Kvetha Fricaya! Greetings Friends!
Yowza! I just returned home to Montana after attending my first DragonCon in Atlanta. Fellow author Brandon Sanderson convinced me to go earlier in the year . . . and boy am I glad that I did. What a great convention!
It’s hard to know where to start. First of all, with the fans, of course. A big thank you to everyone who came to my events: panels, signings, and readings. The line at my main signing was so long that we ran an hour more than planned. Awesome! As a special treat to everyone at a presentation, I read a small excerpt from my upcoming sci-fi novel. (Sorry, not ready to share it in print quite yet!)
Outside of my events, costumes everywhere! So . . . many . . . costumes. I’ve done a lot of conventions, including some San Diego Comic-Cons, and I’ve never seen this quality, quantity, or variety of costumes before. Really impressive stuff.
Along with the fans, it was a special treat to meet other authors and artists at DragonCon. There were too many to list in full, but several of note were Mercedes Lackey and her husband Larry Dixon (we shared macaroons and a plethora of bad dragon jokes); Fran Wilde, who has a wicked wit and is a delightful co-panelist; and Peter David—a sci-fi fantasy legend (go read his stuff if you haven’t yet!)—who was on my very first panel ever, back when I was still a teenager. 
One of the biggest highlights was meeting Todd McCaffery for the first time and hearing him talk about when his mother, Anne McCaffery, read Eragon for the first time (also at a DragonCon, coincidentally enough!). She gave me my first blurb for Eragon back in the day, and I can’t tell you how much it meant to me that the creator of Pern had something nice to say about my own dragons.
All-around, DragonCon was an amazing experience, and I highly recommend it. Just avoid the elevators in the Hyatt! More than once it took ten to fifteen minutes to go up or down a few floors. But, the wait did provide time to get to know fellow convention-goers.
Again, a big thanks to everyone who came to my events. You know who you are!
And as always . . .
May your swords stay sharp!
Christopher
p.s. Check out this amazing tattoo based off Ciruelo’s painting of Eragon and Saphira!
