Emerald City ComiCon 2012

I spent a weekend at the 2012 Emerald City ComiCon, and I'd meant to jot down my thoughts on it sooner, but...well, I'm still filtering bits of it into my conscious mind. It was a fun and satisfying venture. A nice little write up can be found over on the Talaria Press site - go check it out here if you have the inclination.

But I also got to hang with some great folks - new and old friends alike - and got to deal with a nice little case of laryngitis, so clearly I was doing a monster bit of chatting.

Some of the particular folks I got to hang with were (in no particular order):

Joe Benitez - who drew a fantastic sketch of my daughter, cosplayed as Rom from the Aesirium books. He's also giving me some great advice on further ways to expand the books into a few other mediums, but this is a larger project I'll tell you more about later.

Emonic - he and Chemix are some amazingly cool cats, and if you haven't at least met them, then no wonder you've been feeling like your life's just not been complete. Wish these guys lived closer, we'd totally hang out more.

Alexis Cruz - okay, don't look at me like I just started name dropping. Alexis and I go back years, but I'll be damned if the man didn't just walk up randomly to my table. That was just an awesome moment.

Sometimes, crossing paths with certain people can be viewed as a simple happenstance, but I choose to see this creatively delicious convergence as an indicator that things are truly moving in the direction I've been trying to get them to go. Something about just sitting on the other side of the table all weekend long, talking to hundreds of total strangers - at one point talking to THOUSANDS of total strangers - reminded me exactly why I love this business. Telling stories, sharing the creative bent of my fractured brain; it's just a wonderful experience - - talking with others who share a similar path was a great way to reassure my little 7 year old boy shadow that things are gonna be just fine.

Writing is a wonderful experience. Totes worth the effort, worth the occasional self-doubt and the struggles it's taken to get things lifting off. And the best part is that it's just starting.

Speaking of which, we're now in the 4th month of 2012, and I still have 3 novels to finish this year, PLUS a lot more short stories.

But "Into the Dust" is finally up, in both ebook and paperback - - which was shockingly easy to produce. It's made me re-examine a lot of the production processes that have served as "common knowledge" thus far.

Literally, the entire project took a bit more than one month, start to finish. The sales have been spectacular, and, because of that, I've changed the timeline for the novel for which this collection serves as a prequel. But that just means I'll be working on potentially all three novels simultaneously.

I'm a madman.

Thankfully, one of those novels will be co-written with another author, so it won't be as brutal of a process, and both this and the third novel are already mostly structurally built out. But just know that though blogging might dwindle a bit, I'll try and post updates either here or over on Twitter or on Facebook. So, yeah, you're not rid of me yet, by any stretch.

Ah crap. And there's the anthology of children's stories I'm doing with my daughter. And the next Talaria Press anthology. Hrm. Okay, no, don't worry. I can juggle it.  It'll be another adventure. :)

Anyway, thanks again to Jim Demonakos and his team of convention staff and volunteers - - with an extra shout out to Joe Parrington, who is pretty much an all-around awesome person.