worlds collide - literary style

The past couple months were filled with conference travel. 

In early March, I attended an academic/literacy conference in Baltimore. It's an event I've attended on and off for over a decade. When I first started attending, I went as an MFA student. The faculty of the MFA program I was attending told us the event was a blast - super fun! I am, and was back then, all about having fun especially if it involves books and writers. So, expecting the sort of fun I typically had at a writing event, off I went. 

As it turned out, as I figured out the first time I went, it was not that kind of fun. I found the other attendees to be a tad stuffy at times. No laughing in the halls. Very literary. As it turned out, it was a serious event filled with serious people. I did have the promised "good time" but it took some rethinking on my part. Once I caught on to the serious nature of the event, I decided not to tell anyone I was a romance author. Meanwhile, over the years, I continued attending that event as an academic and editor while also publishing romance and attending actually fun events, like BookLoversCon. 

This year, these two worlds collided. I was asked by a small press to sign copies of the multiple genre anthology that contains my essay, How to Write an Erotic Romance Novel. The editor invited me to bring some of my romance novels to sign alongside the literary anthology. Photo below! Doing this meant explaining to people who stopped by that I was both Melissa Ford Lucken, serious literary author, and Isabelle Drake, author of romance, erotic and not, and horror (sex-cult zombies!). As you can imagine, this caused much confusion and some disbelief. 

Why are you both people?

Which do you like better?

Why do you write that when you could write this?

I had no answers for these Very Important Questions.

I did have a good time, though. So, I'm counting the event a success.