I'd had both hopes and reservations about this convention, which completes this year's show season. I'd hoped that, with the election over, people might finally be more willing to spend -- but I was concerned that, with things still unsettled and the economy still not in good shape, they'd also be more careful about their spending ( Read more... )

This weekend, we're at Grand Rapids Comic Con at DeVos Place in downtown Grand Rapids. This is our last event of 2024, and we're hoping for a strong finish.

If you're in the Grand Rapids area, we'd love to see you. We're in booths 806-810.

This is the second year of this new anime convention, put on by the people who run Planet Comic Con. The Kansas City Convention Center (Bartle Hall) is an expensive venue, so the booths are priced proportionately, and this is an election year, which means that people are less willing to spend. Also, we were somewhat down on our merchandise -- and ( Read more... )

This weekend we're in Kansas City for Planet Anime Kansas City. This is the second year of this anime convention, put on by the same people who do Planet ComicCon, and it does seem to be growing.

If you're in the Kansas City area, we'd love to see you come by and check out this new convention.

It's hard to discuss this one, given the sheer amount of stress caused by the issues with the van, and the problems of effectively trying to run two stores at once. I think it would've been a lot more enjoyable if things had gone smoothly -- but I'm not sure where we'd be financially. Our merchandise was selling a lot more slowly, but I'm not sure ( Read more... )

We're in Collinsville, Illinois this weekend for Archon, which is the St. Louis area's oldest science fiction convention. However, the trip down to it became Interesting in a way I could've done without -- the van began to vibrate as we headed down I-55 on the second day of the journey (after a visit to family Wednesday night). I was glad to get ( Read more... )

Here's an interesting panel at Tampa Bay Comic ConWhen we think of cosplay, we tend to think in terms of "adults playing make-believe," or of the people who go to extraordinary lengths to recreate the costume of a well-known character, and relish the challenge of realizing in the physical world "clothes made out of pure Awesome" from an anime or ( Read more... )

All week, I've been thinking of how, if we'd done Tampa Bay Comic Con as we had planned earlier this year, we'd be at various places in the process of getting down there. Today we would've been loading in -- and as I'm writing this, I'm sure that many of our fellow vendors are sitting in their vehicles in that huge line that forms around the Tampa ( Read more... )

If AnimeIowa's vendor hall hadn't waitlisted us this year, we'd be in Coralville, Iowa right now, hard at work in our booth. However, it may well have turned out for the best, since this way my husband was able to get a much-needed medical procedure taken care of, and will have plenty of time to recover before our next event in September ( Read more... )

We had actually not even planned to sell at InConJunction. When we saw that three other conventions were going to be lined up in the three previous weeks, we figured that four cons in a row would simply be too much. We'd just be panelists and otherwise hang out ( Read more... )