. When I did finally encounter them, we had a brief talk, and when I mentioned how hard it was to find orange collars in Itzl's size, one gave me her card because she thought she knew where to get a collar for Itzl.

Now, the panels I did attend: The Liar's Panel on Getting Published. We laughed so hard, and there were some excellent suggestions from the audience. One person mentioned getting your book printed in bound form to submit so the publisher could see what it would look like once it was published. Another recommended getting your ISBN before you submit to show the publisher how serious you are. PublishAmerica was mentioned. And so were the more common stalking the publisher and submitting it in crayon on paper sacks.

This was followed (not immediately, but later) by the Slushpile Panel, which is always a hoot. Editors read some of their favorite rejections. Some of them show really finely tuned creative skills but seriously sad presentation skills. I bet, if a few of them just got a bit of experience, they'd be decent authors. They're just that side of acceptable. It shows just how important polishing your work is.

There were other panels, as well. I missed the Merlene Show because that's when I was finally allowed to check in to our room, and set up the crate so we could let Shika get comfortable. It calms her to be crated when she's stressed out.

The masquerade was good - I may post photos later after I've uploaded them.

And the Penguin Players were in fine form - again with photos posted later.

Of course, Itzl and Shika were the most photogenic attendees at the entire Con, but I may be slightly prejudiced.