Vesna Kurilic

Those coming to the blog for the first time in 2017 might be a tiny bit suprised to see all the old content here – after all, I’ve been larping irregularly at best through the last few years – and those coming back after the two-year break might be a bit puzzled when new posts start showing up. For all of you, here are a few plot points my life has been through inbetween Fury Road and Lost and Found (Supernatural season 13, episode 1).

#1 Pack life

After quite a bit of consideration (and not a small amount of tissues), I’ve left my old primary pack in 2015 and, a few months afterwards and with no connections between the two events, accidentally started a new one. It’s a pack of two adults and one “teenage” cat, and quite a few relatives (and co-cosplayers), and it’s the light of my days. Finding the place you’ve never even realized you were supposed to be at is one of the best things that can happen to a wolf, and having a bigger pack (some would say ekipa, but I find the word lacking), one this tight, for the first time in my life has been… indescribable and irreplaceable. (So. Grateful.)

#2 ISBN and all that jazz

In the summer of 2015 the most curious thing happened – at the first FantaSTikon in Split, a friend of mine (who used to be great PR and general moral support during my years in NaNo) kinda got hooked on a novel I had almost finished, and set her mind on getting it published. Her effort finally paid off in May of 2017, when I kinda sorta became a published literary author. I’ve had several of my short stories (and endless blog articles) published before, but this is the first hard copy book. Scary! More now, more to come.

#3 Librarian life

I’ve been a library volunteer from 2001 to 2011, a librarian since 2012, and just a few months back I’ve landed one of the positions of my dreams at my Library – assistant program coordinator for the library network. (For those unversed in Croatian library science vocabulary, it’s something like an event manager, just at a quite smaller scale, and your get to do everything. It’s got its bad days, but the brilliant ones are way, way more common.) I’m still not sure whether I’m going to wake up from this anytime now, but who knows… sometimes dreams stick!

#4 Tattoed dreams

Dreaming about tattoos since my teenage years, started collecting them in 2010, and in the past few years the collection’s begun to grow in the most unexpected ways. I’ve recently been happily converted to the American traditional style (my artist has been trained in Italy, which has its own, glorious version of the style) and I’ve never dreamt bigger in my life so far.

#5 We want (all of the) cosplay, and we want it NOW

Once you really start cosplaying, it becomes almost impossible to stop! Since both my best friend and my partner are incredibly passionate about cosplaying, and my love affair with my sewing machine only ever seems to grow, the past two years have seen some of my favourite costumes so far being brought to life to Croatia’s four biggest sci-fi conventions. We’ve been the wives of Immortan Joe, Alex and Kara Danvers, Enchantress from Suicide Squad, America Chavez, Hawkguy, four of Gotham’s most fearsome villains (inspired by the Gotham City Sirens) and much, much more. Most recently, we’ve been a part of a twelve people group (yeah – a pure dozen!) who dressed up as investigators from the Eldritch Horror boardgame and went on to puzzle and inspire a whole convention. The show goes on!

Eldritch Horror investigators cosplay at Rikon 2017. Pic by Danijel Štriga

#6 The future is not set…

… but I can tell you this – there will be more writing, tips on cosplay and larp, a bit more book promotion (hey, you don’t see a werewolf novel based in 1870s in the Austro-hungarian empire every day!), and quite a lot of fun. Hope you join (again) for the ride! Tickets this way.

Book cover (featured) by the talented Aleksandar Žiljak.