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Octocon was this past weekend, and a fine Octocon it was!

I decided to do a dealer’s table at the last minute, and it went…well. I brought jam and books. About…70 jars of jam, and 30-40 books. In fact, I had to restock for the second day, because what I’d brought on day one had sold out to the tune of about 80%, which was sort of Beyond My Expectations. I don’t seem to have gotten a picture of the books on day one, but (first photo courtesy of, by which i mean ‘nabbed from the twitter feed of’ Octocon :)):

This is what was left at the end:

This morning my Twitter timeline was full of people full of jam (pics courtesy of Shelly!):

all gone! — Good news: @ce_murphy makes amazing pear jam.
Bad news: I ated it all.

So…yes. That went well! Next year I need to bring sampling jars (and a toaster, someone said *laughs*), but it certainly went well enough to do it again. (One of the other vendors said he’d had a friend in the dealer’s room last year, and the friend had said to him, “There was a woman beside me selling JAM,” which he obviously thought was baffling, and the vendor relating this story said he’d said, “*Jam*? You’re pulling me leg,” but the guy had sworn that no, there was someone selling JAM, and look: here I was again!

Then he bought five jars. :))

I also handed out fudge:

and I tell you what, it was a spectacularly good batch and the only reason I shared is because I am a MAGNIFICENTLY NICE PERSON. A number of people asked if I was selling fudge. I wasn’t, just handing it out, but IDK, guys, what do you think, a cottage industry? Miz Kit’s (or Mrs Murphy’s, for Added Irishness) Jams & Fudges?

OMG my friend Kate (pictured above) was ROCKING her Rogue look this weekend, O.M.G!!!!

I was just ADMIRING HER ALL WEEKEND, OMG!! ♥!

There was also a perfectly stunning Agent Carter in a perfectly stunning blue dress the EXACT SAME COLOR as mine, like, to the point that I caught a glimpse of the *color* from the corner of my eye and thought: That woman is an Agent Carter! And she was! So we bonded. :) And then she saw my name badge and was like “! You’re CE Murphy! I loved your gargoyle books!” So we bonded more. *laughs* It was really lovely to meet her and I’m feeling inspired to do cosplay because of her. ♥

I did a few panels (fewer than I was supposed to, because there were a couple late night ones I was meant to do on Saturday but I decided to check the train times at the last minute and it turned out if I did the late panels I wouldn’t be getting home until 1am and nooooo. I was much too tired for that.). They were all a lot of fun, and to my UTTER DELIGHT, the reading Saturday morning netted at least 3 sales of BEWITCHING BENEDICT. I wasn’t at *all* sure how a comedic Regency romance would go over at a SF convention, but I gave it a shot anyway. I read the lemonade scene and got a lot of laughs, and then people came to buy the book! I was so happy! Several people who bought it said “I don’t usually read romance, but the reading was so funny/I like your writing/I’ll give it a shot,” which just fills me with joy. ♥!

An advantage of being at the dealer’s table was people came to me, which was wonderful! And I got to chat with a lady I’d just met on Twitter who is a CE Murphy reader and who runs a collectibles business (Uncanny Collectibles), so that was wonderful, and it was just a really nice weekend. And I’m super tired and have to get to work now. :)

So Octocon was great fun. I went into it tired (because i was an IDIOT and i got a new phone on THURSDAY and i couldn’t get it to update properly and i stayed up until TWO IN THE MORNING getting it working right, the day before a weekend-long convention started!) and had a panel Friday night so I had to be vaguely functional through that, and more or less was.

It was a weekend of selfies because I didn’t have the camera with me a lot because I couldn’t find the purse that more or less went with my outfits. :)

Friday night pincurls & rebellion T that I designed. For some reason I always feel like a particular badass with the pincurls and do-rag. :) Got lots of compliments on the shirt. :)

Ted was one of the judges for the Golden Blasters Film Festival, so he was busy Friday night watching the films, but we had dinner with Nicholas and Mikaela before that, and we managed a bit of saying hi to everybody before collapsing into bed at a relatively sensible hour. I had Saturday morning panels while Ted set up our stuff in the dealer’s room and went to get Young Indiana from Dad’s house, where he’d stayed overnight.

Saturday morning. The idea was to become increasingly glam throughout the day. :)

I brought about 50 jars of jam and jelly and we sold them all. I also sold some books, but the jam went really fast. O.O :) Ted, who had (has, poor guy) a cold, brought Indy home Saturday evening after Indy charmed everybody he spoke with all afternoon and was a genius at pitching the wares (“Magic & Manners! That’s 15 euro! RAVEN HEART is 5 euro! The jam is four euro each!”).

Indy and author Paul Anthony Shortt at the dealer's table! — Indy and author Paul Anthony Shortt at the dealer’s table!

Indy took this one. Slightly more glam. :)

I spent the day becoming increasingly glam…

…until I was dressed as Agent Carter from the Marvel movie universe for the evening’s Rebellion Ball.

(The decorations for the ball were SO GOOD! The theme was ‘rebellion’ because the Irish Easter Rising was in 1916, so it’s a big thing around here this year, and they’d done up crepe paper banners with all kinds of symbols of SFF rebellions, and had screens with the Matrix code and it was great!)

Honestly, I had every intention of bailing on the ball around 10:30pm and falling into bed, except we were all having so much fun dancing and talking that I stayed up until the music ended, and then, intending to sensibly go to bed then instead of going to the bar, had someone say, “Agent Carter, your mission is not yet finished,” and that was pretty much an irresistable pitch, so I toddled off to the bar to chat until I almost literally fell over at about 1:30 and figured that was Quite Late Enough.

Marvel represents with Agent Carter & the Winter Soldier ("the two loves of Steve Rogers' life," as a friend said!) — Marvel represents with Agent Carter & the Winter Soldier (“the two loves of Steve Rogers’ life,” as a friend said!)

I took a super hot bath at 1:45am and felt good about my life choices as I went to bed. :)

I thought I had two panels on Sunday and only had one, which was good because I was pretty loopy. Everybody was getting pretty loopy, in fact. *laughs* Octocon is a small convention, but it’s full of love and friends and we had a wonderful time.

Less glam on Sunday morning, but still rocking a pretty good eye-makeup game :)

I *was* kinda crushed that I managed to get to not *one* of the Guest of Honor things, what with being either on a panel or at the dealer’s table during everything they were doing, but that’s the kind of thing that happens, so there you go. :) It was a lovely weekend and I got home last night and stayed up and talked with Ted a while, fell into bed, got up to bring Henry to school this morning and came home to take a 2.5 hour nap on the couch, which I really never do. I could go back to sleep, too, omg, but it was such a nice weekend. Thank you to all the staff and volunteers and everybody!

Octocon 2017!

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Octocon 2016

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