Dispatches from Scares That Care VII

 

Another quality post brought to you by Steve!

7/29/21 21:29 EST

Hey, everybody!  Usually after the delightful Scares that Cares charity convention each year I write up a dissection of the whole weekend, but this year I've decided to do something a little bit different.  I'm going to (try) to remember to write a little bit a couple of times over the course of the weekend while memories are still fresh and not obscured by the cloud of...um...healthy soft drinks.

It's Thursday night and I arrived at the hotel around this time yesterday.  In years past I've greatly compressed the weekend, sometimes arriving Friday afternoon and departing Sunday.  But that is not conducive to having a good con.  You won't get to talk to anyone, you'll feel rushed, and you'll just go from driving to hawking to driving and probably make yourself miserable.  So over the past few years I've started coming up Thursday and leaving late Sunday and this year I finally decided to just stretch it all the way out.  I came up Wednesday and I'll be leaving on Monday, which I think may not be 100% the right answer, but I'm glad I at least tested it out this time.

I got a lot of work done today.  I know, that's a little bit shitty, paying to be in a hotel and just writing all day.  But it works for me and unless things are very different from years past I anticipate I will be up all night hanging out with people, so I'm glad I got that breathing room in.

The trip from central Pennsylvania to Williamsburg, VA was uneventful yesterday.  I stopped once for a mandatory Wawa tuna hoagie and coffee, but that (somehow) added less than fifteen minutes to my trip.  I left right after work and arrived right around 10:15.  I figured only convention staff and their partners would be here Wednesday, so I rang up my good friend Brian Keene, who is on the convention board, and we shared a few drinks of ouzo and caught up.  I am particularly glad about that because I expect I will not see him again this weekend except perhaps as a Flash™-like blur moving by fixing convention things.

This morning I caught up with Joe Ripple, the convention founder and organizer, who talked to me about COVID protocols and some other sundry business about being in the celebrity room.  That's right!  Yours truly is a bona fide celebrity this year.  Then I took a dip in the pool (another thing I hardly ever got to do in years past.)  Unfortunately I didn't end up meeting up with anyone for dinner.  I guess it's still a bit early for the usual suspects to be arriving.  But that has afforded me time to complete my reading for Sunday, practice it over five times due to my goddamned webcam, and then send a covert video to my audience plant to ensure they know when to step in and "upend" proceedings.  I also completed the monthly blog and newsletter for the small business I own and started working on this blog, so I won't be rushing around like a madman Monday night and backdating it to noon like the conniving liar I always am.

Okay, that seems like too much for a single dispatch, but I guess it did technically cover two days.  So let's try to do these at least daily if not more often.  Catch you on the flipside!

8/2/21 2:29 EST

Wow.  That...clearly did not work out.  I guess I don't know why I thought I would want to sit down and write a portion of a blogpost every day after working a convention table, but I guess I was way off on that.

Anyway, here's how the rest of the weekend went.  Thursday night after writing that post I headed down to the lobby to see who was coming into town.  There I caught up with Jeff Strand, my past and future reading partner, and artist Lynne Hansen.  I also met Bridgett Nelson, a new up-and-comer who I immediately bonded with, and promised to attend her reading the next day.

After talking with Lynne, Jeff, Bridgett, and crew for a few hours, my good friend and author Wesley Southard arrived.  As everyone else gradually turned into pumpkins, Wesley and I stayed up late into the night catching up, where we witnessed our first con fight.  While it was disconcerting, as far as I can tell the short version is that a belligerent drunk picked a fight with convention security and it went about as well as you would expect.

Friday Lynne, Jeff, Wesley, I, and a few others went to Rick's cheesesteak shop in Williamsburg, which I always think is an odd choice for folks coming from so close to Philadelphia, but it is a tradition and Rick's is amazing.  We met one of our favorite fans and servers at the steak shop.  (BTW, I'm not trying to be super cagey, but aside from the public figures I'm not trying to name too many people.  I don't want to throw around a bunch of spouses and fans names that they didn't want out there, which would probably be fine, but privacy is nice, too.)

The celebrity room opened at 5:00.  (Did I mention I'm a fucking celebrity at this place?)  But first came Bridgett's reading, which was her first reading at her first con.  Ah, I remember those days.  And she immediately knocked it out of the park.  I was really glad to get to come out and support her, and later when one of the con organizers asked me how it went I said, "Well, she described holding a gun to somebody's head and forcing them to eat gangrenous severed toes."  To which the organizer replied, "Ah, then she'll fit right in."

Then it was off to table.  Friday was the big night of sales.  Sales were good overall, but Friday was such a smash that when it tapered off the rest of the weekend it felt like a letdown of sorts, but intellectually I know that was just because all the fans were eager beavers and did all their buying immediately.

Friday night Wes and I caught up with my collaborator Wile E. Young and everybody's spouses and loved ones, which was a massive and long coming reunion.  We had pizza which Virginia has apparently not imported as well as cheesesteaks and ended up in my room exchanging the kind of heart-to-hearts and merciless ballbusting which can only occur at Scares That Care.

Saturday was the long day.  Vending started at 10:00 and lasted until 19:00.  I took as many opportunities as possible to send buyers next door to Wile E. and rub it in his face that they had bought our collaboration from me instead of him.  Lunch consisted of a chili cheese dog which, in hindsight, was a terrible choice for a vending table.  I got to spend most of the day catching up with Adam Cesare, Scott Cole, Matt Serafini, and Jonathan Janz.  That evening the usual crew went out for Italian along with Dacia Arnold.  Dacia's big news for the day was that Billy Zane, the villain from "Titanic" had bought a copy of one of her books and inquired about the movie rights.  

Most folks were rolling out on Sunday so I hung out with my friends a bit on Saturday but then got to go spend time with Jeff, Bridgett, and John Urbancik.

Sunday split the difference between the rest of the weekend, with a 10:00 to 16:00 vendor room.  I had opted to stay until Monday so as all the vendors began gradually drifting out early as they are wont to do, Wes and I stayed until the bitter end.  We were rewarded with meeting up with our friend from the cheesesteak shop, and even a few other last minute sales.

Finally most of the con departed, but Sunday night the stragglers finally got a chance to breathe.  I got to meet up with Brian and John again, as well as John Anderson, Scott M. Baker, and the "Castle Freak" himself, Jonathan Fuller, which I rubbed as thoroughly and roughly as possible in superfan Wesley's face.

The night ended, as most nights do, with Lucas Milliron and John Communale lecturing me on black magic.  And that, my friends, was Scares That Care VII.  Oh, and you can still donate to the charity by clicking on the link below!