by Kate

Our lovely intern Elizabeth is going to do a round-up of GenreCon later this week, but I thought I’d throw up a quick 25 list of my own in homage to the international guest of honour.

1. Chuck Wendig – even cooler in person than online (and I thought that was impossible)
2. Being asked to do a Q&A with Chuck Wendig. No, those questions won’t be posted online; that was a one-off performance. But it was a highlight of my life thus far.
3. Temporary tattoos. Honestly, is there another industry where temporary tattoos are allowed, nay, encouraged?
4. Serious eye make-up and kick-ass boots. See above for temporary tattoos.
5. In fact, my whole kick-ass urban fantasy heroine costume for the cutlasses and kimonos banquet was a complete highlight for me.
6. Men. Romance conferences are so awesome, but there’s a definite feminine energy to the place. Adding men is a whole new vibe, and it was invigorating.
7. The State Library of Queensland. What a great venue.
8. The GenreCon ninjas – such an amazing team. They did an amazing job pulling everything together and deserve mountains of praise.
9. Talking about books. For hours on end, with people whose eyes never glazed over.
10. Learning about new books, and new authors, and new genres, and then talking about them more.
11. GenreCon Karaoke. Sure it was the first time, but I can see it becoming a thing.
12. Patrick O’Duffy‘s rendition of Total Eclipse of the Heart. It was life-altering.
13. My and Joel Naoum‘s rendition of The Gambler. You better believe I know when to hold ’em.
14. Meeting so many new people from all over Australia and all across the genre. And finding that regardless of which genre we love, we’re all just really genre people deep down.
15. Christina Brooke nailing character arcs and the way so many people talked about this session for the rest of the weekend.
16. Terminator, Alien, Speed – you name it, Rebekah Turner and Charlotte Nash covered it in an awesome panel about narrative structures in action movies.
17. Our hybrid genre panel with Sandy Curtis, Kim Wilkins, and Patrick O’Duffy – we talked about hybrid genres, sub-genres, mixing genres: but mostly we talked about writing the damn book. Write the book that’s in you.
18. T-rex erotica. Apparently dino erotica came up in more than one panel, but did those panels have Kim Wilkins miming what it would look like? Did they?
19. The Wire fangirls and boys totally taking over the antagonist panel because why wouldn’t they!??! (seriously, if you haven’t watched it yet, what are you waiting for??)
20. John Birmingham, Tom Clancy, and frozen hamsters. I think there was supposed to be a debate argument in there somewhere, but, honestly, who cares?
21. Anne Gracie dubbing John Birmingham ‘Paris’, in a nickname that’s sure to last the ages.
22. The Great Debate introducing new, genre-specific covers of both Girls Just Want to Have Fun and The Raven.
23. Neither Great Debate side of the debate actually debating anything.
24. #GCoz – because you seriously didn’t miss a thing.
25. The sheer number of ‘I miss GenreCon!’ tweets, blogs, facebook messages, emails, and phone calls that only prove just how fabulous the whole weekend was, and how much we’re looking forward to the next.

If you weren’t there, I’m sure you had great reasons. Make sure those reasons dissipate in time for GenreCon 2015, location to be announced!