Hobnobbing with the Stars of General Hospital

HOPE DAWNS ETERNAL – especially after the General Hospital Fan Fantasy day last Saturday.*

I’m feeling so blessed to have been able to attend the General Hospital Fan Fantasy event this past Saturday in Montclair, New Jersey. Last November, when I first learned about it online, I immediately splurged on a Platinum ticket, which included a 90-minute meet and greet, including a 1:1 photo opportunity with all ten stars. I’m so glad I did.

I managed to get my photo taken with all of them, and perhaps some of their glamour was contagious, because I photographed far better than I usually do. Unfortunately in the first couple of photos, my hair makes me look wild and crazy. Gisella, my great hairdresser at J.C. Penney, had given me a marvelous cut and blow dry the day before, but I was a few minutes late arriving, and I didn’t have time to check myself in the mirror. A stiff breeze wreaked havoc with my do on the way in. Maura West, aka Ava Jerome, was the first star I posed with, and when I checked the image on my Galaxy and said I looked crazy, she said, “That’s okay, we’re all crazy.”

The actors were uniformly upbeat and friendly, and several said how much

they appreciated my coming to the event. Overall, the women displayed more social graces than the men, with the exception of Michael Easton, whose presence was the main reason I splurged on that platinum ticket.

When I walked in to the conference center at Montclair College, Michael was the first star I spotted – the proverbial tall, dark and handsome guy across the crowded room, taller than the other actors and most of the fans, dressed entirely in black. My first thought: jeez, it’s really him, in the flesh, but he looks so small! Of course he was over a hundred feet away, and I was used to seeing him in close-up on a big TV screen.

I queued up with the other platinum fans to meet the stars, and Michael’s line was by far the longest, so I opted to start with some of the others. Tyler Christopher, aka Prince Nicholas Cassadine, was the first, and then I moved on to some of the actresses standing near Michael. When I finally did get to him, he was friendly and gracious, and he seemed genuinely impressed when I offered him a copy of my suspense novel, Eldercide. I inscribed it to him with a note saying he’d helped inspire the character Gabriel. I didn’t tell him Gabriel is a compassionate serial killer of little old ladies, but I hope he’ll read the book and find out.

Juggling my camera, finding folks to take photos of me with the stars, posing, getting autographs and handing out fliers for my books was a bit discombobulating. Near the end of the meet-and-greet, when I went back to Laura Wright for an autograph I’d missed, I told her I didn’t quite have my act together, she said, “That’s all right, none of us do. Anyone who says they have it together is lying.” She proved her point later, when she emceed the two-hour show with Tyler Christopher, but she was a hoot!

In my next post, I’ll tell you about that session and some of the terrific questions and answers, including how they cry on command and which star got poison ivy up his rectum, but in the meantime, here are some snaps of me with my favorites. Subscribe to my blog so you won’t miss it! And please leave comments: which stars are your favorites, and which photo makes you most jealous?

*HOPE DAWNS ETERNAL is the name of my new soap opera vampire novel. Look for it in May!