When this brand new event was announced in spring of 2024, I submitted an interest form simply because you miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take. I was both shocked and thrilled to be accepted as a signing author to the first Queers and Quills! I hadn’t been back to the West Coast in almost a decade, and I’d never visited Portland. But as time passed and I had such a good impression of the organization and communication in the lead-up to the event, I knew the extra expense of traveling clear across the country would absolutely be worth it.
Thursday
Of course, an event on the other side of the country means a cross-country flight, with a 3-hour time zone change. By the time I arrived in Portland in early afternoon, I’d already been up since midnight local time and drank sooooo much coffee (including from a robot barista in the Denver airport). A coworker from my day job who lives in the area was kind enough to drive me from the airport to the event hotel. The time meant my room was not yet ready, so I acquired yet more coffee and avoided the comfortable lobby couches (which would have promptly knocked me out) and ended up hanging out with the volunteer leaders while they finalized details (again, impressing the hell out of me with both their organization and kindness for a random exhausted author). When I was finally able to check into my room, I got a short nap before meeting a friend for an impromptu adventure around Portland while we ran some errands, followed by a lovely dinner at the hotel restaurant. (Followed by me promptly returning to my room and passing out once more.)
Wait! Don’t I usually have the amazing author Rory Maxwell with me on these writing adventures lately? Never fear — her flight landed later that night. She was a fabulous PA for me during the actual book signing and is overall an excellent emotional support human.
Friday
Sadly, Rory had a difficult week before heading for Portland, with her beloved 21-year-old kitty Kyuubi crossing the rainbow bridge a few days earlier. She made an appointment for her first tattoo at a cool shop outside of Portland for Friday morning, and I went along for moral support. I also proved the adage true that you take 10 years to pick your first tattoo and 10 minutes to pick your second. While Rory got a gorgeous memorial to both her cats on her forearm, I snagged a walk-in slot with another artist and got the Watchers symbol from Highlander: The Series below my Stargate sign on my upper back. If the Stargate tattoo represents home, the second represents writing, since Highlander was my first foray into fanfic and a writing community. (Don’t worry, the third symbol I have planned for the trifecta requires the cooperation of my two best friends and can’t be nearly as impulsive.)
We returned to the event hotel in time to attend one of the weekend’s panels. Kate Hawthorne moderated a fabulous conversation about realism in kink and consent with Meryl Wilsner, Heather Nix, Lance Lansdale, Alethea Faust, and Ashley Herring Blake. (Why yes, I did get this excellent picture because I sat in the front row like a total nerd fangirl.)
Authors were fortunate enough to have time that evening to set up for the next day’s signing, which alleviated much of my stress for the following morning. Afterward, I was able to have dinner with Alethea Faust and actually spend time getting to know them, since we didn’t get much social time at the last event we attended together. They are absolutely as cool in person as they appear online!
Saturday
Time for the big day! I was honored to be selected for a panel discussion on Saturday morning on neurodiversity and mental health representation. I’m an “own voices” author for that category, and I’m passionate about both accurate representation in my fiction and removing stigma in real life. Heather Nix moderated a conversation that also included authors Leslie McAdam, Annabeth Albert, Ashley Herring Blake, and Abigail Taylor. We packed a lot of emotion into the hour, as Abigail and I humorously shared how we deal with the same issues in completely opposite ways, and Leslie brought us all to tears with a story of how one of her books helped a reader.
Then, time for the big signing! Rory knows me pretty well at this point, performing her primary PA function of shoving food at me so I didn’t power through the day on the strength of caffeine and adrenaline alone. The afternoon passed quickly with a steady stream of readers asking me to sign my story in the event-exclusive charity anthology, along with others stopping by to say hi or learn about my work.
Despite our combined jet lag and standard post-event introvert exhaustion, Rory and I joined a few friends for dinner in the hotel restaurant, then made a brief appearance at the evening’s “Re(a)d” party!
Sunday
After a delicious farewell brunch with other authors and readers, I sent Rory off to the airport for her flight back east with one of my suitcases full of signing gear. Why didn’t I go with her? Because my epic West Coast adventure wasn’t over! First, I had a day to kill in Portland, which obviously included a pilgrimage to Powell’s Books. Later in the day, I caught the train and headed north…
The Next Two Weeks…
Shortly after finding out I’d been invited to be an attending author at Queers and Quills, I spent Thanksgiving with some of our best friends in Atlanta. We introduced them to cruising a few years ago, and we’d already been talking off and on about an Alaskan cruise. Well, since I was already going to be on the West Coast, we found the soonest cruise after the event and booked it!
Before my spouse and friends joined me to sail out of Seattle on Friday, I stayed at an AirBnB in Puyallup, Washington, where I lived for the 5 years before graduating high school while my parents were stationed at nearby military bases. I had the perfect setup to work during the day and spend the evenings catching up with old friends…and a few old places. I spent time one afternoon driving around to the schools and church I attended and the two houses I lived in. For an amazing 3 years, I had the privilege of this Mt. Rainier view outside my bedroom window (literally, I took that picture standing on the street outside my former backyard).
Our 7-day cruise on the Anthem of the Seas was amazing! We toured some amazing small towns and national parks, and we saw glaciers, humpback whales, orcas, and seals along the way. (I was also very cold. If you’re on the Rainbow Readers Cruise with me later this summer and catch me complaining about the August heat in Key West, just remind me about June in Alaska.)
Next Up
- RomantiConn (July 25-26, 2025; Trumbull, Connecticut)
- Rainbow Readers Cruise (August 11-15, 2025; Celebrity Reflection)
Attending any of these events? My books are available for preorder!
Final Haul
Note: Links go to my available reviews of any previously read books.
Me: I’m not going to preorder many books, only from authors that I won’t get a chance to see again anytime soon.
Also Me: And I’m not going to buy any books at the signing. I’d have to figure out how to get them all home.
My suitcases and Rory’s suitcases after the signing: LIES. ALL LIES.
- Official Queers and Quills con badge and welcome kit, including an amazing hand lotion that my new tattoo and I put a major dent into over the next 2 weeks
- My copy of Closer, the limited-edition event collection, which includes my short story “Integrity First” (featuring characters from the world of my Core Values Collection)
- So many cool stickers and other swag, some from fellow authors and some gifted to me by readers who stopped by my table!
- Tallowwood, The Kite (Milvus Files #1), and The Bait (#2) by N.R. Walker
- Out of the Ashes (Metahuman Files Classified #1), New Horizons (#2), Fire in the Heart (#3), and A Ferry of Bones and Gold (Soulbound #1) by Hailey Turner
- Blood in the Water by Kate Hawthorne & E.M. Denning
- Cried Out (Trophy Doms New York #3), The Villain’s Beast (Thorned Vows #1), and The Hitman’s Prince (#2) by Kate Hawthorne
- Kiss and Cry by Keira Andrews
- ILYBSM by J.E. Birk, Rachel Ember, and Leslie McAdam
- Four Ever, Always Mine (Love in Eden #1), and His Cowboy Heart (#2) by Sloane Kennedy
- T-shirt and canvas bag from Powell’s Books!
- The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin and A Deadly Equation by Naomi Novik (because apparently I was not done with impulse book buying for the weekend)
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