GenCon 2009 Day 2: The Undead Authors Society
August 14, 2009
I must be missing out on something, to believe that bagels are nothing to be excited about. Cream cheese, jam, 1001 different flavors and toppings…they have just never appealed to me. They did, however, appeal to the gamers, as the line to the bagel shop was out the door. Or maybe there was nowhere else to eat breakfast. Anyway, Matt had his bagel breakfast, and we arrived early at our table at the convention hall with the intention of doing some pre-show browsing.
Some of the tables were still covered from the night before, but we had a pretty good feel for what was transpiring while we were stuck behind our table. GenCon attendees had a series of choices: gaming, eating, or buying (note that sleeping is not an option). The games were everything from electronic with fancy screens to miniatures or live action role-playing (LARP). Some displays were quite elaborate—from castle-esque to battlefield. And the merchandise! There were card games, t-shirts, fake Medieval weaponry, fantastical costumes, books (of course), artwork, stuffed animals, jewelry, and the list goes on.
There were but three things that enticed me. A life-size construction of Dr. Who’s tardis was there as a display (check out my souvenir photo), and I am a long-time fan of the Doctor (thanks to my dad). Item number two was a t-shirt with the constellation of Pegasus (because I’m a sucker for winged horses—even more so than your typical fantasy unicorns). And finally, a small print of a black winged horse done by one of the artists. Given the choice (and I was forced to choose), I walked away with my t-shirt, but that wasn’t ‘til day four. We tried to keep our money in our pockets at all costs.
Now that I’ve said that, Matt and I did decide to make a significant purchase. We found an artist willing to do reasonably-priced freelance work. So we commissioned him to do a small drawing of each of our favorite characters in watercolor pencil. Now I know and you know that I’ve done many drawings of our characters, but there is something thrilling about seeing someone else’s interpretation of a character we created (so enter our Raven’s Art Contest—please!). We were tickled at the results, and Arcturus and the White Demon are amongst our GenCon images.
Day two went better than day one, and we could justify our purchases with the seven books we sold (almost a book an hour isn’t bad at all, really). We met up with our author friends for dinner at the Noodle Company. The restaurant doesn’t require any description, but the interaction amongst us was memorable for what was discussed. Matt and I, being “newbies”, were grilled—hard—concerning our sales pitch. “What is your book about?” they asked us, and we stuttered and stumbled our way into a lame explanation. Being the kind and helpful people they were, they gave us some advice and told us to practice the art of being enticing and intriguing.
We went back to the hotel and did just that. Forget intriguing, we just want to be interesting to people. We believe in what we’ve written, and we don’t want people walking away because we can’t communicate verbally. Our strategy involved Matt’s exposition about the magic stone, Raven’s Heart, and my elaboration upon the characters’ mission. All in all, we felt better that we had rhyme and reason to our sales pitch, and we could rest that night knowing tomorrow would be different—better, we hoped.
But wait—we didn’t sleep yet. We may have been dead tired, but we ignored the tired and decided to be plain old dead. I’m speaking of the Zombie Walk. Many a GenCon attendee donned makeup and wardrobe for a gruesome parade of undead enthusiasts. We walked—stumbled, rather—from the hotel to the street, then to the convention hall. Matt wouldn’t give up his character and was insensible most of the way. Was it a sight to see! And we belonged to the Undead Authors’ Society, a group forged by C.S. Marks and her glow-in-the-dark t-shirts. She and the other authors we had befriended had seen to it that we looked like proper zombies. (And if you want to know just what that looks like, you will, once again, check out our pictures.)
You can’t close an evening any better than that, and who hasn’t lost his mind and wandered aimlessly at times?
-Stefanie
