Salt Lake Comic Con 2016 Days 2 and 3 – I Survived!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 5, 2016

Well, the 2016 Salt Lake Comic Con is over. Funny how, especially when manning a booth, it goes from “I’m so excited!” on Day 1, to “Wow, this is great, but I’m so exhausted!” on Day 2, and ends with, “This is great, but can it over yet? Please?” by the end of Day 3. It’s a little sad that there won’t be a FanX next year, so we’re gonna have to go a full year this time before enjoying something quite on this scale.

It’s exhausting, but it was lots of fun and plenty epic. And I was having fun even at the end, although my legs felt like they were about to fall off from all the walking and standing (I tried to avoid sitting while at our booth). I didn’t really get to walk around the vendor floor much until the third day, so I hardly knew where anything was outside of the rows between the main entrance and my own booth. I still managed to get some of my Christmas and birthday shopping done for the year, so, BOOYAH!

The Xchyler Booth was pretty wild. Traffic seemed to come in waves. We’d be swamped for twenty minutes, and then hardly any visitors for the next twenty. I don’t know if that’s normal for other booths, but that’s how things were in our world. The authors at the Xchyler Publishing booth were Candace Thomas, Sarah Seeley, John Olsen, Ben Ireland, Scott Taylor, Scott Tarbet, and my wife Julie Barnson. Oh, and Melissa McShane who doesn’t publish through Xchyler, but is good friends with several of us anyway, and offered to help run the booth. And she has hella good books.

Nearby, there were the awesome Space Balrogs and guests, including David West, Craig Nybo, Jason King, Bob Defendi, James Wymore, and Holli Anderson. We’re all friends, so it was nice to be able to wander over by their table at times. Well, it was nice for me. Hopefully I didn’t bug the crap out of them. I also briefly met with Michaelbrent Collings and Johnny Worthen, both of whom had the enviable problem of selling out of their latest books.

Over at the Wordfire Press booth – holy moly. You couldn’t tell they were depleted by the number of people attending DragonCon, which was being held the same weekend. I got to chat with Dave Butler (AKA “D J Butler”), Julie Frost, Eric James Stone, Jason Anderson, Dan Willis (Jason, Dan, and I got into a very fun conversation about Philip K. Dick and the history of the movie Blade Runner), Christie Golden, David Farland, and Brad Torgersen. Brad Torgersen and David Farland were kind enough to sign my copy of the 2113 Anthology.

ALL great authors. Check ’em out!

No doubt I’m leaving someone out, and I apologize.

The second night, some of the Xchyler authors went out for dinner together. The Wordfire folks were having a similar dinner together that night at the same restaurant. Some other friends happened to be there at the same time as well. I guess when the restaurant is A) Excellent and B) Right across the street from the convention center, you don’t need an Improbability Drive. There was a tiny bit of visiting between tables before the food came out. 🙂

As for panels… I got to see Millie Bobby Brown, the young actress who played Eleven in the hit Netflix series, Stranger Things. She surprised me. She was very comfortable speaking to Comic Con audiences, quick with the answers and jokes, and seriously handling it like an old pro. I couldn’t say the same about the panel with Nicholas Brendon and Emma Caulfield (who played Xander and Anya on Buffy the Vampire Slayer).  They didn’t seem nearly as comfortable on the stage, which I thought was strange. I think part of it was that most of the questions still centered around Buffy, and it’s been a long time since that series ended. (SHOCK! I feel so old!)

I attended some very good panels on writing science fiction and magic systems, and another centered around Steven King’s excellent non-fiction book, On Writing. The final panel I attended was all about the movie Aliens (including the others in the series), since it is enjoying its 30th anniversary. (SHOCK! I feel so old!) Still an excellent movie!

At the end of the third day… yeah, I was exhausted. And had to go to Cedar City the following morning. And THEN my family comes down with the Con Crud. Ugh. Not so cool. But in the end, was it worth it? Heck yeah!  We had a blast. We were busy. We sold and signed a lot of books. It was a great convention, and I’m looking forward to next year!

I just hope to get some rest between then and now… 🙂

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