Shorty

January 2010 Hanging with Shorty. He even has a cooler of the Blue Stuff on him!

In 2010 I attended my first con as a vendor. My first steampunk book, Thomas Riley, had just come out and I picked a con that seemed pretty cool that was close to Nashville. It was Shadow Con. Honestly, I was a bit nervous. I had no idea how smaller cons worked or how people would be. I'd been to San Diego Comic Con before and to Dragon Con, but never to a more regional and strictly fan driven one. This time I was on panels and selling my own book and really on my own in the world of Fandom for the first time. That can be scary! I mean, did the steampunks speak in British Accents all the time? Would everyone judge me for my limited knowledge of Klingon or my poor skills at Warcraft? I had no idea.

At Shadowcon, I set my table up and everyone was insanely nice to me. They all were so cool. This includes one Stuart "Shorty" Bergman. He was a huge man with long hair and beard. Instantly intimidating. He was the nicest guy you could have met. He welcomed me to the con, hung out at my table and talked about, well everything and I just met the guy! Later, I ended up at his little room party in the hotel where we had "The Blue Stuff" which he then told me was his version of Romulan Ale. It was like a billion different kinds of liquor with Blue Curaco for color. At the end of this life defining conference, Shorty even sold me my first bottle of Mead, which I was really excited about.

I saw Shorty several more times, at Midsouthcon and again at Shadowcon the following year. We talked Facebook after I moved to Washington and he always made it a point to chat me up when he saw me online. I still regret not being able to go to the Memphis fandom con he helped launch.

I found out yesterday that Shorty's battle with Cancer had ended and I wouldn't get the pleasure of seeing Shorty's gleeful face or cheers him with a nearly poisonous amount of Blue Stuff.

Shorty was so kind to me when I was just starting out and he helped ease me into an entire culture that I was quite nervous about when I started. And through the years, he always stayed in contact. Fandom all over has lost an icon, a bright light, and a hell of a guy.

Rest In Peace, Shorty. I will miss you.

ZOVA Books

As I wait for the incoming edits for Thomas Riley 2, I thought it would be good to introduce my new publisher ZOVA BOOKS. I first met with the good people at ZOVA in person at San Diego Comic Con 2010. It was so exciting to hear their budding plans and their enthusiasm back then, nearly two years later, they've turned their bubbling book plans into a super volcano. They have their hands in a ton of amazing and ultra exciting things, not only in the publishing world but in the universe of film, and media as well.

I'm super excited to be a part of this company and they have a ton of amazing writers on their roster that run the gambit of literary genres, so as you can imagine, I'm honored to be in their company. ZOVA BOOKS holds the contracts for Thomas Riley 2 and 3, so you'll at least see two books coming from these fine folks. I'm also absolutely stoked on the help they've given me so far. I really believe that the character development in book two is already stronger because of Amanda at Zova. I'm so happy that my crazy characters have become crazier and now you'll get to see some glimpses of backstory in Thomas, Cynthia, Ann and Kathleen Benika.

Have I gushed enough? Okay, okay, I'll stop for now. Take a minute to check them out everywhere:

Website www.zovabooks.com

Twitter https://twitter.com/#!/ZOVABOOKS

Facebook http://www.facebook.com/#!/ZOVABooks

Tumblr Feed: http://zovabooks.tumblr.com/

Blog http://zovabooks.blogspot.com/

San Diego Comic Con 2010

I'm a six year veteran of the San Diego Comic Con. We originally went on kind of a whim to see some weird new media things and wow, who would have ever expected that it would have turned out to basically be the new red carpet?

So this year the Good Ensign and I trekked off to San Diego, checked into the 500 West and lived out five days of "do whatever the hell we want" while being surrounded by every new scrap of movies, tv, art, comics, fandom, media and insanity that dares to show it's face in 2011. As per tradition, we went directly to Fred's (A chain tex-mex place) for celebratory beer and Chicken Chingaderas. That night, we were into preview night, roaming the seemingly endless yet familiar exhibitor hall in search of new goodies. Put it this way, the street signs outside of the convention center were written in Klingon. Really:


Despite going every year, it's hard to accurately describe how massive and crazy Comic Con is. Think 150 thousand people and all of them are trying to get your attention. Then think it's somehow even crazier than that. This is not a place for those with Agoraphobia or Enochlophobia.

So Thursday we hit the exhibit hall again with fleeting plans to attend any panels that day. That's how it usually goes down. We plan to do a bunch of stuff but it never happens because we're doing something else. That evening we attended the art toy company Munkey King's party at Bar Basic which is always a fun event featuring pop artists doing live paintings and beer. Can't forget the beer. Here's a lame picture of Joe Ledbetter doing the live painting.


The amount of stars on the floor this year blew away previous years. Sure you may bump into Glenn Danzig or Seth Green but this year there were tons of people signing in the exhibitor hall. Here are just a few I could get pictures of:

Danny DiVito


Chevy Chase


Seth Green


Bill and Sookie from True Blood


Michael MacDowell


Warehouse 13


We also caught Penn & Teller's panel on performing together for 35 years. Pretty awesome. The level of general fandom is off the charts. People camped out just to get into panels and I don't mean just super big panels like Big Bang Theory and True Blood, I mean like for everything. Here's people at 1AM camped out for the Supernatural panel and Smallville Panel. As for us, we waited 3 hours for the always amazing Mythbusters panel. Great stuff as usual. Funny, exciting and brilliant!


Of course there were the fun crazy people in costume. If you can think of a costume, it was probably there. Here's a VERY small sampling of what was there:
Captain America (With a goat for some reason) was protesting the idea that Comic Con might move to Anaheim. I didn;t have the heart to tell him that I think I heard that San Diego already signed an extension to keep the con there...


Kitana (Mortal Cobat)


Cobra Comander (Now with 200% more henchmen!)


So we're already looking forward to Comic Con 2011 (Hopefully no one will get stabbed in the eye next year.) Until then, thank you San Diego!

Next Up:
I'll be at Gencon selling Thomas Riley at the Frenzy Universe Booth and as an added bonus I'll have the first copies of the Steampunk Anthology "Dreams of Steam" in which I have a steampunk story called Engine 316. See you in Indianapolis!