ACW Episode 149 – No Family Members Allowed

Click on the thumbnail above to view the full-sized comic!

Hopefully, this post comes through okay. When I sat down to write it, my offline blogging software, Zoundry Raven, just sort of decided to quit on me and wouldn’t restart for anything. Of course, Zoundry hasn’t updated this software in a few years, so I guess it was just a matter of time. Let me know if the post comes out weird though.

Anyway, about this week’s comic. Every time I go to a con, I get asked the same question. Mike Pederson, who runs Ravencon (no relation to Zoundry Raven!), always asks about the Hubster and the kids, and wants to know when I’m going to bring them to a convention. The answer is NEVER. We tried, when Pixie was a year old, to take the whole family to a few conventions, and it was a disaster. The kids couldn’t sleep in the hotel room, which meant the adults couldn’t sleep either. In fact, at one con, Pixie got up at 2AM (she was sleeping in a trundle bed on the floor), picked up the phone, and ordered room service. That ended family convention attendance right there.

The fact is, I go to cons to work. Yes, I go to see people and have fun, too, but the main point of my being at a con is to work. I have a table to man all weekend long, and books and zines to sell. Plus because I write erotica, most of the panels I do tend to be held around 11PM or later, which makes staying in a hotel room with two children a problem. They’d wake up every time I walked into the room, if they weren’t already being kept awake by the room party down the hall.

And on top of it all, Hubster just isn’t interested in schlepping two kids around a con all weekend. I mean really, it’s a pain to travel with kids under normal circumstances, even when you go some place where you know the kids will have plenty to do. But at a science fiction convention? I don’t care how family friendly a con says it is, it cannot entertain my two little monsters all weekend long. They get bored, they get hungry, and then they go feral and that’s it for the Hubster.

So no family at cons. But I’m there, and isn’t that what matters?

Next convention I’m attending is Farpoint, February 17-19, in Maryland. Be there, or be… absent? I dunno. Just show up and buy issue two of Mustachequerade, okay?!