Salt Lake Comic Con 2017 – Thoughts

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 26, 2017

Another year’s Salt Lake Comic Con came to a close, and I still haven’t become rich and famous and become a special invited guest. Go figure! 🙂 But I did manage to have a pretty good time. My legs will forgive me eventually. Our booth was a little crowded with authors, and we still haven’t quite gotten the hang of the whole book-pushing thing. Someday. At least this time, we had a nice, thick rug beneath us. That helped. You don’t think it will, especially with soft rubbery soles, but OH MY GOODNESS does it make a difference after 8-10 hours of standing.

Aside from manning the booth, I attended a handful of panels, did some shopping for gifts, visited with a lot of friends and colleagues, and enjoyed watching all the awesome cosplayers. As far as celebrities, I saw Dick Van Dyke and Zachary Levi. Both of them were highly entertaining. Dick Van Dyke is 91 years old, hard of hearing, but still awesome.

I attended a panel on writing Urban Fantasy with Jodi Lynn Nye, Tad Williams, Julie Frost, Cheree Alsop, and a couple other authors I’m not as familiar with. I enjoyed the discussion a great deal, even if it didn’t necessarily go into depth. Williams in particular made a point at the beginning about how “Urban Fantasy” is a category created by marketers, not authors, and one should never worry too much about what is “allowed” within a subgenre. Another panel, on writing Star Wars books, included Michael Stackpole and others who had written official stories in the Star Wars universe. It provided some interesting insight into working with a licensed property, particularly one that fans are rabid about. Jim Butcher had a Q&A session which was really fun. At least half the questions were about the Dresden Files.

One event was a book launch for Johnny Worthen’s new thriller, “What Immortal Hand.” The publisher (Omnium Gatherum) graciously shared the last half of the hour with us to launch Lynn Worthen’s (no relation) new desert-based speculative fiction anthology, “Mirages and Speculations.” Johnny Worthen is one of the authors. As am I. I don’t think I can compare my stories to Johnny’s beautiful – almost lyrical – style. In fact I really don’t want to. He’s a great writer. But that’s what the book is about… a cross-section of different kinds of speculative fiction, by authors with many different styles. It’s great stuff, and worth checking out.

On Friday night, we got together with friends and had a great dinner. I met a few new people there, including professional mermaids. After the conference Saturday, we got together with yet more friends for another dinner at a local pizzeria that I’d never tried (Rusty Sun Pizzeria). The calzone was excellent… I definitely want to go there again. 🙂

One particularly cool opportunity came when I received a visit from Adamantyr, who has been here at this blog almost as long as I have. Darius Ouderkirk, another regular around here and a fellow game developer, also dropped by. I loved having so many friends drop by. Sadly, I know at least one person came by when I wasn’t there. Hopefully I didn’t miss too many people.

And then, just like that, the party was over. Le Sigh. At least until FanX, usually in the spring. I guess in theory, I could be going to Snake River Comic Con this weekend. I was more than a little tempted. But alas, the real world waits for nobody, and I am loaded down with Stuff to Get Done.

Filed Under: Events, Geek Life - Comments: Read the First Comment



top