Not a blow-by-blow, but some quick highlights of the
ARCHON 30 convention, here in St. Louis this past weekend, for any who might be interested.
And what a fine convention it was. Maybe 3000+ attendees, lots of pros, and me placed on ten (!!) panels (not to mention being asked to jump aboard another, from out of the audience). They even
put my name on the back of the con T-shirt (along with a whole bunch of other guests, including
George R. R. Martin, Elizabeth Moon, Tom Shippey, Laurel K. Hamilton, etc.). Holy cow, that was new. Yes, I bought one. Two, actually. ;D
Some may ask (and rightly so), how does Van end up as an invited "Pro guest" of cons now? Four things do it, each minor but together adding up to guest invites, apparently: The Avengers site (and the associated traveling Jeopardy tourney) is pretty well known by now, and gives me a little comics credibility. I'm a "professor" now, which seems to help. The SENTINELS book
www.whiterocketbooks.com makes me at least
semi-published (so my Guest ribbon said "AUTHOR" on it-- cool!). And the Rittenhouse thing gives me somewhat of a genuine "published" credit. I doubt any one of those alone would do it, but somehow I have achieved critical mass of "little things!"
Unfortunately, I started coming down with bronchitis a couple of days before the show got started on Thursday, and consequently I had very little voice (and was coughing) the entire time. Not very easy to be emcee of Jeopardy, or even contribute on a panel, when sounding like that. But I did the best I could.
Some highlights:Friday was my much-self-lampooned
"autograph session" in the lobby, but several folks actually did stop by and check things out and a few did purchase copies of SENTINELS. And one guy had me sign his program book (making a total of two times I've done that at cons, now. Crazy.) The way things were looking, I could have moved a few more copies if the half hour hadn't ended so quickly.
Afterward I met
George R. R. Martin and got him to sign my two hardbacks of
ICE AND FIRE. Very friendly guy. Also met
Glen Cook (of "Black Company" fame) and found out that his early work, the
STARFISHERS TRILOGY, will be reprinted soon, for the first time in a quarter-century. I read them in high school but my copies wore out and fell apart long ago, so that's good news.
I met manga artist
Gary Bedell and commissioned a sketch of Pulsar from him. My goal is to have a nice collection of convention sketches of Lyn by the time we put out the omnibus SENTINELS edition later next year. He produced a really nifty, highly kinetic sketch of Lyn, with big manga feet, and with lightning whirling around her. I'm enjoying all these different takes on her appearance.
Then I saw artist
Mitch Foust at a table nearby, and commissioned a Lyn sketch from him, too. More on that in a bit, but his work is gorgeous and Lyn looks just
stunning in it.
On Friday night I was on a very large comics-related panel with some great conversation about the current state of comics. I railed against decompressed storytelling, "Writing for the trades," and CIVIL WAR in general.
Mitch Foust, at the other end of the table, slumped forward in horror as I summarized some of the CIVIL WAR events. Heh.
On Saturday I competed in and actually won
Archon's "World Famous" general SF/fantasy/horror/comics Jeopardy tournament. I didn't expect to win, and had to come from behind in the semis, but was very lucky in that several questions in a row in the final two rounds were right in my wheelhouse. I chose as prizes a set of vintage CONAN novels (in the handy pocket size).
Just prior to that, I conducted
MARVEL VS DC JEOPARDY, (for the fourth time this year!), and discovered past uber-champion
Rob Clough's St. Louis counterpart, "
Brad." He dominated the match in true Clough-ian fashion, crushing his rivals beneath his comics knowledge. Oh, man, we need to get the two of them together for a tournament of champions at some point. Dunno who the third contestant would be, but I wouldn't want to go up against those two.
Other stuff happened in between all this, involving Tolkien and Galactica and generally of no interest to folks here, so I move ahead.
Finally, I picked up the Pulsar sketch done for me by
Mitch Foust. Mitch's work is incredible-- mostly gorgeous portraits of gorgeous women, and his rendition of Lyn is right up there with his best work I saw. It'll be included in the oversized omnibus of SENTINELS coming out next year, sometime, and I'll try to post it on the Web site soon. The more I look at this beautiful portrait, the more I want it fully colored so that I can hang it on my living room wall! (Right alongside the "Cherry Blossoms" painting of his I also bought, depicting a female samurai in front of a cherry tree.)
You can see his work at
www.mitchfoust.com, though it looks much nicer full-sized, on the page.
So that was it. While not the circus that, say, DragonCon is, Archon was a tremendous amount of fun. I was approached more than once by people telling me how glad they were that I had come, thanking me for my contributions to the con, and welcoming me to the area, etc. Wow! Nice. And I sold another batch of books (and two more sign-and-ship requests).
Next year the con will be very different, as it will host
NASFiC (WorldCon when WorldCon is overseas). In some ways, that's disappointing, as I expect a lot of its friendly local flavor will be lost. But by 2008 it should be back to normal, and I look forward to that.
And with that, Con Season for 2006 comes to a close.
Four conventions in five months-- expensive, but more fun than I've had in possibly forever.
--Van