Fresh Fiction’s own Kate Cornell attended Comic-Con International this month, and she was kind enough to share her awesome experiences with us. Welcome, Kate! Comic-Con International: San Diego. Once upon a time, it was a a convention celebrating comic books. It has since become the place to premiere, explore, and celebrate the world of all things sci-fi and fantasy. This year, I packed up my car and made the nerd pilgrimage down from LA. I had a deal with myself that, if I was able to go in as a professional, I would go in costume. Great choice. If you go, you’ll find so many people celebrating their fandom with amazing costumes, it’s exciting to join them. While so much of SDCC is hurry up and wait (I’ve never been so excited to stand in line!), there is one important thing you have to remember about Comic-Con: make your own good time. On Friday, after, naturally, standing in line for 3 hours to get into a party on an aircraft carrier (yes, literally, an aircraft carrier), we were turned away at the door. Disappointed, foot sore, and a little angry, we ventured back toward the convention center in search of…

I wanted to be a published writer for as long as I can remember but I didn’t actually get it done until I was older than I’d care to say. In the run-up to crossing the proverbial threshold I was reasonably prepared for rejection and got a good workout on that score, to wit, sixty-six literary agents told me to pound sand before one said, yeah, I’ll give you a shot. But I was frankly unprepared or even aware of a number of other things which turn out to be fairly important to the life and times of a working writer, or at least this working writer. Here are the top-five things I didn’t know in advance. And by the way, even if I had known them it wouldn’t have changed my mind one bit about aspiring to the writer’s life. 1. A good third of everything I do is geared to the business of being a writer as opposed to writing. I had no idea! Maybe I’m less efficient than other writers or maybe it’s a function of the fact that I chose not to single worldwide deals for my books or even single English-language deals. I have separate…

Since Netflix started offering complete seasons of television series available for streaming, I started hearing the team “binge watched”. Even before Netflix, I was buying DVDs of my favorite shows and then devoting a weekend to watching episode after episode, no commercials, no waiting a week for the next installment. Bliss! (I can actually admit to watching all the seasons of ANGEL on DVD in one weekend more than once! LOL) But TV seasons aren’t the only binges out there. Before I was a writer, I spent every spare moment being an avid reader and series were always my favorite! However, waiting for the next book in a series I loved was NOT! 🙂 Now that my Night Series is complete, I’ve started hearing from “binge readers”. They typically wait until a series is complete, then load up their eReader with all the books and dive in for a week of total fictional escape! Sounds fun, right? Are you a Binge Reader? Have you ever tried it? My Night Series is now complete! It centers around a secretive race of immortal blood drinkers called, Night Walkers. They’re actually descended from the mysterious Mayan civilization and have been living among us…