Fangirls battle on at the 14th Annual Xena Convention

It's enough to make any lesbian heart beat a little harder: Former Xena: Warrior Princess co-stars Lucy Lawless and Renee O'Connor at the weekend-long lovefest that is the annual Xena convention.

Add Hudson Leick, who played Xena's blonde, leather-clad arch nemesis Callisto (below left), and Jacqueline Kim, the actor behind Xena's mentor and barely-subtextual former lover Lao Ma (below right), and it's hard to imagine it could get any better.

But it does.

Because along with the kick-off this Friday of 14th Annual Xena: Warrior Princess Convention in Los Angeles, Lucy Lawless will be appearing in two live concerts at the legendary Roxy Theater. And if you can't be there, don't worry; just like last year, AfterEllen.com is going to bring you live coverage including exclusive interviews with Lucy and Renee, convention reporting, photos, and maybe even  video from Lucy's concerts.

"Concerts" may not be the right word for this year's musical production, "Welcome to the Pleasuredome." "This is a re-imagining of a script that my husband and his friend wrote in the period of 'Frankie Goes to Hollywood,'" Lucy told me last week. "It's about the time at the dawning of AIDS, and how everybody was partying with this sort of cold fear at their backs. The show encompasses the grimness of that reality with the glitter of the nightclub."

Lucy described her character as a "Catholic school girl who leaves the nunnery and goes to the city and falls in love with Gloria, who is this glittering emcee of a club called the Pleasuredome.  And she just falls wildly in love, and they have high times and low times, and it’ll make the lesbians very happy. You'll finally get some sugar."  

I talked with Lucy and Renee at length last week, and snippets of those exclusive interviews will be mixed in with our convention coverage. It all starts Friday afternoon Pacific Time and continue through Sunday, right here on the blog.

Photos from last year's Xena convention and concert by KT Jorgensen for AfterEllen.com; publicity stills courtesy of Creation Entertainment.