Post Comicpalooza Ramblings

I am happy to say that this year I had one hell of a great time at Comicpalooza. I spent a great deal of my time working with Michael Varhola, Brenda Cass, Will Thrasher and many others, but it was worth it.

Despite getting only about 20 hours sleep during my 6 days in Houston.

I spent the first two days patiently waiting for people to come and try their hand at Mutant Future. Ran several people through a character generation demonstration and several more through a couple of nice, quick combats.

Then the last two days I spent most of my time at the Exhibitors booth, helping to promote and sell our material.

Some of the highlights were as follows. First, I got to meet and stalk my favorite author, Jonathan Maberry. It was one of the pretty much the defining event for me. I also managed to sit in on a couple of his panels and those two hours provided me with more information than I could ever hope to find elsewhere!

Of course I got my entire Joe Ledger series autographed, and picked up the first in his newest ‘tween series: Night Siders: The Orphan Army.

I also had the pleasure of meeting Richard Harmon. I ran into this young actor, probably best known as the asshole Murphy on the show ‘The 100’. I met him at the comicpalooza party on Thursday evening.

Then I got to meet Roddy Piper. As I figured he had no recollection of meeting me nearly 30 years ago. Then again, he was… quite happy. Lots of drinks. I could smell it. Still, he was very cordial and I had a nice time meeting him.

Saturday night I was thrilled to be able to party with a great bunch of people. This is weird for me, considering I am not the type of person to party at all. Made quite a few contacts, had a photo bombed by the soup nazi himself, Larry Thomas, talked to several professional WWE wrestlers as well.

Overall, it was a great time! We even got shut down by 7 hotel security staff, 2 managers, and 2 Houston Police Officers.

Next year, our party is going to be the big one people will want to attend.

The two LARPS or Live Action Role Playing games we ran were also a lot of fun. See, I have always considered LARPER’s to be the bottom of the RPG community. Very strange people and I never wanted to get involved in these events.

I helped because they asked me to do so. So the first night I played a wandering vampire, got killed lots, but had fun chasing people and acting out the role. The second night I played a wandering monk who would fight for gold or train those who had the coin.

Both nights I had lots of fun. Would I do this any other time? Nope, not a chance. If they run this event next year I most certainly will do so again.

And of course I purchased a lot of goodies. Three graphic novels, a Darth Maul style light-saber, a couple of customized glasses, a couple of decks of playing cards, and a few shirts. I didn’t buy as much as I thought I would have, which is a good thing.

This time around there were no issues with my flight, unlike when I went down last year. Flying to and from, I ended up having major delays. This time,  even with the storms and the flooding, I was on my flight on time and back in Calgary at a little after 7.

SO, here is a shout out to the young lady who made the customized ‘Colonial Marine’ Glasses for me. She owns a company called Midian Craftworks and her site can be found by clicking the name of her company.

Also, another shout out to Allison and Todd Markello. They are the creators of the Cards and Quests RPG which was being demonstrated non-stop at the con all weekend long. We almost sold out of every copy we had printed for the con as well, which was great!

Speaking of games, I had a hell of a lot of fun playing a simple but immensely fun game called ‘Dagon Rising’, which appeared in issue 6 of the D-Infinity magazine. I had so much fun with the game I printed it out as soon as I was able to once I returned home!

It’s a tile based game, and the premise is you’re on an ever-changing island. You need to get to the Pillar of Dagon and plant enough dynamite to blow it up, then escape back to your ship. On the way you have to deal with the changing island, as well as Deep Ones who are out to stop you.

Very simple game, and I really hope to see a kickstarter for this game. It was created by William Thrasher.

So there are going to be quite a few changes occurring over the next year. First and foremost, when Jonathan Maberry tells you to go out and find an agent and get your two zombie novels published, that’s exactly what I will be doing.

Right now I’m thinking of working on doing an extensive re-write of the first novel. The major reason is my skill has increased dramatically since I wrote it and I want to be sending my best work to an agent to try and sell for me.

Will this cut into ‘Buck Who?’ I don’t think so. I certainly don’t expect to sell it right away, so I will be able to continue with my goal of writing Buck Who for 52 weeks. You never know, though! Things could change really fast without me realizing it.

Also, all the books I have in various stages of completion will be worked on extensively. I need to get all these books finished and ready for Comicpalooza next year so when I am attending the booth, I will have upwards of seven or so books to push, sell and autograph.

That was one major highlight for me. I sold in the space of 30 minutes four copies of Sword of Kos: Hekaton and autographed each one. That was a feeling I cannot begin to describe. I really want to be able to continue with this.

So many good things came from the trip, it’s really exciting for me!

Now it’s time to push another kickstarter. Isaiah Broussard is the creator of a cute and fun comic called Transylton. This is for Volume 2 of Transyltown. His first Kickstarter went off wonderfully but the second did not do as well the first time around. I have backed him each time and I will continue to do so. Give his comic a shot! It’s lots of fun and you’ll be supporting a very talented young artist.

Now, despite begin gone for almost a whole week, I was able to write chapter 21 for Buck who. Chapter 19 went up on schedule on Friday. I also posted, albeit quite late, two more entries for my New Mutant Monday series. I posted The Blasters and The Porters on Thursday. The next two will be up on time tomorrow morning.

Normally this would be the part of my blog in which I gave quick reviews of novels, RPG material and movies.  My blog has gone on a lot longer than I am used to so I’m going to leave those topics for another week.

Thanks to all the new followers on Twitter. I continue to grow with each week! Hopefully by this time next year I’ll have followers in the hundreds, if not more.

And, also, thanks to all the folks who have liked my personal Author Facebook page!

Until next Sunday, Peace!