Finally have a chance to breathe a little after our whirlwind con schedule over the past couple of weeks (well, that’s what it felt like to me, anyway), so I figured I’d take a minute and jot down my convention impressions. This might get kind of lengthy, so buckle in.
Thursday the 22nd I drove down to Portland (a city which I adore, although I didn’t get the chance to combine Red Stripe and Qbert at Ground Kontrol, which is the entire reason I usually make the trip) and split the weekend between Gamestorm and the Public Library Association Show. Both were interesting, but the culture shock of going back and forth took a little getting used to. My book was on display at the IBPA booth at the library thing, and that was mostly about meeting book folks and trying to kind of soak up the publishing industry through osmosis. I’m not sure if it’ll pay out in terms of books sold to libraries vs. cost of being there, but it was definitely worth checking out, especially since it coincided with the REAL reason for our visit.
Gamestorm is an awesome con, you guys. It’s devoted entirely to gaming and maybe a third the size of Norwescon (which was the following weekend — more on that later), but the vibe is extremely chill, and we spent almost the entire time in the open game room playing new games and making new friends. ZN was on sale there (courtesy of Don from Games Plus in Woodinville), and we passed out a bunch of pins and promo cards, although I’m not sure if we even sold a single book. What we did do was learn to play a whole mess of games, each of which was TOTALLY MY FAVORITE NEW GAME while I was playing it. Pandemic. Thurn and Taxis. Some kind of samurai-themed tile game which I was totally planning to buy, but now I can’t remember what it was called (help me here, people). We had to reign in our board game budget, but in the end we walked away with Small World (a tremendously fun fantasy world conquest game) and Tsuro (a quick 5-minute tile game for up to 8 people which Dawn Marie and I both loved). Oh, and also a copy of the out-of-print deluxe edition of Kill Dr. Lucky, since I’ve played and enjoyed the cheap-ass version. It’s like the prequel to Clue, where everybody in the mansion competes to off the guy!
We also got the chance to hang out with Shannon and Matt from Seattle Geekly, which was nice since they wound up working their butts off at Norwescon so we didn’t get to socialize with them much there. Speaking of which. This year was my very first Norwescon, and right now I can’t imagine ever missing it again. SUPER FUN. It’s technically devoted to science fiction, but of course there’s a lot of crossover there, so there was plenty of comics, gaming, movie hype and what have you. My book was on sale in the dealer room (again, thanks to Games Plus), and this time we sold a whole grip of them. It helped that we had ZN promo cards stuffed into every one of the 3,000+ registration bags, of course.
We had been planning to attend the con this year anyway, but a friend was in charge of the guests of honor and she asked us to help out (thanks Christie!), so we were on duty for a good portion of the weekend. It actually worked quite well, since our jobs were easy enough that we were able to really enjoy the con, but also got to hobnob with the pros and experience the convention’s delightful underbelly. I picked up a bunch of folks at the airport on Thursday (including Cory Doctorow‘s parents, who were lovely) and got a lot of one-on-one time with guest of honor Vernor Vinge (I was assigned to handle him specifically, but he wound up being pretty self-sufficient). I had never actually read any of his stuff, but let me tell you this: Vernor Vinge is a prince. Probably the nicest guy you will ever meet, if you have the good fortune to make his acquaintance some day.
Dawn Marie was assigned to artist John Jude Palencar, and he too was a delight, signing about a million posters for attendees and volunteers, and always willing to talk shop with anyone who strolled up. Another high point was running into Alyx and Kelly, good friends of Dawn Marie’s who apparently drive down from Vancouver for the con every year (who knew?) Alyx is the author of Indigo Springs (I had picked her editor up from the airport the day before) so I spent what was probably hours attempting to pick her brain while I was considerably drunk at the Tor party Saturday night. Sorry, Alyx!
There was also a zombie walk and accompanying Thriller dance lesson (anybody who has read Zombocalypse Now will know why Zombie Pope was my favorite) and Sci-Fi Match Game (Dawn Marie was the first contestant and won the most awesome Batman shower curtain rings ever). This happened to be hosted by Kevin Standlee, who used to run the old Myth Adventures fan club back in the 1980s. The fan club newsletter (Myth Information!) was the first publication I ever submitted drawings to back when I was 15, which got me started cartooning and lead to publishing my own zines, which lead to publishing my own newspaper, which lead to publishing my own books. So needless to say I owe Kevin a lot, and reconnecting with him was one of the con highlights for me.
Over all, we met too many new friends and had to much fun to go into detail here. Next year I hope to worm my way onto some panels, so stay tuned for that. Overall, I’m done with conventions for a while, though. At least until PAX in September!
Apr 08th by admin
