Anime Expo and My Vida Loca

I can't say that I lead a double life. I'd say that there are many facets to my life. For each facet, there are circles of friends and associates. Then, there is the facet of my family and friends from back east and down south. For the most part, the facets rarely intersect. There is the odd occasion that one group will start chatting on Facebook with another group while commenting on something I posted or commented on. That is intriguing and sometimes scary. On Tuesday, I was checking my email on my phone and noticed that my in-laws were commenting on something Gabriel posted. Since his posts can get, shall we say, provocative and profane, this was deeply puzzling and worrisome. Jon's exact reaction was ohcrapohcrapohcrap! As it turned out, Gabriel had posted photos from the birthday party on his Facebook page. I think anyone can look at my page as it is public, so you can check them out here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3521712325953.2125064.1366419070&type=3 . Meanwhile, I really love this photo of me and Jon.

Photo courtesy of AX

At any rate, last weekend, a few facets of my life intersected. The fangirl, the writer, and the producer sides of my life converged at Anime Expo(AX), a huge convention that celebrates all things anime as well as manga and gaming. My primary mission was not to chase the cute and barely dressed cosplay boys. There are too many 'laws' about 'lewdness' and such. I was mainly there to meet the nice people I do freelance editing for at Digital Manga. Before Saturday, I only knew them via e-mail and the bi-weekly teleconference. The secondary mission was to visit my favorite webcomic authors who are behind the beautifully drawn and ever so naughty Teahouse Webcomic. I had another mission with Digital Manga. I was hoping to introduce Wendi Pini to someone in authority. We happened upon the President of the company. Of course, Ms. Pini introduced herself in Japanese. I thought about using my limited Japanese while introducing myself and telling him how much I enjoy working for DMG. But Japanese is a language with many types of speech from the very formal to the ultra casual. I couldn't remember in that instance if the greeting I was about to use was the appropriate level of formality. It could easily be a greeting that only yaoi characters would use. That would be a very rude thing to say to this friendly but clearly serious businessman. In the end, I greeted him in formal English. The encounter went very well, and he didn't even know about the big bag of cookies I brought to the booth. Hey, I know how to make an impression.

Gilder and Linneus

Cosplay and comic Linneus

After that, there were fangirl matters to attend to. This was not as easy as I thought it would be. The crowds were enormous, so it was difficult to browse the booths. There was always someone pressing you forward or backward. Unfortunately, it was never one of those shirtless young men in the tiny shorts pressing us. That would have been awesome. I did get to have a very nice visit at the Teahouse booth. I got a rose from the lovely Linneus in the flesh. Teahouse is a webcomic about a bordello filled with incredibly beautiful male and female employees. I discovered it while following yaoi related links. It's a naughty but very funny comic that has even inspired me to write the story The Companion for Full Metal Orgasm, a cyber sexpunk magazine out of Japan (Warning! This is some really racy stuff) . To thank them for their marvelous work, I brought them cookies. I walked away with a beautiful poster and an adorable key chain of my favorite character and inspiration, Gilder. I basically gushed at the ladies about how fabulous they were. I seldom get to be so silly. It was great fun.

In the midst of all of this and trying to find a Cthulhu plus toy, my friend Marie from my writing and retails world was hob nobbing with the legendary Wendy Pini and getting on rather well. It was neat to have two women I greatly admire hitting it off. One never knows if friends will mix well together. Believe me. I have the battle scars from the bad dinner parties to prove it. I now tend to entertain in small groups. But I digress.

Updates

This week, I'm handing in a pilot Jon and I have been working on for months. I want it out of my inbox before volume two of the latest manga series turns up. I also have some other projects that must be done before September. Many of the details on these projects are in my other blogs. In the yaoi blog, I'm talking about writing with music and the latest Soldier's title. You can find that here: http://sybpressyaoi.com. For updates on the web series go here: http://demonspawntales.blogspot.com/ .

Stay tuned!