Here I am, blogging once again! There must be something in the water over here in Silver Lake because usually I like to give it a good six months between entries. Or maybe I'm just procrastinating on writing my next book. Or maybe it's the fact that my dog Hudson is currently asleep on my feet and I can't move.

Anyway, hellooooooo.

So my summer has been very interesting so far. My mom and I are gearing up to take surfing lessons soon, so of course I'm watching TV and reading and doing absolutely nothing to build my upper body strength and lung capacity. This should be a hoot. I'm also writing writing writing and deleting deleting deleting. I used to make fun of an old writing teacher who used to say "Writing is rewriting" and now karma has obviously come back to bite me. My bad.

Oh yeah! I also went to Comic-Con!

I have some friends who work in various aspects of the superhero/graphic novel/cool stuff worlds (hi guys!), so I usually go down to San Diego to visit them and say hello, and then I bail and drive home before all the shenanigans begin. This year, though, I stayed and even ventured onto the convention floor. 

In a word: WHOA.

The first thing you should know about Comic-Con is that people are really friendly. The second thing you should know is that most of them are dressed in costumes. The only costume I own is my Halloween "Beer Wench" costume that I got at Target four years ago, and if you think that I was gonna wear that at Comic-Con, you have another think coming. (Just a piece of advice: if you're going to a Halloween party, don't dress as a beer wench.)

After arriving, I hopped on the escalator along with dozens of other people, including one guy who was dressed as a chef covered in blood. I had absolutely no idea who he was supposed to be, but again, I don't know a lot about the comic world. But I was at Comic-Con! Everyone's so friendly! One man had already told me that I look "surprisingly normal"! When in Rome, right? I turned around to ask.

Me: Um, hi! What's your costume supposed to be?
Chef Covered in Blood: (holds up bleeding hand)

So it turns out that he really was a hotel restaurant chef who cut himself and was on his way to the emergency room! And lo, my trip to Comic-Con had begun.

If you've never been on the convention floor at Comic-Con, you can totally recreate the experience at home! First, stand in your living room. Next, pile approximately 83904920 people into the room with you. Make sure you have at least one person whose costume involves strategically-placed horns and another two who don't believe in deodorant. Third, give everyone the exact same cell phone ring so that all of those 83904920 people dive for their phones whenever one rings. Then, right when people start moving in an orderly fashion, have another person stop walking abruptly to take a picture of something (preferably Strategically-Placed Horn Dude), causing everyone else to run into one another.

Oh yeah, and make sure that Iron Man walks through the room a few times. 

I might be exaggerating just a tad. The floor can definitely be claustrophobic, but trust me, it's a hell of a lot of fun. It's a bunch of fans all in one room, and everyone's excited to be there! How often does that happen?

I managed to extricate myself from the crowd long enough to find Stephanie Perkins and her cool husband Jarrod Perkins. You may know Stephanie from such books as "Anna & the French Kiss" and the upcoming "Lola & the Boy Next Door". Hudson's super excited about "Lola", in case you didn't know.

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The look on his face clearly says, "Give me my treat or I'll pee all over the floor."

Anyway, I managed to find Stephanie and Jarrod in the crowd and we decamped back to the hotel bar. But not before having our picture taken with The Royal Waffle, of course!

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I think it says volumes about my & Stephanie's personalities that in a convention filled with hundreds of superheroes, we made sure to get our picture taken with The Royal Waffle.

The best part was when the waffle's sidekick (who I WISH was dressed as a pat of butter!) asked if we wanted to hold the fork in the photo. Lady, we're already posing WITH A WAFFLE. A WAFFLE WHO HAS LEGS AND IS WEARING A ZORRO MASK. Why do you think we'd draw the line at a fork? (Also, why the Zorro mask? You're a giant waffle. You're sort of recognizable.)

Anyway, we finally made it back to the hotel bar.

And then this happened:

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I honestly don't remember if I shoved Steph and Jarrod out of the way when I saw this, so if I did, I apologize.

Comic-Con in a nutshell: the Mad Hatter and Alice in Wonderland sitting at the hotel bar. I think I had three separate aneurysms when I saw this. Do you even know how much self-control it took for me not to rush over and ask if they were having half a cup of tea?!? NO YOU DO NOT OMG. But seriously, it was like my childhood dream coming to life.

Also, I'm totally dressing up as Alice next year.

After I calmed down, Stephanie & Jarrod & I started talking. And what do you know, it turns out that it was their tenth anniversary that day! Champagne all around! Then Laini Taylor and her husband Jim showed up, along with their daughter Clementine Pie, who is as adorable as you would imagine a child named Clementine Pie to be. 

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Me & Stephanie. Why yes, I am investing in loose powder, thank you for asking! Also, either Laini or her husband Jim took this photo. Or maybe it was Jarrod. Photo credit to everyone!

Here's the thing about hanging out and talking with other writers: it is so nice. Sometimes, when you're sitting alone at your desk and deleting deleting deleting, it can be stressful. And also really scary. Sometimes, you need to talk to someone else and tell them how *#@! hard it was to write your second book and how you thought that maybe you did it all wrong, and how you cried when that one person said your book was "meh" and how you cried when another person said that it made them want to write books, too. Writers need their version of the office water cooler, too, and if it happens at a hotel bar during Comic-Con while the Mad Hatter and Alice are drinking at the bar, well, that's just the way it goes.

At the end of the trip, Comic-Con turned out to be a huge, refreshing, kick in the pants. I've worked in the publishing industry for ten years and for ten years, the sky has been falling. Only now, the chunks seem to be getting bigger. Borders is gone, e-books are on the rise, piracy is up (OMG STOP STEALING BOOKS WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU IT'S CALLED A LIBRARY USE IT), and I'm not gonna lie, sometimes it's hard to sit down and put words on the page when all I can think about is whether I'll have a job in five years.

It took me two weeks to wonder whether or not to write this blog post, mostly because I didn't want to sound like I'm complaining. The fact that I get to write books for a living still blows my mind. It's the best job I've ever had, hands down. But sometimes? It's really scary. The pay is sporadic. There's no health insurance or retirement benefits. I'm still learning how to sort the business from the writing, and it doesn't help when I'm working on a chapter and my dog is sitting there like, "Hurry! Write faster! I need more Greenies!"

But Comic-Con helped ease my worries because at the end of the day, there will always be fans.

I don't mean MY fans (hiiiiii, fans, ilu) but fans in general. People who wear horns and masks and dress up like their heroes because it's fun. People who fill 6000+ seats in Hall H simply because they want to see the actors and creators who bring their favorite stories to life. It reminded me that my job is to tell those stories, to write them like I always have.

My favorite thing that happened at Comic-Con (aside from The Royal Waffle, of course) was Andrew Garfield's speech at "The Amazing Spider-Man" panel.

This is the part that stuck with me:

I think that we all wish we had the courage to stick up for ourselves more, to stick up for a loved one more, or even a stranger you see being mistreated, and Peter Parker has inspired me to feel stronger. He made me, Andrew, braver. He reassured me that by doing the right thing, it's worth it. It's worth the struggle, it's worth the pain, it's worth even the tears, the bruises, and the blood.

He's right.

So thanks to my friends who let me crash in their hotel rooms, thanks to Laini & Stephanie for reminding me how much fun it is to talk with other writers, and thanks to all the fans (even you, Strategically-Placed Horn Dude) who let their geek flags fly. I can't wait to do it again next year.

Assuming, of course, that I survive surfing lessons.