Des Moines was on the Wizard World Comic Con tour and I was lucky enough to be invited to be on a panel. Wow, what an eye opening experience! Costumes, celebrities, awesome artwork, activities and people, so many people. Absolute and total sensory overload, in a good way.

I’m glad I cut my teeth on smaller conventions, like DemiCon and the larger ICON, before taking on something as big as Comic Con. The Des Moines leg of the tour is relatively small in comparison to other cities, but it was still huge. Had I started my con experience here, I would have been overwhelmed. Being surrounded by friends also helped.

The panel I was part of, A Second Skin: how to add depth to a character different from yourself, was amazing. Tamara Jones pulled together a wonderful group of people with varying degrees of experience, genre, and opinions. Dennis Green rocked the roll of moderator, while still managing to answer questions as a writer. Jed Quinn, Aaron Bunce, Rachel Aukes, Tammy, and I did our best to give our insight into character development. All of us work well together, or at least I think so.

Sitting up there on the dais was a bit intimidating, especially when I looked out at the audience. Wow, there were a lot of people there to hear what we had to say. I have to admit, I was nervous—okay, terrified—when I saw all those people. But again, I was surrounded by friends and there were even a couple in the crowd. When we started, they were so welcoming, so friendly, so eager to hear what we had to say, I forgot to be nervous.

The Q&A portion was probably my favorite part. You all know how much I love interacting with book lovers. These people didn’t ask run of the mill questions. They were insightful and well thought out, heck, I learned things about my fellow panelists. I sincerely hope to continue the conversation at ICON.

A big thank you to Wizard World for hosting our panel.

Tammy, I can’t thank you enough for inviting me to participate!