This weekend I was in Detroit attending the Immortal ConFusion convention. While I was there, this happened:
You can read all about it here and here. But what you won’t read about in those places is how I ended up attending the private shooting session for this photo.
I knew my good friend Al Bogdan was going to be doing the shoot, and I asked him if he needed an assistant. I was kind of joking…but only kind of. Happily for me, no one objected to Al having some extra help, which led to one of the more memorable hours of the weekend. I helped unload, set up the backdrop, run messages, and compare the authors posing in front of me to the cover we were trying to imitate. And I take all credit for Charlie Stross’s silver modesty drape in the above photo.
Also, this happened:
I believe this is the only currently extant photo of me with a Hugo rocket.
I also had my first practical joke pulled on me. I know, I can’t really believe it’s my first either, but I’ve spent some time wracking my brains, and nothing else has come to mind. So this is my official first. It involved the personal delivery of pastries (yum, pastries) to my hotel room at an ungodly hour of the morning. Well, ungodly for night owl, jet-lagged me, in any case. I used Twitter to coin the term “pastry bomb,” as in “My friends totally pastry bombed me this morning.” I can’t think of a more Amy-appropriate first practical joke. Also, I had pastries to eat for the rest of the con, which was a definite win for me.
Maybe I should have taken photos of the pastries or something, but instead I have a photo of me a little later that day. I think this illustrates my mood post-prank pretty well, and if you look closely, you can see my Ferrett-inspired pretty princess nails.
And now I’m home and sleepy and happily working on the query for Academy of Forgetting (I might throw it up here at some point, since you heard me talking about that book all last year) and the brainstorming for my next novel, which takes place in space and is therefore inherently exciting.
Since I am new to the world of practical jokes, leave me a comment if you have any stories about ones you’ve pulled (or had pulled on you). I obviously have a lot to learn.
The photo of you with the Hugo is great!
And you should be justifiably proud of the silver drape on Charlie Stross, too.
Sounds like an awesome weekend. Great photos, too!
Paul