Hypericon Friday - Giant Beavers, Cherry Stems and Zombies

FRIDAY

All right, enough silliness. Time to work.

Flunkies lined up, we proceeded to the con for booth setup. The work Katie and I did clearing out all the detritus really paid off. The boothstuff was reduced to one rolling box of doom, and Katie organized all the books by title into fewer boxes, eliminating the endless trips to the car and the annoying jumble behind the booth. Brava Katie.

Therefore booth setup was much less painful than previous shows. I really like our design this year: Louisiana gothic, with moss-green crinkled not-silk draperies, cobweb black lace toppers, creepy-fabric accents on the racks and strings of little human skulls. What's that you say? I've got a dark-fantasy swamp romp coming out next month? Well, I suppose it's a coincidence!

The new display for the buttons worked amazingly well, especially when propped against the box of stained glass, which looks very nice on the black lace (too bad I can't auto-generate a window behind every booth, eh?). Also, the portable speakers for the booth music were great, and the batteries hold up nicely. Better than the batteries for the iPod, in fact.

Booth set up and ready to go, I handed off the duties to Sara and fulfilled my promise to the boy: we went to see UP. Review forthcoming, but the shorthand is that it was charming and diverting, though not the OH COOL! that THE INCREDIBLES was. Many people said if you aren't crying at the end, you're obviously a Cylon. Sign me up for the glowing spine, because I wasn't. But maybe that's because I saw it coming about twenty minutes into the movie. Full review will be on CultureGeek later this week.

Back to work, and the boy settled in with a stack of DVDs and the Disney Channel in the hotel room. I worked the dealer's room for a bit, and Friday sales were spectacular - in fact, we seemed to do better the longer I stayed away from the booth. Hmm. Maybe that says something.

Friday night was the meetup at some saloon Sara knows. Angelia Sparrow volunteered to stay behind and watch the boy, which meant she was floating in a Jacuzzi at the hotel pool while we were getting lost in downtown Nashville and molested by a giant dancing beaver.

No, I am not making that up. Jon Klement, David Tyler, Tim Harlan and I accidentally parked on North Third instead of South Third and there was a giant anthropomorphic beaver and.. it wasn't pretty.

KLEMENT: *comment deleted*
ME: Didn't I say the first of you to make a beaver joke got smacked?
KLEMENT: *smartass grin*
ME: *SMACK*
KLEMENT: *laughs*
ME: And you're a CHILDREN'S author!

Dinner was lovely, as I got to catch up with old friends like Panya/Michael and Loren Damewood and Stephen was there with his posse. We missed the Apex crew, who apparently arrived, ate and left while my gang was wandering in the wilderness.

Accomplishment of the day: I tied a cherry stem in a knot with my tongue. Twice. Never did it before. I feel all special.

Unfortunately, we got rather lost on the way back and I was ten minutes late for the 11 p.m. reading. Fortunately (?) there were six of us, so I just waited my turn. I missed Alethea Kontis and John Everson (rats). I'd heard Brian Keene's readings before, because I read everything Brian writes like a rabid fangirl, but I got to hear some good stuff from David Jack Bell (a.k.a. the author I didn't already know) and Jonathan Maberry, crown prince of zombies.

I decided to read from THE COLD ONES because I'd just finalized the deal on the zombies - what? You want details? You'll just have to wait! Because YOU didn't go to Hypericon! I talked about it there! Sucks to be you! *pffftft* Or you could go join my YahooGroup, which will be getting all the details shortly. I was going to read the battle with the redcap, but instead I went with the opening zombie attack. I started to lose people, which bodes ill, but by then they'd been listening to author after author for over an hour, so I'll try not to take it personally. *sniff*

Lucky me, I went second-to-last, because nobody wants to follow Shrews. He read from TORMENTOR, which is about to jump to the top of my TBR pile. A lot of authors see readings as recitations of printed work. I see them more like the group reads we used to do in the theater. Shrews sees them as full-on theatrical performances, with the kind of volume and inflection that can only be achieved by a six-five hulk of a man used to bellowing over loud machinery. I wish someone had been taping it, because it was a sight to see.

On to wandering, my favorite con activity. I dropped by a few gatherings, loitered about, caused trouble and disappeared. I got to bed at a remarkably sane hour of 1 a.m., I think. If my memory can be trusted.

Comments

  1. I blame the GPS, that and Nashville for having screwed up streets.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Pfft. That's the /sane/ part of Nashville.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yeah yah yeah blame Nashville.
    :-P

    ReplyDelete

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