Eh. Not really. It was the worst convention I ever went to and I'll never go again. For starters, I attended with a friend who said she'd gotten us a room. She was on a shoestring budget, so I was surprised. The hotel there was full, so I said, sweet! She didn't tell me that we were sharing this room with NINE other people whom I didn't know, four of whom stayed up all night arguing, and three of the others were massive women who snored/gasped for air all night long so loud I had a hard time falling asleep on the freezing cold floor in January with no pillow. They all had "back problems", so they got the beds (and blankets).

The attendees broke the elevators early into the convention, of course. There were so many scooters.

Again, friend was on shoestring budget, so, the next day we hadn't eaten and it was coming up lunchtime. I had spent the whole morning wandering around just trying to get away from everybody. It was like Tumblr in real life. My friend said they did a "snack area" and it was free, so we could hit it up for lunch. I was doubtful at this point, but I was just sort of marking time until we could leave, so I went along with her to the snack area. Sure enough, it looked like someone had opened up five family-size bags of Tostitos onto the floor and then stamped on them for an hour, then put a couple of empty tables covered in salsa puddles and overturned salsa bowls in the middle. A few guys in Rascal scooters were orbiting the mess, prowling for crumbs. "Oh, looks like the snacks are already gone," said my friend. "That's a shame. I always love the nachos here." Nachos and salsa for lunch? Blech. I convinced my friend to leave the fucking hotel for five fucking seconds to go get a Subway sandwich with me. Surprisingly, the Subway store was deserted, even though there weren't any other restaurants in the area. I guess everybody else was on a shoestring budget. I don't like Subway, but was thankful to get at least something that wasn't chips and salsa.

The merchandise room was filled with creepy guys selling fetish gear, pushy women selling their self-published sci-fi vampire erotica novels, and tons of occult and Wiccan bullshit. It was stupid.

Later that evening they had an ice cream social. Free, of course, so my friend just had to go - that was going to be our dinner! Ice cream for dinner? No thanks, I thought, but I tagged along. It was pretty much the same scene as the snack room before. Empty ice cream tubs, ice cream spilled on the floor, and hams sitting around quietly grazing on their sugar, focused on their plates. No conversation. Just eating.

I was hoping to meet brilliant sci-fi feminist authors but got a rude awakening. I'd still like to finish my sci-fi novel, but I don't want to be lumped in with this seething mass of Twilight-ripoff writers. The whole debacle was enough to put me off writing for a very long time.

So that was it. Nothing spectacular, just a really lame con, and I was sort of trapped there because I didn't have my car with me. Zero stars, would not do again, did not in fact ever do it again.

Fuck conventions.