Alright then. Lets get this show on the road.

Was it worth it to abandon all you lovely readers for a Friday?

First off.

How dare we presume such a thing. What a gross and disgusting underrepresentation of the pain, physical, mental, and spiritual that you must have.

Hopefully the rapture of my fondly typed, uniformly automated font styles on this blinking cursor screen or laptop or whatever you read us from glaring out of the spam folder doth cure thine inexpressible sadness for we hath risen and we hath conquered.

Second off, cause first off was already taken we have some book math for you. Plain and simple facts that you should understand as we full throatedly endorse ourselves as having only bought one book... albeit a very expensive one...

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Sooooo... we got 20 books....

But only one really. *REFER TO VIDEO ABOVE*

Anyway.

Lets review the Haul..

Now, this first image is the spines of all the ones we actually purchased... except the two in the right side of the stack. We already owned Structuring Your Novel and Anne of Green Gables(both of which I am reading as of right now. Hopefully I'll finish Anne Of Green Gables today(Tuesday)though).

And this... is all the books we got signed... with two exceptions... "Launching You" the white book on the bottom of the image... And "Unbanded" Which is in the top right corner of the image.

Unbanded I bought pre-signed soooo hehehe. The other one we just didnt seek out the author cause it was kinda just a random pick up...

Something like that.

Anyway. We busted our porcelain piggy banks and turned them into tatooed dead trees(books, sorry for the morbidity).

So far, I havent read more than a couple chapters into any of these-

*RECORD SCRATCH*

Sorry... I lied... Ive read Unbanded, The Shattered Ones, In The Unbreaking, and Fates Defiant.

Three of which are Brigitte Cromey books, who we met at the conference and OMYGOODNESSSSS! We also finished buying all of the books by said author person.

Needless to say, we got some books signed, got to meet one of the best modern authors...(in our opinion, plural as in The Irish Twins Collectively). Ill show just Fates Defiant for now... cause I feel like I could overload this with images...

Anyway. Fates Defiant won the Realm Awards for the General Fantasy category.

And if anyone can imagine the joy that burst through Gilbert Ryan Kisslings head at that moment...

The entire room got a special shout added to the chorus of clapping and whistling and yapping from all over the place. Fates Defiant 1000000000% deserved that award.

And now I kinda wanna reread it...

Anyhow...

It also got super close to taking the Realm Book of the Year awards... If it had... my plan was to jump up and wave my copy around and pray fervently that I didnt let it slip out of my hands and fly into some poor applauders face. XD

Beyond that... Im gonna seal my lips... cause Im not sure how much Brigitte has actually announced to folks.

Now... Now....

Now...

Moving on.

My though process when I put the rest of these up is... Hm... these are the ones Im really curious about. The others I want to read... but they don't jump out and bite my nose like these ones do.

Anyhow. Lets work from the top with these images...

Most of this is my attempt at getting a hold on the Dystopian Genre. Why and what is it... what am I missing? Its fascinating in theory... unfortunately Ive seen very little true dystopian that has really given me the depth I expected from it.

Anyhow.

Calculated has been recommended over and over. And since we had the opportunity to meet Nova McBee and to purchase her books... I went all in. So there's that. Nova is a super neat lady, and I'm hoping that upon reading those books I can reach out and have a discussion. Assuming that these are as effective as everything I've heard.

Fight Write... I met with Carla Hoch for one of the mentorship sessions... And not gonna lie... Id go back just to get an hour conversation with Carla. She's got her brain CHOCK FULL of Fight Write... I asked a question... turns out I asked the semi-wrong one, but by the time we finished the 15 minutes I walked out grinning like nobodies business, far more intelligent, ready to read Fight Write and like... all my questions were answered... without any real gaps in the armor.

Just to say, if Carla ever comes across this, and I mean to tell her whenever I reach out, the rambling or "getting off on tangents" as she apologized for... is what made that so beneficial me. The energy was awesome and I gleaned more from that than almost anything else I did when I was there.

Also pro tip... Apparently medieval/ancient age women would have been given something more like a spear or a polearm that was decently light for defence... rather than your Katniss bow or whatever other ranged things seem to pop up... The sling I guess- well... you get the picture. I always deemed polearms as too much for a small in frame country gal... But she made a great point... Farmers are dangerous... maybe less so with strict Chivalry-esque swordsmanship... but they know where vital areas are, they have an idea how to hunt. The butcher and dress their kills as well... they are more well equipped than we give them credit for in fantasy...

Anyhow.

Next up...

The Dogs of War won a realm award and Ive heard pretty good things about it... But Susie bought that one before I could add it to my stack... so I substituted with some other books by the same author... Emily Hayse. Super excited to see what her novels are like

Steal The Morrow, I read a chapter deep into all the books to get a feel for them... that one made me get close to tears... No wonder though its a retelling of Oliver/Robin Hood... Closer to the musical Oliver! than the book I hear tell... but still.

And "A Time To Die" Ive heard lots, but know almost nothing about it... Im interested to say the least. Call back later for advice

In other news... The conference itself was pretty good. It was a lot of walking... but I do that regularily so big deal... Ummm The teen track wasnt quite what I needed, but it was decent, and the other sessions... there were some really good ones and some really basic ones. Thats what I'll say.

I have to say, its a lot harder to pull into something when you dont quite fit into the crowd. Im a historical fiction author primarily... Not speculative... But I can typically ignore that and glean anyways... which I did and I am glad I went to Realm Makers.

During that time... I got my mom to listen to Vol. 1-2 of Emma M Lion and I think I have recruited another Lionheart to the cause.

Im trying to ration those books too... cause my impulse upon finishing a volume is to buy a new one... So... I made a deal... "Read x books and then you can buy the next one."

Its satisfactory and Im holding my wallet with a will of iron steel and bronze... Titanium? I dunno,

Anyways.

That was Gils random coagulated thoughts on the conference and all the random tidbits that I wished to share...

So long for now.

And thanks for coming...

And I read Hunger Games. Ill share about that on Friday for y'all folks... cause I have some thoughts.