Cosplay results & Yuma Renaissance Faire
Here are the results from the Wizard World: Portland Cosplay voting contest:
Harley Quinn – 9 votes
Tank Girl – 2 votes
Marty McFly – 2 votes
Warhammer 40K- 2 votes
Roland – 2 votes
Bane – 1 vote
Ms Harley Quinn, being the victor gets a complete set of my ebooks. Tank Girl, Marty McFly, Warhammer 40K, and Roland each get to choose one series, and they will get all the books in that series. Bane will get to choose one of my ebooks.
Looks like the next time I’ll be around a bunch of cospalyers will be June 19 – 21 at the Sacramento Wizard World.
Now, on to the Two Rivers Renaissance Faire in Yuma, AZ from last weekend.
I’ve decided to start recapping my weekend “adventures” at Renaissance Faires, conventions, and other events. A lot of people get really excited for me when they hear I’m a storyteller and writer, and I suppose at first it sounds really glamorous. part of what I want to do with these posts is to give people a behind-the-scenes look at my experiences in this crazy profession I’ve chosen for myself. The dilemma with this is, rarely are the events I attend 100% perfect, often times at no fault of the event’s organizers. While I want to be honest about my experiences, I am also aware that some people don’t take kindly to criticism. However, I am who I am, and I try to be as real and candid as possible…so…that being said…here we go…
I started off the ten-hour drive by picking up my buddy London and stopping by Strabucks. Because coffee. Originally, I was going to tackle this faire on my own, but thank all the gods that ever were that I asked London to go with me. He was an awesome traveling companion, and without him, the weekend would have been disastrous.
The Two Rivers Renaissance Faire is a fun little event. Three days, with Friday being a school day. It’s a much different feeling than faires in California. Crowds in Arizona are much less likely to “play along” in my shows without a little extra coaxing, with the exception of my middle show on Sunday, which, while small, rocked it out of the park. That being said, I think so many of audiences play along with the audience participation thing in California is because I usually have people familiar with the show which gets everyone else around them going a little more easily. Even with the audiences being quieter than I remember, I got lots of compliments from people about the stories and my performances. It was also a pretty low-key event, so I had plenty of time after the shows to chat with people, something I don’t really get a chance to do in the frantic bustle of faires closer to home.
Other great bits: Seeing old friends. Desiree, the producer, seems genuinely happy to have me at the faires. People I saw last year picking up the next books in the series because they loved my books that much. Getting asked to possibly do some library shows if I come back next year. Getting asked to perform on the “late night NC17 stage” on Saturday night. The Yuma faire is one of the few that stays open later on Saturday night, being 10pm for this event. The cool part about this is that I have a couple of stories that I don’t normally get to tell during a regular show during the day at a ren faire, because the stories are more than just a little naughty. Watching 100+ people’s faces drop when they figure out what’s really going on was AWESOME of EPIC proportions.
So…now onto the less glamorous stuff…that stuff that most people don’t think about when they say, “That’s so cool,” when I tell them what I do for a living.
First…my voice was crap. Back before I ran off to Wizard World Portland, I had been struggling with a head cold/flu thing. Thought I’d licked it, but I began to relapse Wednesday evening before heading down to Yuma. Friday was rough. By mid-Saturday I thought it would be a miracle if I could make it through all my shows on Sunday. Well, thanks to my pals Josh (who gave me some throat spray), Morgan (who gave me some throat coating tea), the Hungry Knight food vendor for keeping my cup full of hot water, and London for running back and forth to keep hot water in the cup and helping hawk the shows so I could save my voice, I managed to do my thing through every show. Normally, three days isn’t that big a deal. I manage just fine. But now I think that some of the Arizona ren faire people think I’m performing lightweight.
The Yuma ren faire site is right across the street from a U.S. Marine air station. So, all through the faire, we had all sorts of military aircraft flying over head. Sometimes these were fighters only a few hundred yards or so over the faire. So, when I heard someone talking about keeping cell phones out of site so that we didn’t kill the suspension of disbelief, I had to chuckle at the irony.
And then there was Sunday…Superbowl Sunday…so, yeah. That happened. Happens every year for this faire, and it turns out about how you expect…luckily, it’s a three-day faire…except Friday is “school” day…only…this year, the several thousand students that were supposed to show up…didn’t. I don’t know why. I heard some rumors, but I don’t do the rumor thing. I’m certain it had nothing to do with the faire or the promoters, because they were as surprised as the rest of us. On the up side, I heard from several of the other performers that I had some of the biggest audiences on Friday, which was certainly good to hear, and I had great crowds on Saturday. Even my smaller shows on Sunday did fairly well.
So, that’s all the news from the front lines of the Two Rivers Renaissance Faire in Yuma, AZ. Next stop: Life, the Universe, and Everything in Provo, UT.
