Sunday Salutations and the People of Liberty Con
Happy Independence Day America!
Welcome to the People of Liberty Con portion of our blog. We feature two polls this time - one to determine who does worst in photos and one to determine which of the Faces of Jason Cordova is your favorite! Again, with the heavy writer content, extra animal pictures; this time with puppies!
Chaos Critters: Moments in Time
This weeks Chaos Critters features puppies! These are Miniature American Shepherds - Aussies that have been bred to be smaller. Readers of our work should recognize the breed.
This first is what Anna calls: The Cure for What Ails You!
And now we have so many puppy pictures. (Hat tip to https://pixlr.com/photo-collage/ which offers free automatic collage generation - you just have to match the numbers they support.)
And a couple more. The little one below is chewing on the back of my vest or maybe my belt.
And below, I’m hoarding two puppies at once!
The People of Liberty Con
I know I will miss some people in this because I have a horrible memory. But just pick your favorite puppy picture above and assume that was posted specifically in your honor!
Alpha Mercs
We saw many of the Alpha Mercs. In the picture below we have from left to right
, (and his wife Shari - not shown), , Anna and Tod (), , and . It was great catching up with our fellow Mercs - especially Sam and Shari who are now one of our publishers!
Meeting J. Kenton Pierce in person was on our specific goals for Liberty Con. We’ve both beta read several of his novels and several more of his short stories. We’ve known him for years - before the Alpha Mercs even. You should read his stuff - really good military sci-fi with incredible worlds and interesting people. However, we do have a question for everyone. Who reacts worst to being photographed, Anna or Pierce? Sample photo for analysis and poll below.
Other People from Liberty Con
Some of the great folks we saw were mentioned last week when we discussed their panels (https://blog.casasent.blog/p/sunday-salutations-and-wrapping-up).
, his wife Susan, and daughter were great. They put up with us talking about dogs and dog training and asked for our autograph. Twice!We ran into Trish J. Woolridge (https://www.anovelfriend.com) in the lobby of the hotel waiting for our Uber. We ended up talking with her and her husband at the airport quite a bit. Thanks to her and Marisa Wolf, we are now signed up for Superstars Writing (https://www.superstarswriting.com/) in February.
Speaking of Marisa Wolf (https://www.marisawolf.net/), I read her Beyond Enemies right before the con. It was great getting to meet her - and it turns out she already knew Anna’s sister. Marisa also gave a big thumbs up for Superstars Writing which clinched us going.
We got to spend some quality time with Rita (https://www.amazon.com/stores/Rita-Beeman/author/B0BJ6C5DMS) of
. She is awesome and the story of how and why she accepted our story “It’s Raining Cats and Dogs” is hilarious. (Spoiler: We unknowingly put elements into the story that appealed to both Law Dog and Rita’s history in different ways.)We got to meet one of our first fans ever, Charli Cox (https://www.charlicox.net/), at Liberty Con too! We hope to see more of her and her writing soon! During the con, we had fun talking with Charli and Jason Cordova (https://www.amazon.com/stores/Jason%20Cordova/author/B004CZHHPU). They were also in the lobby when we headed to the airport.
The Many Faces of Jason Cordova
I also mentioned last week that Jason, for us, stole the Godzilla panel. Here are the five awesome emotion photos I got during the panel. We asked our favorite AI (https://www.perplexity.ai/) what emotions Jason was having.
So, the other poll for today is: pick your favorite Face of Jason Cordova! (Note that #4 was actually described as “Surprise / Concern with Nervousness or Tension”.
Jason is awesome. We’ve encountered him professionally when he reps for Baen on MeWe and we’ve been in discussions where he’s giving advice to other authors. So, go buy some of his books to thank him at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Jason%20Cordova/author/B004CZHHPU or on Baen’s website, where he gets a bigger cut (https://baen.com/allbooks/category/index/id/4892). Don’t be surprised if the Baen link quits working at some point - we heard at the con they’re updating the website. More about Jason here (https://jasoncordova.com/).
Chaos Critters: Snippets of Life
With Crokell, we can tell whether he needs to go potty or just wants a treat. I’ll bet you can too!
What does this have to do with our writing?
Sometime our animals, even the Nano-Sapiens, need to communicate non-verbally. This week’s video is a really good example of that.
Writing Update
Tod updated and edited two of our stories, a stand-alone and a Nano-Sapiens. We submitted them to two different places. He continues reading the initial portion of our second novel and has started on his turn writing it, while Anna works on the novella.
Great seeing you guys there!
Those are so cute! I was looking at the American Shepherd when I was deciding on a new puppy a couple of years ago, but they were way expensive around here. And I'm happy with my Sheltie, anyway, as I grew up with some. Those are some sweet puppies!