Yesterday I was good and still on the convention high. Today I think I have crashed. Brain lock, body weak, just feeling completely out of sorts. But I’m going to give this a shot anyway. Plus I’m working without a net (no handwritten notes whatsoever).
FRIDAY
So I had planned to sleep all day Thursday so I could stay awake most of the weekend. It didn’t work out that way. I ended up working and being productive into the late hours. I caught myself around 11pm and took two sleeping pills. I talked to fellow local writer Len and discovered we would be taking the same flight to NYC. Pills kicked in around midnight.
Got up before the alarm at 5am. Hopped in the taxi to the airport and he was the driver with the best conversation the whole trip. Getting my boarding pass I overheard one of the women talking about an earthquake. Figured it was Cali news and I went about my business. About 30 mins later got a text from Josette saying there was two earthquakes here and she and mom felt them (later Avri confirmed the first one happened right after I left and he thought someone was doing construction on the building). I didn’t notice either of them.
Met up with Len who told me about his brother who had this wicked stomach virus. The airplane trip was simple. I still love flying so much. Made it to NY and met Len and Alex’s mother, Betsy. We took a van near Grand Central Station and took a smaller van to their hotel. We discovered that the van guy left Len’s largest bag on the street (that had all of his clothes and some pretty expensive books he had planned to get signed). Len lost his cell phone on the bus the day before (oh, I went to the Zone and ran into Len on while I was leaving and he was on his way to meet up with his ex, so it was right after that) so we went to the T-mobile store. They switched the sim card in an older phone they had and we had lunch and discovered the old phone could receive calls, but he couldn’t answer as none of the buttons responded. Betsy and Alex went somewhere and Len and I came back to the hotel and the driver found his bag! Off we went to the convention where from first viewing I could tell they improved VERY MUCH on the clusterfuck that was last year (and apparently the worst one the first year). Grabbed my bag and off to the booth where I met DeWayne who was there on time (I made it in around 11am-ish). Will arrived about 10 minutes after me, so now all the NYCC TAT crew were finally at the table.
(ADHD starting to kick in… going to try and rush through the rest of the weekend)
After tons of ripping and running Tony finally caught up with me at the booth. Met up with Sean after the con closed and we tried to figure out which after con event we’d do. Most of us had to go to the hotel. After tons of chaos Sean, DeWayne, and I ended up having dinner at TGIFridays.
Sean fell asleep early and Tony came in around his usual 2am and he schooled me on some great tips- the top two being try to start a new word balloon with each sentance and how fast lettering in Illustrator (like I’m supposed to be doing) instead of Photoshop really is. We still kinda differ a bit on what we consider decompression, but I’m making a focused effort to try and add more panels per page.
SATURDAY
Holy chaos!!! More sales, more people, more networking. After standing on my feet about 90% of Friday and Saturday fatigue finally kicked in and I was too tired to even attempt any after con parties.
SUNDAY
There were a few companies I wanted to talk to, but couldn’t find (later I discovered how many booths were MOVED at the last second) but was going to skip it all and not go to the show any Sunday as I had to catch my flight at 2. Between the desire to try for those last few talks, already being up, and Tony busting my chops on missing all the stuff Saturday night I went ahead and joined them in going to the con and it turned out to possibly be one of the best and most productive few hours I spent all weekend (hot damn that Tony Lee being right 86% of the time!!!).
Rushing out to get to the airport it seems the only dingbatty thing I did was leave my airplane info on the hotel table instead of the room key. That was okay as I remembered my airline, time, and flight number (wow, again my memory is better than I give it credit for) so I was able to print my boarding passes with no difficulties. Had a 3 to 4 hour layover in Chicago where I learned Betsy already made it back while Len and Alex had some flight delays. Took TONS of notes and bits of story ideas during that layover time.
The show was AMAZINGLY AWESOME!!! I’ve been debating and wanting to go to Wizard Chicago in a few months and I think I’ll go after all without setting up a booth. I also think in San Diego I’ll focus a bit less on sales and staying at the booth… then again, I dunno. Met a lot of great people who stopped by the booth that I would have missed if I was up and about the whole time. Arg. Will figure that out later.
