Andy Zach with Brenda Sutton and the Chambanacon Logo

• Chambanacon delighted me and over a hundred other attendees from November 25-27. The convention is the oldest ‘relaxacon’: a relaxing convention of gaming, science fiction and fantasy. It started in 1972 and some of the original attendees are still around. I met various authors, from Olivia Esther, age 17, to Glen Cook, with over forty years of successful novel writing and publishing. I chatted with successful authors Alex Bledsoe (website) and Gene Wolf (Gene Wolf’s wikipedia page). I’ll be adding my fellow authors, Glen Cook, Rey, and Esther Olivia websites to my resources page. Please check out their web pages!

• On Friday night I  read four (!) excerpts from my book ‘Zombie Turkeys’. I read my usual three scenes from three chapters. Then I added a battle scene from a turkey farmer’s point of view. Later, several of the listeners bought the book. You too can read an excerpt here: Excerpt
• Friday night concluded with some fine guitar and folk singing from Phil Parker, a dedicated filker for many years.

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• Then on Saturday  the convention activity peaked. In addition to various seminars and panels on writing, we had:
  • Steve Scherer , hot glass artist, designs and creates delicate fantasy and science fiction art pieces before your very eyes.
  • Ray Vantilburg , airbrush artist, not only designs the ChambanaCon T-shirt, but does fantastic custom requests.
  • Randy Pardue, martial artist, offers workshops and, for those really interested, advanced workouts.
• The night concluded with a cocktail party and banquet.
• Finally on Sunday, we wrapped it up, saying fond goodbyes until next year.