Megan Engelhardt

I knew about musicals from a fairly young age; I have a vague recollection of my grandparents taking me to see Annie at a dinner theater near their house but I have no idea how old I would have been. I know the first moment musicals became a major part of my life, however. I was staying up late to work on a school project, and our local PBS station was in full fundraising mode. (That’s when the good stuff is on.) They aired the Les Miserables 10th anniversary concert. I was IN. FOR LIFE.

While Les Miserables was my first great musical love, it wasn’t the last. I did a stint in Godspell at summer camp. My speech teacher took me to see Rent. My first date with my husband was to see a local high school production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. (They had two narrators, it was fun.) Our first dance at our wedding was “Someone Like You” from Jekyll and Hyde.

This weekend I was at Cleveland ConCoction, a fun little convention in Aurora, OH that has a really great Author’s Alley (and I don’t just say that because I’m often in it.) The Author Guest of Honor this year was Marie Vibbert, who is a most excellent author and a pretty fabulous person. One piece of knowledge she passed on this year was that it’s important to have something unique in your online presence. You can’t just post “buy my book” over and over again – there needs to be something different that people associate with you. As a musical lover, I immediately thought of the burlesque song “You Gotta Get a Gimmick” from Gypsy.

So this is me, trying out a gimmick.

My debut novel is called The Way We Used to Walk. Just like my college friends and I, the characters in my book tend to take a lot of walks. I do love taking walks, but it’s been a long rough winter and I haven’t been out for too long. The weather is getting nicer now – the snow is gone (at the moment) and it’s warm out and things and people are starting to shake off the winter. I’m going to try to take more walks, and I’m going to try to share those walks here every Wednesday.

For this first one, though, I’m going to share some pictures from the biggest walk I took lately – walking through ConCoction! It really is a great little convention. There’s a fair bit of cosplay, which makes for some interesting characters walking around. There are always Girl Scouts there pushing cookies. And if you are interested in writing at all, the panels are full of people with all sorts of different experience who are very willing to share that with anyone.

And sometimes I’m there, too!