Friday morning, we made our way to our hotel for the weekend and had a remarkably easy time finding a good parking spot and getting checked in quickly. Then we zipped over to the Buffy/Angel panel. Here’s one-half of the panel — Kristy Swanson (Buffy in the original movie) and Felicia Day (Vi in the series).

And the other half of the panel was Charisma Carpenter (Cordelia) and Julie Benz (Darla).

After the panel, I was off to have the first of the photos I’d booked taken. First up was some of the Battlestar Galactica cast. I’d originally scheduled a photo with Edward James Olmos (Admiral Adama) and Mary McDonnell (President Laura Roslin), but Olmos had to cancel his appearance. I still had the photo with Mary, but I added Kandyse McClure (Dualla) and Michael Trucco (Sam Anders). I wish I’d splurged and gotten the photo with all the cast members there, but I was already making my credit card scream. You can kind of see that I’d dressed as a Merlotte’s Diner waitress from True Blood — the same idea at least 20 other people I saw had.

The next photo was with Charisma Carpenter and Julie Benz. Hey, nothing like having your photo taken between two of the most beautiful women at the conference to make you recommit to your exercise plan.

After that, I went back to our room. Since this year we were staying in one of the four host hotels, I was able to watch and earlier panel with Paul McGillion (Dr. Carson Beckett on Stargate Atlantis) on Dragon*Con TV.  Later that night, Tanya and I hit the Supernatural fan panel and handed out our business cards for the Supernatural Sisters blog we do with M.J. Fredrick, Natalie Damschroder and Terri Clark.

I had to get up early the next morning for my photo op with Leonard Nimoy. Couldn’t believe I was actually going to stand next to the original Spock. Unfortunately, some lowlife thief stole the photo company’s equipment (four laptops, camera equipment, printers, photo cards, etc.) Saturday night, and my Nimoy photo was one of the 10 percent they hadn’t had the opportunity to back up. The folks at Froggy’s Photos were nice and refunded my money. The lady I talked to couldn’t believe I was being nice and understanding about it because she said she’d already had several people yell at her about their lots photos (on Sunday). Dudes, it’s not like they asked to have their equipment stolen. They had to finish out their appointments on Sunday and Monday with borrowed equipment.

I followed the Nimoy shoot with ones with Peter Facinelli (Dr. Carlisle Cullen) and Justin Chon (Eric Yorkie) of Twilight (which was why I’d chosen to dress like Alice Cullen)…

and then Joe Flanigan (John Sheppard) and Paul McGillion (doing a Zoolander face) of Stargate Atlantis. (The following day, I was able to get Paul and Joe to sign my photo and have a little more time to talk to them. Both very nice, and Paul is a total ham. His various expressions in everyone’s photos were a riot.)

After the Atlantis photo, I hurried to where Tanya was already waiting in line for the Battlestar Galactica panel. One-half of the panel was Michael Hogan (Saul Tigh), Michael Trucco (Sam Anders), Kate Vernon (Ellen Tigh), and Mary McDonnell (President Laura Roslin).

The other half was Luciana Carro (Kat), Alessandro Juliani (Felix Gaeda) and Aaron Douglas (Galen Tyrol).

This entire panel seemed to really get along well and all seemed like truly nice people and genuinely appreciative of the fans.

After some lunch, Tanya and I made for the line already forming for the Stargate panel. It was a 4 p.m. panel, and we got in line about 1:45 and still weren’t in the front. A couple of the panel members (Gary Jones and Colin Cunningham) were from Stargate SG-1. The other four panelists were from Stargate Atlantis. They were Paul McGillion, Rachel Luttrell (Teyla Emmagan), Joe Flanigan and Jason Momoa (Ronon Dex). This was another really fun and friendly group.

In fact, when Rachel wasn’t there for the beginning of the panel, Joe called her to see where she was and held his phone up to the microphone. LOL!

I was able to meet Rachel and have my photo taken with her a little later. She was really friendly. I’m inspired to get as fit as her.

We capped off the night with the Cruxshadows concert — for the second year in a row — which went from midnight until 2 a.m. Yep, the really late night of the con. And would you believe there was another event after that? People were queued up for the Rocky Horror Picture Show, which holds absolutely not interest for me.

On Sunday, I didn’t dress in costume because I was on a panel speaking about Writing for the YA Market with fellow authors such as Richelle Mead, Diana Peterfreund, Gillian Summers and Katherine Duey. But before that, I had my photo taken with Jason Momoa. He wasn’t as chatty as the other Atlantis cast members but was still nice. Ronon was always one of my favorite characters, and one of the reasons was because he wasn’t chatty.

The final professional photo I had taken was with John Schneider. I really liked him as Jonathon Kent on Smallville, but well before that I’d loved him as Bo Duke on the Dukes of Hazzard. I remember watching it faithfully every Friday night on one of the three channels we got out in the boonies. I told one of the ladies working the photo shoot that if I could have one back to tell my 12-year-old self that one day I’d meet John Schneider, I wouldn’t have believed it. Not surprisingly, he was super nice.

Dragon*Con has an area it calls the Walk of Fame. It’s here that you can meet the actors and talk to them a little more, get their autographs if you like. I had Joe, Paul and Jason autograph theirs, and I was able to talk to Kate Vernon and Michael Hogan for a few minutes. While Michael was talking to someone else, Kate and I even talked about my YA book, Heartbreak River. How cool is that!? I was able to have my photo snapped with them. You wouldn’t know they’re Cylons, would you?

One of the coolest parts of Dragon*Con is checking out all the costumes. Here are a few examples.

The best Wonder Woman I saw. She was tall and totally had the look.

Supergirl (Isn’t she adorable?)

Kara “Starbuck” Thrace (I remembered meeting this gal last year when she was dressed as Number Six from BSG.)

There are always tons of Star Wars characters. Here’s an Ewok, a Jedi and a Stormtrooper.

And for you fans of Buffy comics, here’s an awesome Fray.

Catwoman

We met Hello Kitty in the food court. I couldn’t help but think she was burning up in that costume.

Loved this trio! They were Captain Malcom Reynolds, River Tam and Jayne Cobb from Firefly and Serenity.

I love the Underworld movies, and here are some Lycans fit to scare small children. What you can barely see on the right is one of the vampires in the armor we see in the beginning of Underworld: Evolution. I wish I’d noticed that the gal taking the photo didn’t get the entire group. Bummer.

The best Dr. Horrible I saw over the weekend.

And here’s me as Alice Cullen with Tanya as Tonks from the Harry Potter books.

I’m already brainstorming my costume ideas for next year.

As it normally does when I’m on deadline, my desk has become a disaster area. I began the excavation today by paying bills and throwing all the junk mail in the recycle bin. Also ran a million errands and did some prep for my trip to Dragon*Con this upcoming weekend. If any of you are attending, I’ll be on a Young Adult panel on Sunday morning. The rest of the time I’ll be geeking out with 40,000 of my closest friends. I booked my “photos with the stars” appointments last night, and I have to admit I went a little crazy. I plan to have my photo taken with several actors from Battlestar Galactica, Stargate Atlantis, Twilight, Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel, along with John Schneider and Leonard Nimoy. I’m also very excited to see many of the actors on panels along with some wonderful authors like Diana Gabaldon, Charlaine Harris and Richelle Mead.

I hope to share lots of fun pictures here when I get back. I still have a few photos from the RWA National Conference I want to share, and I plan to do that over the next couple of days before I leave.

Okay, back to Smallville. Once upon a time, I was a big fan of the Clark and Lana relationship even though I knew it couldn’t last. I’m so over that now, and I’m glad they’re showing signs of Clark and Lois growing closer. I’m wondering if this season will be the last and, if so, how they’ll handle the budding Clark and Lois relationship. Also, I wonder if in the series finale, we’ll finally see Tom Welling don the Superman costume. I know lots of fans want to see that. Oh, and him actually flying, which he has yet to do.

The recent episode “Bride” was one of the better ones lately, but I was left with some burning questions about Chloe. Is she under some sort of mind control? Does that explain her smile at Doomsday/Davis after he seriously injured her new husband, Jimmy Olson, and abducted her? And is this the end of Chloe, as hinted at by Lois when Clark said they’d get Chloe back and she asked, “What if we can’t?” Part of me knows Chloe has to go bye-bye at some point (sob!) because Jimmy is not married in the Superman world. Plus, we’d never heard of Chloe (or Lana, for that matter). It seems Clark having Jor-El take away all those memories Chloe had of his secret identity was the first step toward Chloe’s departure. By the way, I HATED that those memories were erased. I know Clark was trying to help lift her burden, but it almost makes all their adventures together and their close friendship…less somehow. It’d be like if Buffy had gone through seven seasons of kicking butt solo without the Scooby Gang, without them ever knowing she was more than just a classmate.

So, any Smallville fans out there? What do you think about Chloe? What is going on with her reaction to Davis in his Doomsday form? Will we ever see her alive again? If she’s gone, it just feels like this needs to be the last season.

One of my new favorite songs, “Don’t Take Your Love Away” by Vast (who, coincidentally, did a song, “Touched,” on the Angel soundtrack) played at the end of “Bride.” Here’s a Clark and Lois fan vid courtesy of YouTube set to the song.

Sometimes it’s really necessary for a writing to take a break to just play. The last time I had a TV marathon like this (with Buffy and Angel), I came away so inspired to write that I wrote my Golden Heart-winning book from last year. And since I’ll be writing more YA soon, Roswell was a good choice to watch seeing as how it’s set in the high school setting.

My Internet is out again today, so I’m sitting in Panera catching up on e-mail and waiting for an important e-mail to arrive before I can go home. While online, I decided to see if I was up on Amazon yet. I AM!! Check it out here.

Regarding last week’s book winner and this week’s books up for grabs, I’ll post about that tomorrow. Please check back to see if you won.