I love New Orleans. I’ve been there a few times and every time has been memorable for one reason or another. The first time I tried beignets at Café du Monde. Making the entire bus tour stop at Anne Rice’s house because I wanted to fangirl, and all the senior citizens on the bus making sure we stayed there until I’d taken ALL the pictures. Taking Chad Lindberg to Bourbon Street for the first time with the filmmakers of My Big Break and having an absolute blast (and ending up with lots of beads). The vampire tour during which the vampire tour guide took a liking to my young daughter, much to my consternation. But this was the first time I’ve been there for a Supernatural reason – so of course it was amazing!
Richard Speight Jr. and Rob Benedict and Louden Swain kicked off Friday morning, and then Gil McKinney was first up.
Gil’s excited about Wayward Sisters and would definitely be open to making an appearance if the spin-off happens. He also told the story of being in the Impala with Jensen and Jared when Jensen took her for a spin – and did a 180 in the middle of a road that Gil didn’t realize was closed!
Jared: Need some new underwear?
Gil: And I did.
And then there was that time Jared pranked him with a picture of a very large (ahem) naked man on a laptop screen while Gil was on camera. Looked a lot like this…
New Jersey con holds a special place in my heart, simply because it’s the closest con to my hometown of Philly. That means I can actually drive there instead of flying, which makes being a vendor a bit easier. That also meant I could caption this con ‘Adventures in Vending’ because we definitely had some adventures – and some misadventures.
Being a Supernatural con vendor is like joining a tribe of frankly awesome people. For the SPN Creation cons, it’s mostly the same group of friendly, creative, resourceful folks at every convention – and because those cons happen a few times a month on average, the vendors get to know each other very well. They’re like a group of traveling carnies, moving their wares from one city to the next. They have each other’s backs just like the rest of the SPNFamily does, and I would trust any one of them if I was in a tight spot.
That doesn’t mean vending is easy. My friend Karen offered to help me out at NJCon, so we drove up together. The day before, the FedEx guy delivered my many many boxes of books, each of which weighs over 40 pounds. I bolted out the door as soon as he pulled up and asked what the policy was for leaving the books in my car instead of on my doorstep, and luckily the very nice FedEx man agreed. When Karen and I got in the car the next day, I swear it felt sort of like getting into a rocket ship – the boxes of books in the trunk and back seat made the front of the car point dangerously towards the sky.
With apologies to my poor overburdened Honda Civic, we started out, slowly making our way north to scenic Secaucus. The giant convention center had a back loading dock where we could unload the books, so we drove up there and asked where we could park to unload lots of boxes of books. The bored looking man waved us into a spot and said we could park there. Karen and I looked at the very long ramp across the lot where we would have to enter the convention center and exchanged a look of dismay. That was a steep ramp and a long way with forty pound boxes of books!
True to my always-frantically-busy-and-not-quite-prepared state, I hadn’t been able to find an actual hand cart but I’d brought along my green and white striped beach chair on wheels that doubles as a transport cart. You know, for taking your cooler to the beach or whatever. If it can transport a cooler, I thought, why not a box of books? So Karen and I heaved a box out of the trunk and onto the beach chair. The canvas sagged but didn’t break, so we counted that as a win. Then we began the trek up the long steep ramp. After a few minutes of struggling, we finally got up and into the convention center, wheeled the books and the chair down the hall and found our vendor table. One box down, ten to go!
I’ve been too busy to post con reports this year for the most part, but I’m trying to change that – at least for one con! Vancon, as it was called for almost a decade and will still always be called in my head, is a special con. It takes place in mecca for Supernatural fans, where the show is filmed, and that means that lots of other Vancouver-based Supernatural alums and crew members often come by to say hi to the fans. It’s also the place where some of the best days of my life have taken place, and where many of my SPNFamily friends come to congregate, so that makes it a special con for me. This year was no exception.
I didn’t have any extra time to take in location filming or revisit some of my favorite Vancouver restaurants and sights, and I’m still grieving that the con is no longer at the beautiful Sheraton Wall Centre, but the Westin Bayshore is also quite nice. It’s also way above my budget at the non-con rate, and thanks to my aforementioned busy, I neglected to book it early enough to get that. So my friend Alicia and I spent the first two nights up the hill at the Coast, a European flavored hotel with an international bunch of patrons and a portable AC machine that served as possibly the best white noise I’ve ever experienced. I totally wanted to bring the giant thing with me! I then cashed in every single Starwood point I’ve ever accumulated to move over to the Westin, which rewarded us with an amazing view of this amazing city. I love you, Vancouver!
I mean, look at it! That’s the view from my window once I finally got to the Westin Bayshore.
I had a lovely seafood dinner out on the water on Friday night and a few good meals at the hotel restaurant too – I wasn’t in the vendor room, so I had a lot more time to hang out and have some good conversation. I was also very honored to sign copies of Family Don’t End With Blood for lots of people who had read it and been inspired by it, which totally made my weekend. If you came up to me and asked for my ‘autograph’, I’m thrilled that you enjoyed the book and that I got to meet you. And I hope you all told the actors what a fantastic job they did writing their chapters!
I had very little internet reception on Friday and especially Saturday, so I tried to make up for the lack of tweets by taking pictures. Thus this is Part One of my Vancon post, since wordpress was a wee bit upset with how many photos I was trying to cram into a single post. Part Two (SNS continued and Sunday) up shortly!
There were lots of SPN alums on hand for karaoke and during the con, most of which I forgot to take photos of, but I had to have a picture of the lovely Kuma, star of television commercials, and his owners Kevin and Jill Parks. Kevin has been with Supernatural as a First Assistant Director ever since I can remember, and is instrumental in making the show the high quality tv that it is. In fact, he’s joking referred to as “Parkasapedia” for his encyclopedic knowledge of SPN canon! Kuma has appeared on the show too, as well as in that Flonase commercial you see all the time.
Adam Williams, who supervises all that amazing VFX wizardry on Supernatural, was also on hand – along with the always awesome Lucy. Together, Adam and Lucy wrote a chapter in Family Don’t End With Blood about how the show changed their lives completely – by bringing them together! Talk about life changing.
Friday kicked off with Alaina Huffman (filling in for the busy-filming-Supernatural Kim Rhodes) and Gil McKinney.
Nashcon was extra fun because I got to spend it with my friend Kim, who takes gorgeous photos and doesn’t mind when I drool over them over her shoulder every evening as she’s hard at work in our hotel room. If you read this blog regularly, you know I’m behind in posting con reports (Houston and Vegas are coming, honest!), but luckily Kim was willing to write the report for Nashcon, including her beautiful photos. Enjoy!
– Lynn
Lynn and I had a fandamntastic weekend at the Opryland Resort in Nashville for the Salute to Supernatural Convention. I have to give a shout out to the staff and volunteers from Creation Entertainment for all of their hard work in bringing to us such a wonderful experience! I continue to be impressed by their enthusiasm, even on Sunday evening, even after working crazy-long hours. If you have the chance to attend one of these cons, please make the time to thank these volunteers for their tireless efforts in giving us these incredible experiences.
I’m seriously behind on everything, including my con coverage for 2017. Between trying to finish up the new book (which I’m ridiculously excited about – have you pre-ordered your copy yet??? If you do, you get free goodies and can win even more free Supernatural stuff! Check it out at https://www.familydontendwithblood.com/!) Anyway, with that and starting off a new semester of teaching and Supernatural episodes returning, there aren’t enough hours in the day. So here, belatedly, are some of my favorite moments and photos from the first con of the year.
The 2017 Supernatural con tour kicked off in sunny warm Jacksonville, Florida. The sunny and warm part was definitely relevant to me, coming from cold and rainy dreary Philly. I love my hometown but Januarys are hard! So I was pretty euphoric just being able to walk around in my flip flops and lay by the pool in the sun for a while.
