Anticipation – Last Day
The last day of Anticipation saw the Convention enter into a bit of a wind-down mode with a reduced schedule of events & sessions and an early afternoon wrap-up for the Dealer’s Room.
The bad news I had to kick my day off with was that the one session I wanted to see, No User Servicable Parts Inside with Cory Doctorow on the panel, was either moved or cancelled from it’s 9am start. The good news, as I was grumbling away to myself back at our booth, was that Cory Doctorow (obviously not at the session either) came into the Dealer’s Room early to do the rounds and sign anything that booksellers may have. While I had nothing for him to sign, much to my chagrin, I did get the opportunity to meet him and chat for a moment about book cover art and Basilisk Books, the last Ottawa bookstore (now closed) to be solely dedicated to Sci-fi/Fantasy. Very cool!
While the convention program itself was winding down, the Dealer’s Room was quite busy with those who had items mentally tagged coming back to make their final purchases, others looking to spend their remaining cash on some last minute treats and of course those looking to grab a bargain before heading back home. The day ended up being far more lucrative than either of us expected with both Andrew and I having a steady number of sales and a couple big ones intermixed to really finish things off on a good note. With the influx of unexpected funds, I got to loosen the pursestrings a bit and do some buying myself. I manage to nab a 1st edition copy of John Wyndham’s 3rd book Jizzle, with jacket, in very good shape at an excellent price. A couple other booksellers decided to discount their stock to lighten the returning load a bit enabling me to snap up a number of great hardcovers and signed books at very attractive prices, including an early signed Guy Gavriel Kay first.Â
The booth beside us, ChiZine Publications, had a number of great books they’d recently published, of which a couple I had to grab.  What really caught my attention at their table though was a display of Loonie Dreadfuls, an awesome modern Canuck play on the great penny dreadfuls from days of yore. So, of course I bought up a copy of each (with one more hopefully coming in the mail) and will certainly keep a eye on their website for other forthcoming dreadfuls. Will also try and do a seperate post on them in the near future once I’ve read them all.  And of course not to forget my two princesses back home, I pick up a beautiful hand-made set of earrings for France from SuperChick Creations and a cute little hand sculpted and painted dragon for Emma from the talented folks at Creatures from El.
Again a big thanks to Andrew and his crew who were an absolute pleasure to work with and hopefully we will team-up again at future conventions and shows.  It was an excellent experience for both myself and the bookshop with 5 days filled of interesting panels, wonderful conversation, plenty of sales and promotion for the store, and of course the opportunity to meet and hob-knob with some amazing authors. Who could ask for more!
And just in case you thought that all was relatively calm at the Con, here are a couple pics of folks who decided to get into the full spirit of the Con and tour the tradeshow floor in full costume (these are the PG rated costumes 
).
  