I had a good time at OSFest in Omaha, Nebraska. The convention was smaller than I anticipated, so profit was virtually out of the question since I stayed in the hotel. But I made the most of the situation and broke even, as well as making several new contacts and potential friends.
I got a ton of compliments on my display, and some people wanted pictures of it.
Some, including my neighbors at the booth next to mine, got dressed up in pirate fashion to take advantage of the pirate discount I was offering.
It was my first convention with a dealer table where I had hardcover books to sell, and they went over quite well. I outsold many of the other authors, though this was in part due to being near all the other vendors (unlike several of the other authors).
There was an area of the main room where kids were constructing a cardboard version of Tokyo, which would be destroyed by monsters at the end of the con. However, while opening up the room divider for the dealer room on Sunday morning, the divider smacked one of the sprinklers on the ceiling.
Water started gushing from the ceiling and the fire department didn't manage to stop it until it had been going for nearly half an hour. Fortunately no dealer goods were damaged, and they let us stay in the dealer room much later due to the delay, but Tokyo was destroyed "by tsunami" (image swiped from "Jim's Sci-Fi Blog" http://jimsscifi.blogspot.com/2015/08/my-weekend-at-osfest-8.html).
I didn't sit on any panels as the ones I was interested in were all during vendor hours and I was there alone. Perhaps I can make it out to the Midwest Pirate Festival in September with a helper! I mostly bummed around the room parties and karaoke room (note: singing "Silent Lucidity" goes over well). I spent much of Saturday night with a local writers' group at Village Inn restaurant and that was a good time.
With the exception of one guy who took exception to my laser pointer--apparently a war vet who is fine with replica guns but not laser pointers--everyone was very friendly, and I'd like to see this convention get bigger once again. As it is the first year under new leadership, hopefully that will happen.
For now, I have to get back to writing book 2 and planning the rest of the year's convention appearances. I'm trying to get into Geek Kon in Madison, Wisconsin right now, but the next confirmed event is the Minnesota Renaissance Festival's Pirate Weekend (Sept 5-7) in the International Bazaar.