One of the things I most love about the Seattle area is that we have a Doctor Who/British convention. What’s not to love about that? Toss in my ability to be a panelist and vendor and I’m sold!

This past weekend was Anglicon 2016, where I served on 5 panels, ran a game show, and co-ran a booth in the dealer’s room as Books & Chains. We arrived on Friday morning with 5 crates, most of which contained books. It took us about an hour to set up our booth, which was in a great location.

Oddly enough, Friday was our busiest day (at least it was in the dealer’s room). In fact, we sold so much we had to bring in an additional two boxes of stock on Saturday morning.

My first panel of the day was one I was moderating, David Tennant: Serious, Creepy, and Everything-in-Between, which went very well! We talked about the perks of being a villain and what we loved most about the underappreciated role of Barty Crouch Jr. At least Kilgrave (Jessica Jones) acted the way he did as a result of trauma and a misguided attempt at being loved. Barty was just evil. Psychotic even. We talked about Broadchurch and Duck Patrol, as well as Shakespeare and the Doctor.

The panel on podcasting was very educational as I picked up a few podcasts I hadn’t heard of and found out that BBC Radio has an app (of course it does).

And yes, that’s a light-up TARDIS light on my head in this shot. I was also wearing a TARDIS scarf.

The drive home Friday evening was rather speedy, and I was happy to sleep in my own bed rather than a hotel room. One of the perks of a local convention!

Saturday was my busiest day in terms of panels. I had a bright and early morning getting up at 6 AM, which is early thank you very much! At least it is for a night-owl writer! I had a 9 AM panel to moderate, which was the Alan Rickman Retrospective. I was rather surprised to learn that con committee member Dancin’ Dan does a spot on impression of Alan Rickman! All of his answers came in Mr. Rickman’s voice, which was a great way to have a panel. We watched over a dozen clips from Mr. Rickman’s career and mourned the loss of such a great actor.

The Sherlock panel went fairly well, though we focused more on the books than all media forms (a fact that wasn’t very clear from the description–sorry kiddos who wanted to talk more about the movies. Maybe next year?). Our booth has a booth dragon whose belly was full of Jelly Babies all of Friday and most of Saturday. Around two we ran out of Jelly Babies as they were quite popular with the kiddos. At noon was my QI game show, which turned out brilliant!

The above photo was snagged by scriptwriter and instructor John Lovett on his cell phone. From left to right: Dalek Clara (voiced by Shaylee Bell), author Todd McCaffrey, Esther Matheson, gamer Marcus Evenstar, author Raven Oak (me), and author Janine Southard. And yes, if you squint, that’s a Totoro on my laptop.

Janine and I both played the role of Stephen Fry and our topic was FADS. The rest of the folks up there were our contestants, who were all witty and awesome. Dalek Clara had the worst puns and threatened to kill us all quite a bit. In the end, Todd won the most points!

While Saturday was the busiest in the panels, it was rather slow in the dealer’s room. Despite that, we still sold a ton of books. We met a few awesome people as well, like the girl dressed up as Amelia Pond who got a pitch on voting for Harold Saxon from Agent Carter. 😉

My only real complaint was that the dealer’s room was tucked all the way in the back of the convention space. It was difficult to remember it was there and easy to walk past, hence the slow Saturday.

We also met this gentleman who built his own K-9. He even lifted it up so we could see how it moved. Pretty cool!

Sunday had one of the best panels I’ve ever been on: Moffatt is a Feminist. The panel was basically all of us discussing the evolution and de-evolution of female roles in Doctor Who, and how Moffatt might think he’s a feminist, but he’s not. We didn’t trash Moffatt for everything–we did discuss the good things he’s done for Doctor Who as well as the fact that every time Doctor Who changes directors, there is a love/hate cycle that occurs (much like when the show changes Doctors). It was a brilliant panel to be on!

Sunday was also the day that a group of us decided to cosplay Firefly. Yes, I know–Firefly isn’t a British TV show, nor is it related to Doctor Who, but we wanted to do it, so we did. That’s me up above as Kaylee Frye. I even had a Kaylee bear.

Instead of the bear patch Kaylee wears, the bear has a Kaylee patch on his jumpsuit. It’s way too adorable!

Also joining me in this crazy cosplay, actor Abie Eke cosplayed Zoe, complete with a bad-ass prop gun, and the chainmaille half of Books & Chains, Elise Kreinbring, played Wash. I loaned her my Wash dinosaurs, though it wasn’t necessary.

As she walked through a grocery store before the convention, a little boy recognized her and started calling out that it was “Wash’s Mom!” She ended up having a conversation with him and his parents. Parenting: They are doing it right!

My Anglicon ribbons are covering up the blue flower and fuzzy heart patches on my cosplay, but they are there (as is the teddy bear patch on my leg and the Mandarin).

Thanks to Barbara for taking these pictures of us together. Next year, we need to rope some people into cosplaying our shiny Captain, Jayne, Simon, and River. (I also have a full Jayne cosplay, but it’s much more fun being Kaylee!)

We sold books and chainmaille jewelry right up until closing time and managed to leave Anglicon with only 1 box of books. Overall, it was an excellent weekend!