There are many reasons to love Ad Astra.

It’s enough of a fan con to have a masquerade ball, cosplay, a lego salon, and an anime screening room, but enough of a reader/writer con to have workshops (writing, costume construction, and more), excellent panels for professional development (writing craft, business, research, and fan-based discussions), readings, and great opportunities to network with other authors and industry professionals.

The Guest of Honour Brunch: you get to eat good food and go all fangirl (or –boy) sitting with one of your favourite authors, editors, or agents.

Aside from the con suite, there’s an entire floor of the hotel devoted to special events, book launches, and special interest parties.

There is an art salon as well as the dealers’ room, so you can always find something on which to spend your non-existent disposable income 😛

Astronomy in the parking lot. Need I say more?

It’s local (a four-hour drive for me), and so I don’t have to incur the expense of air fare.

Because it’s a convention, the registration fee is extremely reasonable.

So, I have enough money to feed my book addiction 🙂

Mind you, this year, I got almost as many free books as I bought.

I would highly recommend that any genre author attend at least one convention. Try it out and see if you like it. I get a lot of value out of my attendance and some encouragement to try new and different conferences and conventions.

Next year, I may even try to get on a few Ad Astra panels myself.

This will be the end of reporting until Can-Con in October. This will be a new convention experience for me, so look forward to lots of Writerly Goodness in the fall.

Up next: The next chapter.