Continued from Part 2:
As I mentioned in a previous blog post, the really odd thing about meeting my fellow Pandas at C2E2 was how well we got along. It was really like we knew each other for a lot longer than the few months to few years that was the fact. The only other Panda I’d ever met in person was Steph Post, author of A TREE BORN CROOKED. That was probably inevitable, really, because she lives in St. Pete and, at the time, I was her publicist. A couple of years ago she was a panelist at a book fair on the University of Central Florida campus, which is about five miles from where I live. So, I pedaled my bike up to campus and Steph, her husband and I hung out all morning and had a quick lunch together before I had to take off to get to work.
I suppose the instant connections all of us at C2E2 felt upon meeting one another has a lot to do with the selection process of our publisher. There are several hundred (if not thousands) of novels submitted each year and evaluated by the acquisitions team. A select number are chosen to be pursued. But the final step in that process is a private interview with the publisher. Compatibility and willingness to cooperate and coordinate with other members of the community is the key to becoming a Panda.
Based on my previous experience, I guess I kind of expected to hit it off well with everyone else. I mean we communication regularly online, so we aren’t really strangers. But you really never know what to expect until you actually meet someone. Sometimes people just don’t hit it off. That was not the case with our C2E2 authors. The level of familiarity we had with each other was more akin to knowing one another better and for a much longer period than was the actual case. It truly was like we had grown up in the same town, maybe attended grade school and high school together. It felt more like a class reunion.
Of course, we coordinated most of the advance preparations for C2E2 with our online communications tools. And so, most of what we did went off just as expected. One part of the weekend that didn’t go as planned we had no control over. Meg Bonney had planned to attend Friday and Saturday, commuting from Kenosha, WI, where she lives. But at the last minute something came up at work and she couldn’t get away on Friday.
Because David had to leave Friday night there wasn’t a time that all of us were together. We had planned taking at least one all-inclusive group photo. But that wasn’t in the cards and I for one was disappointed. But for those of us who were there on Saturday, Meg’s arrival was greatly anticipated.
She has been a rising star since before her debut novel, EVERLY, was published last fall. She’s sort of already famous in many ways. Besides working for a major corporation, she contributes to Pure Fandom and live Tweets about a number of popular TV shows. As a result, she has quite a following on Twitter and other social media. In fact, Meg is something of an expert on anything to do with the TV pop culture and sci-fi/fantasy movies. She is also the first person I’ve ever personally known who has a blue check mark on her Twitter account, indicating that her identity is verified.
After waking, showering and getting ready for the day ahead, I received a text message from my daughter Sarah. She said that she and her boyfriend, Peter, were almost to Chicago and that she would let me know when they arrived at the Convention Center. I was excited to see her. It had been nearly 4 years since I’d seen her while visiting for her big sister’s graduation of U of I’s grad school.
As C, JD and I set out for the day, intending to check out of the room and store our stuff in the car (as we were leaving that afternoon to return to Ohio that afternoon), we discovered the elevators on our tower of the hotel were not working and, according to the sign taped to the wall above the elevator call buttons, we had to call for the car to be brought up to us and take us down to the lobby. That was kind of scary, especially for someone who is a bit claustrophobic. You see, as the doors closed and we began descending, the lights on the control panel and the one above the doors that indicated the floor were flashing. The operator manually controlled our descent with, fortunately, no unexpected stops.
Perhaps the elevator problem was karma for the jokes C and I made the previous day every time we rode in the elevator, asking the other passengers who would be the murderer if the elevator mysteriously stopped. Hey, it’s what writers do, right? We’re always looking for a plot.
We made it to the convention floor only to find that as many people as were there on Friday, at opening Saturday was worse, probably three fold. To one side of the convention floor was a line of people waiting to get in. Since C, JD and I had regular tickets event security expected us to stand in that like, which looked like it would take at least an hour or two to gain admission. I suppose they wanted exhibitors to buy extra badges, which were exorbitantly priced, in lieu of the general admission tickets. With an exhibitor badge, one could, of course, skip the line.
C was having none of that, though. We walked past the line, to the far side of it in fact. When a security person halted us, she explained we were with Pandamoon Publishing and our booth was just through the curtains. And, somehow that worked. C can be very persuasive at times, but I was surprised. Gratefully, they let us through.
When we made it to the booth Alisse, Penni and Dana were already there, but Meg hadn’t arrived yet. Then my phone rang. It was Sarah. She told me she and Peter, her boyfriend, were waiting at the convention center’s entrance. Now, what we had planned to do was go for a quick breakfast together somewhere and hang out for a bit, all outside of the convention. They weren’t planning to attend, probably because of the ticket prices, which were forty bucks per person for just one day! But it was really too late for me to get away and go find a place to have breakfast with them. Also, I wanted to hang out at the booth and try to sell a few books. Still, my daughter had come all the way to Chicago to see me.
As it turned out, David had left his multi-day ticket for anyone else to use. Also, Alisse had an extra exhibitor badge that came with the booth that Penni was using, allowing me to borrow her ticket as well. So, suddenly, there were a couple of free tickets for Sarah and Peter, if they wanted to come inside the event, meet my fellow pandas and hang out with us or see the sights. All I needed to do was get the tickets outside to them.
I didn’t really think about the line to get inside the event. After all, there was a way around that, right? I mean C had used her magic and we just skipped the line. So I took the extra badges replete with lanyards and went out to meet with Sarah and Peter. After hugs and handshakes, we hoofed it back to the entrance of the event. But things had changed in the past hour.
Now the head security guy was playing Billy Bad-ass telling me that we needed to get to the back of the line. He didn’t care that I was an exhibitor because, I didn’t have an exhibitors badge. And he didn’t want to hear about three badges for the booth but seven exhibitors, which was the reason I had a regular ticket. He said I needed to buy an exhibitor’s badge. So, I called Alisse, told her what was going on. She brought out her other exhibitor badge and handed it to me past the security check point. But the security guy was into the full scale playing heavy mode. He wanted to know why I didn’t have an exhibitor’s badge. Alisse told him I must have picked up the wrong badge along with the tickets I’d purchased separately for my kids. He warned her that it better not happen again but at least he allowed us to pass through the check point, skipping a line that had grown to be a 3 hour wait just to get inside.
Honestly, I don’t know the exact number of people who were there. On Friday we heard there were 40,000 people. Then, again, we also heard someone throwing around the number 62,000. The event floor was vast, so a lot of people could mill about inside. Even so, Friday was crowded at times. Saturday was just ridiculous. Walking around was like passing through what the late great comedian/actor Robin Williams once described as a “human car wash”. Later on we heard the attendance for Saturday’s was around 150,000 and I don’t doubt that at all. Actually, it seemed like more people than that.
By the time Sarah, Peter and I made it back to the booth, Meg was there. We hugged. And, as expected, she fit in just like the rest of us. And her husband, Mike, came with her on the train to Chicago earlier that morning.
After introductions and some catching up conversations, Sarah and Peter decided to go walk around and see everything there was to see. I settled in to operate the booth while most everyone else went off in search of contacts or people watching to buy some books. They also took some pictures with cosplayers. At one point around noon, C and JD went out to find something to eat that didn’t cost the arm and a leg the food vendors inside the venue were charging. They brought back a Kielbasa on a bun, which immediately became my lunch.
Along the way, we met some interesting people, among them a few more unsigned authors who pitched their books. One guy who was originally from eastern Kentucky told us a real life story that sounded like something out of Christine’s book, CRIMSON FOREST. After talking to him for a while about people he knew in Kentucky and Ohio, C and I determined that he might actually be distantly related to both of us.
A few cosplayers who passed-by stopped to take pictures with us and consented to hold up our books. Others didn’t want to hold the books, se we held them. After a while, C and I went off in search of opportunities for other pictures as well, while JD stayed with Alisse to tend the booth. All along the way, we were uploading pictures to our Pandamoon internal communication channel through the WiFi connections in the building – which were amazingly stable considering how many people were there to potentially suck up all the Wifi. My smart phone told me the connection as 150Mb. From the brief interval required to upload multiple pictures, and even some short HD video clips, I’m certain the venue had multiple routers in use to prevent saturation.
When Sarah and Peter reappeared at the booth, they wanted to buy a copy of my book, BECOMING THUPERMAN, for his dad. Since he has connections in Normal, IL, the setting for the story, it seemed a natural thing that he’d like to read.
There were also some people several of us knew through an online relationship but had never met in peson. One of them was Jon Filitti of Mindsoak.
It was late afternoon before C, JD and I said our goodbyes to everyone. Meg and Mike were heading home as well but had not yet decided whether to make the trip again on Sunday. Penni and Dana were planning to leave the ensuing day. I felt bad about leaving Alisse with the prospect of her being all by herself for most of Sunday and having to close things down but each of us had made our plans. It was tough getting everyone together for even the time that we had managed. I needed to get back to Florida and the prospect of dog sitting for my son’s bulldogs for a week while he and Jen, his girlfriend, were on a cruise. C and JD had to get home for the kids, their dogs and, of course, work.
We collected what we were going to take home with us. C had managed to sell out of her books. I had several left over, but I had brought more books than C. I signed a few books to leave behind for Sunday and, before leaving the convention floor, I called Sarah to find out where she and Peter were.
Once I hit the blast of chilly air outside I remembered I left my hoodie back at the booth. And so, I hoofed it back to the event. I called Meg and asked her to run it out to me. She was the only one at the booth but sent Mike the convention floor’s exit to hand my hoodie to me through security.
I slipped it on and hurried back to meet up Sarah and Peter outside the hotel. We said our goodbyes. Then I rejoined C and JD before continuing on through the hotel’s lobby to the valet parking station. There we had then bring out the car from the garage. We loaded up the remaining few things and set out for Cleveland.
I didn’t realize how tired I was until we were out on the road again. I’d been looking forward to C2E2 for a couple of months but now it was over. Kind of an emotional letdown in a way, but I was also glad it was behind me. Along the way back to Cleveland we made a couple of pit stops but mostly it was just the long drive. It was well past dark before we arrived at C and JD’s house.
On Sunday morning C’s pitbull puppy decided try eating my reading glasses. They were destroyed, of course. I mean, they were 35 years old. But they still worked for me, for the most part, anyway. Other than having issues focusing on the really fine print, my eyes are actually pretty good. C felt really bad about my loss, though and said we’d go into town to get a replacement pair at a drug store or something. While we were out we drove down to the lakefront and had lunch at a small place in the town where C lives. Afterwards, we drove around the countryside seeing some sights before heading back to the house and calling it a day. I think all of us took a long nap that afternoon while I did laundry in anticipation of packing up to fly back home in the morning.
To be Continued in Part 4