ConDFW VIII – Saturday – Part II

I have to admit that the two room suites at the new ConDFW hotel are inspired since the hotel is built on an atrium style – big center core with central elevators and the room on “spokes” around the exterior. Sound does travel up the central core, but didn’t go beyond the “sitting” room. The bed area was quiet.

Oh, and I put out a new promotional thing this year – a 3X5″ memo notebook with a sticker cover Jimmy designed. Along with my cheap gimmee pens. Those notebooks DID NOT stay on the table. I rationed them out over Friday and Saturday – and they were being picked up as I put them down. It was COOL. Going to keep that up.

Saturday started with a bang-ish around 9:30 when we went down to breakfast. As we sat down at the next table from Russ, Renee, and Kimm – David Weber and his wife, Sharon, came in and were about to be seated next to us. So, Jimmy and I invited them to join us. And God Bless ‘Em, they did. We’d never met them before that breakfast. It was GREAT. We spent a good hour talking and eating. Sharon’s a Redhead, so we’ve made her an Honorary Apocalyptic Redhead. 😎 So much fun to discover we have quite a bit in common with them in Real Life, and they are such COOL people.

We left them chatting with The Butchers – they’re all mutual fans. Then shock of all shocks – I actually went to a panel that I wasn’t ON. Usually, I end up talking schmoozing. But this was a panel on collaborations. Dusty was on it with Weber and Steven Brust – who are polar opposites on just about everything. I had an unofficial “duty” to make sure no blood was shed. Teresa Patterson and PN Elrod were also on it. I felt for PN Elrod for having to moderate that mess, but she did a masterful job. Kudos to her!!!! It turned out to be an informative, entertaining, and blood-free panel. I learned something, and will be writing an article for Strange Words on it soon.

Fortunately, that was the room my Noon panel was in, so all I had to do was switch seats when it was over. I’d talk more about this one, but Lou Antonelli summed up our panel best – he was the moderator – in his blog:

I was also the moderator for “Cliches of Doom” with Rachel Caine and Rhonda Eudaly – agaim, folks I have been on panels with before. The small size (I’ve never seen a panel that started with only three panelists) kept down the number of stories, but on the other hand, the three of us – man for man (if you pardon the expression) were probably the most entertaining. Three real wise-guys.

At 1 p.m. we had the Redheads signing. We signed a copy of ROTA to the Webers, but we had a steady stream of people coming up to us the whole time. That was the cool thing about ConDFW this year – there were a TON of new people. I moved a couple of One Step Beyond anthologies. Enough to cover the cost of the brilliant and stunning Bill Crider’s new book for my dad’s birthday present. (If you read this, Dad, don’t spoil it by looking it up… it’s only a week away.) The signing was awesome. It wasn’t the lines that Butcher, Weber, or others get, but we weren’t sitting there lonely and bored. 😎

After the signing, Jimmy and I waited with Tim Morgan for a lull in Weber’s conversation so we could give HIM the ROTA, since we didn’t know where his wife was. Tom Knowles came up to me, saying something about an anthology of mine – which I had no idea what he was talking about. He pulled the ROTA out my hands and said, “Well, it’s ONE OF YOU!” We finally figured out he was actually talking about Julia’s anthology. Tom is launching a new publishing line – Dark Star Books in April. So we chatted a touch more, he gave me and mentioned their party that night. We were already planning on going, but that clinched it.

After a well deserved late lunch, Jimmy had stuff to do while I spent time at the Yard Dog Press table in the dealer’s room. I also hit the 1/2 price sale at Lazy Dragon. I bought two daggers and got a folding knife for free. Happy Birthday to me. We did manage to sell books. I don’t know how many, but I know of at least two titles that were sold out by 5 p.m. on Saturday. We sold out of YDP’s stock of ROTAs and then used Julia’s stock. Which, for a 3 year old project, is AWESOME.

I did take some down time before the Art Auction. I needed to hem my pants once and for all to keep from tripping in the 4 inch heels during the auction. We did go back down one more time before changing. Ran into a friend of ours from OKC who came down for the Auction. I had some trauma with my wardrobe, but Jimmy got back in time to help.

The auction was small – for art – due to the challenges with the show. But the big thing was Weber’s Experiment. He was auctioning off submission copies of his 2010 Honor Harrington novel. One was for the Charity (which was still TBD – that’s not good). The others were for David. These proceeds help him help smaller conventions afford to have him come to their conventions. They like smaller conventions, but for health reasons, they need to fly 1st Class – which is cost prohibitive to many conventions. This allows him to be affordable. And it WORKED. Seriously. I want fans like that some day. Sheesh.

Then it was to the parties. We made one round in the scary shoes before changing out to flat ones. I ended up spending most of my time in the Dark Star party. I was learning about the company, and I was working out the 10 a.m. reading with Teresa Patterson on Sunday morning. Dark Star is putting out the Robert Aspirin legacy murder mystery in April that Teresa finished up. She was reading from that. So I offered to go first – as the Opening Act Comedian, so to speak.

We ended up at the FenCon party and called it a night about 1:30 a.m.