Another quality post brought to you by Steve!
Hey everybody!
Despite the fits and starts, con season 2021 is underway and I've made my way to a few events now. I won't lie to you: it is a bit scary, despite being vaccinated. Despite doing my damnedest to maintain social distancing, constantly sanitize, and mask up, there are still times I worry it's just not enough to keep myself, my friends, and my community safe. So, unless the larger picture of the Corona fourth wave changes, I'll probably be dialing back from live appearances aside from existing commitments for the foreseeable future.
But, all that doom and gloom aside, I did attend a fun event in Gettysburg, PA, this past weekend: Creature Feature 2021! First, I want to highlight worlds colliding. The small business I co-own, Air Studio, created this gorgeous conversation starter for my table:
Here you can see some of our house specialties on display. The pigtails are a fun addition to jeuje up any piece. Inside the aqua balloon is some lace material replicating ectoplasm (in keeping with the spooky nature of our novel.) And, of course, the balloon has been personalized with names, the same font as the book, and images. So our artists really went all out.
Here you can see my co-author and tablemate Wile E. Young in front of the sculpture. Yes, we are both vaccinated, and you can see we were both wearing masks and took them down just for the pictures.
And here, taking a step back, is our whole table. You can see Wile E.'s banner, and all of our books lined up with display cases. Big thanks to Kristopher Triana, who was also at the show and took these photos.
So I couldn't escape the day job entirely on Friday, but did successfully take a half day off and reached the con a few hours ahead of time. Sadly, our good friend Wes Southard could not, and had to hurry in around 5 all in a blur like the Tasmanian Devil. When I checked in the Queen of Cosmic Horror Mary San Giovanni was right behind me, so we got to catch up for a few minutes.
We tabled from about 5-10 on Friday night, and sales were surprisingly robust. Of course, I'm used to attending more science fiction themed cons with fellow ATB contributor Mary Fan, so I probably benefited a bit from the stronger horror theme of Creature Feature.
At that point Mary San, Wile E., John Urbancik, and Somer Canon had to head out for the night, but luckily that gave Wes, Kristopher, and I a chance to have dinner with Joe Ripple and some of the staff from Scares That Care, an event which you may recall me talking about in my last blogpost. I've never actually gotten a peek behind the scenes of convention organizing, so our conversation was hilarious, but I can also tell you that there are some very exciting things on the horizon for that most distinguished charity. But none of those are my beans to spill, so, picture Kermit drinking tea or whatever's most appropriate since we all just speak in memetic shorthand now.
Kristopher had to drive in from Connecticut, so he zonked immediately, leaving me and Wes to talk each others' ears off all night. But it had been nearly a month since we'd done that, so we were overdue.
Saturday, as usual, was the grueling long day, but my friend and mentor Brian Keene appeared, so there was a veritable bevy of minds to pick and laughs to be had, so the day never dragged, even when foot traffic dwindled. Sales were quite good again as well, and Creature Feature even sprang for some food trucks, so there was more than just the usual hotel room coffee and vending machine snacks to keep us fed.
The celebrity room actually closed at 5 on Saturday, so at that point we all had a chance to go make our purchases from the vendors room, take naps, and get dinner before settling in for a long, hard night of drinking and making fun of Wes. Apparently they don't have Arby's in Connecticut, because Kristopher made us all drive past all the delightful local gastropubs and eateries in Gettysburg in the name of ice-cold curly fries and soggy roast beef "sandwiches." But, then, on second thought, perhaps he was simply FULL BRUTALing the rest of us.
In any case, what happens in Gettysburg stays in Gettysburg (don't worry, kids, that's a real tourism slogan) so I can't tell you any more about the rest of that night, but suffice it to say that we put Keith Moon to shame with our relentless antics. Boy, you just can't take horror authors anywhere.
After waking up next to a naked hairy man (I'll let you attempt to intuit who) I took a long, scalding hot shower, full of whispered prayers and eye bleaching, before hitting the showroom floor one last time.
We were fortunate on Sunday to be sitting across from a celebrity guest as kind and thoughtful as Ted Raimi, who you probably know from "Army of Darkness," "Hercules: the Legendary Journeys," and much, much more. Ted talked to every one of us and bought a number of our books. He immediately laughed at the Solzhenitsyn pun in THE GHOUL ARCHIPELAGO's title and based on his other comments, I realized he was quite well-read and genuinely interested in our work, which is very cool.
I had to work on Monday, so I sadly couldn't spend another night locked in Caligula-level debauch with Kristopher and Wes, but we had a nice final sit down after packing our books and then hit the road.
See you next month, everybody!
No comments:
Post a Comment