April was...April. 

I've been thinking a lot about how I'm going to manage this post, given all the stuff I haven't talked about because of the A to Z Challenge (the link takes you back to A, if you've missed all that). I could do like five blog posts about everything, but given the fact I've been posting every day (not, because I suck, but still) for the month of April I think I'm going to sort of condense things down into one. 

Which means this incredibly long post is going to do a couple of things. We're going to talk about April, and all the shows, and all that jazz. And then we're going to talk about RavenCon specifically. Before we talk about April you might want to belt up a little, it may be kind of depressing (or you could scroll down past the picture and just jump back into the RavenCon fun).

So April is always a rough month, in the Words and Wanderings house, at least any more. I sort of expect that? Dad's birthday was in April, and Mom's birthday is in April, and you wouldn't think birthdays were depressing but when one is for a dead person and the other is for a person with dementia...yeah. Not to mention we did All The Shows this April, and I had to take my placement tests to go back to college (which is both terrifying and exciting), and there is...difficulty with Mom's medicaid application, and all of that doesn't even get into it being SOL time for the proto-human, and the husband having work stuff, and the fact I stupidly agreed to write a novella in bits, in public, without editing time.

The weather's been not helpful, too.

So I spent most of April trying to figure out what I was going to say about all of this, once the blog challenge was over. I didn't get far. Sure, April is hard. April is always hard. Two years ago today I was sitting around my house waiting for my sister to call and tell me what the doctor said, since Dad was in the hospital and getting less and less coherent all the time. We're like two weeks from the anniversary of his death. That should be the hard part, right? Except I don't think grief works like that. My parents birthdays are so close together, they've always been tied in my head. We bounce straight from Mom's birthday to Dad's and maybe didn't always do cards and presents, but I always called. When I could I visited. Sometimes they came and visited me. 

Maybe being extra busy this month made that better? But actually I think it just pushed it down the line. We're gonna talk about RavenCon here in a minute, from a writing/publishing/business perspective and all that, but this bit doesn't fit any of that. I was on a paranormal panel this year, with some really interesting people who do visual effects, and write, and ghost hunt, that I maybe showed up to expecting it to be about the paranormal in film/books/tv and wound up mostly talking about the actual paranormal. Which felt...strange, but sometimes you just roll with it, and my ability to pull crap out of my nether-regions when required is clearly still working. 

So late in the panel this couple came in and sat in the back, and when it was time for one last question the gentleman raised his hand. "Hi. We lost our son a couple of years ago and for ages we heard footsteps, and noises. And then we got rid of some of this things, things we really shouldn't have been keeping but they felt sentimental, and then it stopped. Do you think that was a real paranormal thing?"

And just for added gut-punch, they were probably younger than I am and I suspect the son they lost was still in diapers. Everyone on the panel was really sympathetic, and basically all said 'if you felt like it was real I'm not going to tell you it wasn't.'

But I had a different take, and I'm going to explain it to you here (probably better than I did then because I'm often better at the written word than I am the spoken). Our minds run in channels, in processing lines. We are--even when we're not--creatures of habit. When someone who used to be part of your habit is gone, your brain still wants to run those same lines. We lost a cat a couple of years ago and for months I'd still feel like I saw her sitting on the couch out of the corner of my eye. Just because the being who started the pattern isn't there anymore doesn't meant the pattern just stops. Our brain wants to complete the picture, because it's used to that being the picture. Doubly so with people who are supposed to be our everyday pattern of life.

So no matter how busy I get, there's a nagging alarm in the back of my head that says I haven't called Dad for his birthday, and when I have a quiet moment that hurts. Maybe not as much as it did last year, but hopefully more than it will next year.

Now that I've been thoroughly depressing, have a strange picture taken by my kid. And scroll down to the bottom of it for the next bit...

Right. If you don't know, here's a link to the RavenCon website so you can read what they say it's about (basically it's a science fiction/fantasy convention that focuses a lot more on books than comics/tv/movies).

When Kate and I decided to apply as guests for RavenCon, and get a booth for the publishing house, it was our only show in April. By the time we got to April we'd filled in the other weekends with a local library con, and a crafts/vendor fair, and right in the middle of all of that, and regular life, was RavenCon. My first Con as a guest, and not just an attendee or vendor (and to be fair, I might have done like one as an attendee). 

To say my anxiety level about this was high might be understating things. I stopped drinking caffeine the day we drove down to the show because I felt like I was going to start having heart palpitations. Kate and Ashley arguably got the bigger panel (a talk about Editing with Chuck Wendig and Tee Morris, both of whom I adore), and we were all doing a few panels on our own. Added to the general nerves of 'crap I've never done this before' and the ones that usually come with any kind of public speaking, there wasn't a lot of guidance about what we could expect from the panels we were going to be on. Like the editing one is pretty self explanatory, but the paranormal one I did required a fair amount of thinking on your feet.

Of course we all did great, and it was a great con in pretty much all respects. The vendor show wasn't as robust as probably anyone would have liked it to be (I always try to talk to other vendors and see how this year stacks up against last year). But the people were wonderful, and I met some amazing new authors, and got to be on panels with people I'd love to do things with again. I'm toying with reaching out to some of them and seeing if they'll answer some interview questions for me to post on here, or on the GFP blog. 

I got to say "hi" to Chuck Wendig, and shake his hand. He was super nice, and I always find him interesting. I'm sure it was at least as wearing being on constantly for three days for him as it was for me (fewer people actually probably care how nice to them I am). I asked Mr. Wendig to sign a book for my son, and when the proto-human is like sixteen and he can actually read it that'll be great (though he super liked that he got a real signed book).

I was on a panel with Sandra Baldari on Saturday night, called Why Adults Read YA that went well, we seemed to enjoy ourselves, and Sunday morning we talked in the vendor show for a while, and she said she was doing a panel on Steampunk, which sounded interesting so I said if I was free from the table I'd go. Sunday was a little slow, so Ashley and I went to watch the Steampunk panel, and when I walked in I was greeted with "Jules can be on the panel!" They had two no-shows, so I took a panelist seat, and proceeded to accidentally remind myself that I actual pay attention to this publishing thing? and know things about genres I don't write or particularly read?

So that was my RavenCon. Three days of people. Not a few hundred thousand like AwesomeCon, but still lots of people. Lots of being charming and warm and I maybe once hid in the corner with my sandwich (and still wound up having a conversation about the con with a random hotel guest). Was it terrifying? Absolutely. Was it worth it? 

Look, if what you're doing doesn't scare you, doesn't push you to do better, you're probably not doing it right. Like everything about being an author that's not just the writing is scary, sometimes to the point you have to stop caffeine so your heart doesn't flutter. The only way I've found to make it less scary is to just belt up and do it.

Also, sometimes the scary things are were you meet the coolest people. And to that end, here's a list.

John Walker | Sandra Baldari | Hawkings Austin | Doc Coleman | Crymsyn Heart | Laurel Wanrow | Tee Morris 

So, that's a (slightly late) update and RavenCon breakdown. Come back next week and we'll talk about underwater basket-weaving. Or maybe movies?

Huzzah, we have reached the end of our tale, gentle traveler!

Only...not? It's more the end of the beginning than the end. I feel like this is a post credits title card. Brody and Libby will return in... And I don't know when, but it's pretty safe to say they will.

Zephyr means a gentle breeze.

And one last time, you can go back to A here.

​Brody stood at the display in his kitchen, half a stalk of celery hanging out of his mouth, and swiped another job offer into the ‘read it later’ file. The number next to the file icon flashed to a bold, aggravated twenty-six, and warned him the file was reaching its size limit.
 
In the six months since he’d shown up on PacIC to do an interview for a job he didn’t want, he’d gotten twenty-six more job offers. Not all of them were from connections from his service days, he didn’t even know what all of them were.
 
In the beginning he’d let them sit because…because he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do, and hanging out on PacIC with Libby seemed as good an idea as any. Even when her trouble was over he hadn’t been entirely sure it was over. He still wasn’t entirely sure it was over. Her survey gig was over though, she was closing up this week, turning in her final work and getting ready to take her next assignment.
 
Apparently Matt had been a little annoyingly vague about what that was going to be.
 
It was going to be decision making time though, soon. Once Libby left he was going to have to find something to do with himself. And on some level he knew what he wanted to do, but he wasn’t going to do it.
 
And staying on PacIC didn’t hold a lot more interest than anything else did.
 
He grabbed a couple of eggs out of the fridge, and turned the electric cooker on. He raised an egg, shifting his hold so it would break perfectly the way his grandmother taught him--
 
“You have a visitor, Captain Halliday,” the voice control system for the apartment interrupted.
 
“Did they say what they wanted?” He turned around to find a vaguely familiar man, wearing an expensive suit and holding a cane taking up the door camera on the display.
 
“No, sir. Should I send them away?”
 
“Captain Halliday, it’s Matt Perthins.” He shifted, and cleared his throat. “Could I have a moment of your time?”
 
Brody walked over and manually opened the door. “Mr. Perthins.” He frowned. “I wasn’t aware you were here.”
 
He had the grace to look bashfull. “I haven’t spoken to Ms. Wade yet. Do you have a moment?”
 
“Of course, come in.” He walked back into the kitchen and put the eggs back in the crate, turning the cooker off. “Is something wrong?”
 
Matt Perthins was staring around his sterile, temporary apartment and clearly adding two and two to make fifty-seven, but when he caught Brody watching him he flushed, and stopped. “You haven’t returned my messages.”
 
“Messages?” He was pretty sure he hadn’t missed a call.
 
“Emails. About the job offer?”
 
Brody blinked. “Oh.” There probably wasn’t a tactful way to say he hadn’t bothered to read any of them. “I…I didn’t realize any of them were from you.”
 
Perthins pulled out a tablet and handed it over. “It’s nothing…fancy, more a general security position, and the pay is…less than what you could probably get other places.”
 
Brody took it, glancing at the information. It wasn’t bad pay, and all it said was ‘field and asset security’ and he avoided those types of jobs because talk about crap he didn’t want to wind up in the middle of… “But?”
 
The other man smiled, and squared his shoulders. “But I promise you’ll like your co-workers. Well…co-worker.”
 
“Libby.” It wasn’t particularly a shock. Except that he was suddenly, intensely sure he didn’t want to be around for that portion of this conversation.
 
Her boss nodded. “There are…contracts I cannot avoid any longer, and my last attempt ended with being told point blank I was allowed to hire security if I wanted to. And I know they said it with the understanding that I would never get Libby to agree.”
 
“And you think she might if it’s me?” Brody wasn’t sure about that.
 
Matt looked at him for a long minute, and sighed. “Captain Halliday—”
 
“Brody.”
 
“Brody.” Matt nodded, smiling. “My boss, and his boss both, have a somewhat…skewed picture of not only Libby, but our relationship. However argumentative she’s been with other people, that’s never applied to me. I could tell her the next survey and she would not balk. I could tell her I’d hired security and she may not be happy about it, but I’m confident she’d fall in.”
 
“She trusts you.”
 
“She does,” Matt agreed. “Because I’m not stupid enough to attribute any extra weight to that, or take it for granted. They’ve assumed I balked at the contract because she wouldn’t do it.”
 
“Instead you balked at the contract because you didn’t think she’d come back.”
 
“However she likes to downplay what happened in the Black Sea, I spent hours attached to my desk, somewhat sure I was going to be planning a funeral.” Matt swallowed. “And this situation before this survey even started would have been equally as bad…”
 
“Only I was here.”
 
Matt nodded. “So yes, she’d agree to protection, and yes, she’d take the job. She might even be fine. But I thought perhaps if you had no firm plans you might like to assist GIG in making the world a better place.”
 
Brody looked at the employment package, and thought about it. Did he want to stick with Libby? Absolutely. Was it all wrapped up in the fear her increasingly dangerous job was going to get her killed? He should say yes, shouldn’t he? Because he was sure that was true, or at least closer to true than anyone would like.
 
Except that wasn’t why he wanted to do it. “Okay.” He handed Matt his tablet back. “But you’re telling her.”
 
At least know he knew what to do with all the unanswered job offers. 

The End! Well, sort of, like I said up there. 

Anyway, come back next week and I'll have some kind of coherent breakdown of the April of All Shows (mostly RavenCon).

Y and Z are happening after the official close of the event, because life got in the way. Y is long, because I'm trying to find some sort of reasonable conclusion for all the threads still hanging. Or part of a conclusion anyway. I'll explain next time (technically five minutes from now because I'm a master procrastinator).
​
Yugen--An awareness of the universe that triggers an emotional response.

You can go back to A here.

​Libby wouldn’t have moved from the hospital room, even if someone had asked her to. They’d given Brody a nanite injection and a sedative that meant he was out for two hours, and Special Agent King was apparently willing to come talk to her at the hospital.
 
In theory everything was over, and it wouldn’t hurt any for her to go somewhere else. Not that she had anywhere else to go, for the moment. She could even have gone to make some sort of plan for the night and presumably been back before Brody was even awake.
 
She was still sitting there, watching his chest rise and fall slowly.
 
“Can I get you a cup of coffee or something, Libby?” Inspector Hussein asked softly.
 
“No, thank you.” She leaned her head back. “Should I assume he’s actually gotten everyone now? Or do you need to go deal with your officer that shot Brody?”
 
“He’s still in processing.” She sat in the chair on the other side of the room. “And while I’ve been promised like six times they got everyone and we don’t have anything to worry, I’m still going to stay close until he’s functioning again.”
 
Libby smiled sadly, and knocked her head back. “We’re all jumping at shadows today.”
 
“You’re shadow-jumping kept you from getting shot, I wouldn’t knock it.” Her tablet went off then, and she held it up, smiling at the screen. “Hello, sweetheart!”
 
“Papa said I could call and see if you were going to be home for dinner tonight?” A child asked, insistent and stern.
 
“I don’t know yet, I’m staying at the hospital until my friend Brody is awake, and keeping Libby company.” She turned the screen then, so Libby could see a little girl with dark hair and bright eyes on the screen, who looked almost exactly like a smaller version of her mother. “Libby, this is my daughter, Amira.”
 
The little girl waved at her. “Hello, Miss.”
 
“Hi.” Libby smiled. “What time is dinner? I’ll make sure I’m not keeping her.”
 
“Six sharp,” the little girl insisted. “But if you need her you can keep her.”
 
“Thank you.” Libby grinned.
 
“Amira, I told you not to bother Mama at work,” a male voice insisted.
 
“Gotta go!” she said, before the screen went black.
 
Detective Hussein laughed, shaking her head.
 
“She’s eight?” Libby offered.
 
“She is.” The other woman smiled. “Convinced she’s going to be president of the world.”
 
“Go her,” Libby said softly. She closed her eyes. “I was going to breed dinosaurs when I was her age.”
 
“I was always going to be a detective.”
 
“Well, nobody ever said direction was a bad thing. Detective—”
 
“Dagny,” she corrected. “I’m off the clock, and I’m definitely dragging you around for dinner when this is all over.”
 
Libby popped an eye open and looked at the other woman. “Is that why I’m Libby now, and not Ms. Wade?”
 
“It is.” Dagny smiled. “Presumably you’re going to be around for a while, after all this?”
 
“At least four months. I think my official timeline is six, but it’ll only take that long if something goes wrong.”
 
Dagny reached out and knocked on the faux-wood paneled table next to her. “I think there’s been enough wrong.”
 
Libby laughed, nodding.
 
“I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” Special Agent King asked quietly, standing in the doorway.
 
She looked back at him, seemingly unmarked and just as well put together as he’d been the last time she’d seen him. “No, we’re just killing time. Did you need a statement or something?”
 
King grabbed a chair out of the hallway and dragged it in with him, sitting in front of her. “I trust we can have a conversation and you, and Inspector Hussein, can pretend for all intents and purposes that we haven’t had it?”
 
“We can,” Libby answered.
 
“Because, as I’m sure you understand, the official line is that I cannot share with you anything that may be pursuant to any form of active investigation.”
 
She cocked a brow at him. “I understand.”
 
He nodded, and handed her a paper folder. “Good. I’m in powerful need of a cup of coffee, I’ll bring you and the detective one, shall I?” And then he stood up and walked away, the privacy door hissing closed behind him.
 
Dagny snorted, and moved to the chair he’d pulled in. “Well then.”
 
Libby opened the folder. “I’m probably supposed to stuff this under the chair and pretend I don’t want to read it.”
 
“I want to read it.”
 
There were four pages of Arrest Identifications. William Shaw, thirty-two, with brown hair and brown eyes, and a tattoo on his neck. Libby recognized him as the man Brody had seen in the street. The next was another man she didn’t recognize, and then another, and then the last identification was someone she’d remembered seeing with James once.
The very last page of the file was a compiled list of known associates, and Libby reached out and grabbed Dagny’s tablet, snapping a picture, and handing it back to her.
 
“What are we going to do with this?” Dagny asked softly.
 
“Wait for Brody to wake up, I’m sure he’ll have a way to not gain friends when we look them all up,” Libby muttered. She made sure the pages were all back in order, and closed the folder.
 
By the time Special Agent King came back, Libby and Dagny were settled in, sitting quietly and resting. Agent King handed them each a cup of coffee, and scooped his folder back up. “Well, it’s been a pleasure meeting you both, please give my best to Captain Halliday.”
 
Libby nodded, and smiled blandly.
 
King nodded to both of them, and walked away quietly.
 
“Well that was interesting,” Dagny whispered.
 
Libby chuckled, and closed her eyes. “I’m going to take a nap, wake me up before Brody wakes up?”
 
“Sure.” Dagny took a sip of her coffee.
 
The sounds of the hospital melded into a comforting murmur, soft white-noise that meant she could relax. She didn’t sleep, really, just floated in that warm, comfortable plane between awake and asleep, and tried to quiet the voice in the back of her head that kept trying to pop up with the bits of her life she’d been ignoring during all of this. It was fairly emphatic that she needed to call Matt, as well.  
 
But it could all wait until later. She certainly wasn’t going to do any of that while she was sitting in the hospital, and after all the time Brody had devoted to making sure she didn’t wind up a cautionary tale she could wait for him.
 
Dagny sighed, after about thirty minutes. “I’m relatively sure you’re not asleep, and he should be waking up in a few minutes.”
 
Libby sat forward, planting her feet on the ground in front of her chair. “I wasn’t not asleep.” She wiped her face and looked at the peaceful form on the bed. Dark blue eyes watched her, and she huffed at him. “How long have you been awake for, then?”
 
Brody sat up carefully, stretching. “As long as you have been, apparently.” He checked her over, and Dagny. “Did I miss King?”
 
Libby nodded. “I’ll share though, once you’re out of here.”
 
“Looks like the nurse is coming,” Dagny offered.
 
The dust settled incredibly fast. Once they were all clear, and Brody was out of the hospital, it’d taken Libby less than an hour to find “temporary” lodging. For a second she’d thought Brody would be off, back to whatever he intended to do with his life.
 
Instead he’d taken a flat about a block from her, and quasi-settled in.
 
Which meant when Dagny invited them around for a Saturday cookout at hers, Brody could just show up at her door and go with her. Dagny lived in the mid-range residential stacks, on the opposite arm of their lodging. The train ride was quick, and they used the intercom next to glass elevator to tell Dagny they were there.
 
“It’s number 12, I’ll buzz you in.”
 
The glass sided elevator sunk down to street level, and the doors popped open. “Select your floor, please?”
 
“Number 12,” Brody answered.
 
“Access granted,” the pleasant voice returned, and the doors slid shut and started them up.
 
Libby liked the idea of the stacks. They were like little two-story houses with grass yards, and gardens, all stacked one on top of the other, and then usually there were some amenities on the bottom few levels. A couple of shops, a restaurant, that sort of thing. Some of the nicer ones had an entire botanical garden, or a museum or something in them.
 
They stopped at #12, and the doors opened right as Amira opened the entryway door. They stepped into the small room, decorated in browns and greens, and Amira stared up at Brody in something akin to horrified fascination.
 
“Hello, Amira,” Libby stepped forward.
 
The girl swallowed and stepped back. “Mama’s guests are here,” she announced.
 
An attractive, broad shouldered man with dark skin and a wide nose stepped into the main room. “Welcome.” He shook both their hands. “Dagny is starting the grill, or she would introduce us. I am Amir, it is a pleasure to meet you Captain Halliday and Ms. Wade.”
 
“Brody, please,” he corrected, smiling warmly. “You have a lovely home.”
 
“Are you gonna be charming now that I’ve told everyone you’re a blunt instrument?” Dagny wiped her hands on a dish cloth, and stood in the kitchen door. Her weekend attire was much more…relaxed than they’d seen her yet. Her headscarf was so bright and jubilant it almost hurt to look at.
 
“He always thinks he’s charming,” Libby teased gently. “Thank you for having us, and please, call me Libby.”
 
Amir smiled. “Please come through to the table outside. Amira, get the plates.”
 
They settled in the sweet outdoor space, and Libby stared at the nest of song birds in the corner while Brody and Amir talked about PacIC and what Brody planned to do while he was there. She’d pointedly tried to ask him what his plans were, but the most answer she ever got was that for the time his plans were to stay in PacIC.
 
And whatever was growing between them, she didn’t feel comfortable pushing for more of an answer than that, so she didn’t.
 
“Mama says you’re a kind of social worker,” Amira said, sitting next to Libby and opening a package of string cheese.
 
“I work with them sometimes, but I don’t help people so much as just ask them lots of questions.”
 
“Why?”
 
“Why do I ask them questions?” Libby clarified.
 
The little girl nodded, attention fully pointed at Libby.
 
“So that the people who are supposed to help them know what they need.”
 
“Why don’t they just know?”
 
Libby smiled, taking the bowl of fruit from Brody, and putting some on her plate. “For the same reason I can tell you’re good at school but I don’t know what your most problematic subject is. And I could look at your records, and see the one you were getting the lowest grade in, but that’s only part of an answer, and maybe if I asked you you’d tell me something different was harder.”
 
“Did you go to school for that?”
 
“No, I sort of stumbled into it,” Libby admitted. “But there are people who go to school to do what I do. I get to travel a lot, right now. Maybe later that won’t be so true, but I still like getting to go different places.”
 
Amira seemed to settle in and think about that, and her mother smiled at her. “Let them eat, love. I’ll be sure to drag Libby around as often as I can, while she’s here. And presumably you’d come back to PacIC once in a while.”
 
“I don’t hit here particularly often, but Matt’s still sort of in panic mode so I’m not sure what’ll happen after this job.”
 
“He’s stopped panicking at me, at least,” Dagny muttered. “What about you Brody?”
 
“No clue. I’ve got more than enough time to decide what I want to do for my second career, I’ll give it a bit and see what appeals to me.” He shrugged. “What about you, I heard they were restructuring.”
 
“I may get a promotion, but what they’re doing is still changing with the wind, so I’m not holding my breath.” Dagny smiled. “Still, it could be quiet for a bit.”
 
“Well, you picked good weather for a cookout,” Brody insisted, all smiles.
 
Libby shook her head at him, and dug into her food. It never used to bother her that her life was up in the air. If it was starting to, she might need to change some things. Matt was going to love that.