I had a one-day, zoom-in, zoom out appearance at the Romantic Times Booklovers Convention in Columbus today and aside from yet more driving added to my already prodigious weekly tally, it was actually a very good time — my panels were good and for my signing I got to sit next to Harley Jane Kozak, actress and mystery writer, who was just lovely and good company; we ended up exchanging books.

I also saw some friends (Holly Black, Kat Richardson, Sarah Zettel, Diana Rowland among them) and met some fun new folks, including Nicole Peeler, Carrie Ryan, Charlaine Harris, the aforementioned Ms. Kozak, and the crew at Romantic Times magazine, who were all very nice to me. Natalie Luhrs, the science fiction reviewer there, however, gifted me with perhaps the most evil CD ever created in the history of history. She frequents the comments here so I will let her reveal the black depths of her sinister compilation; suffice to say I expect it violates the Geneva conventions in an awesome sort of way.

In short: glad I went, even if only for the day.

I am off to the Romance Times Booklover’s Convention, at which I will do panels and sign books (and before the uninformed among you snicker, note that I am the recipient of a Romantic Times Critics Choice Award for The Last Colony, so they’ve been good to me) and hopefully see some friends. I’ll be gone all day, so have fun without me.

Tangentially related to this, let me congratulate my friend, paranormal romance writer Marjorie M. Liu, because yesterday marked the release of a video game based on her books: Tiger Eye Part I: Curse of the Riddle Box. The game, which is available for PC now (and for Mac in May) is a paranormal romance “casual game” that more or less follows the characters and events of Marjorie’s debut novel. You can learn more about the game by following the link above, and if you want to check it out, the game starts at just $6.99 (with deluxe versions costing a few dollars more).

I’m only slightly jealous Marjorie has a video game based on her book. Mostly I think it’s pretty cool.