San Diego Comic Con Epic Post
Warning: This is a long one.
Warning 2: I am going to name drop like a boss.
Warning 3: This is probably going to be as disjointed and non-linear as Dead Weight.
I hadn’t planned on going to Comic Con International, commonly known as San Diego Comic Con or just Comic Con, this year. (For brevity sake over the rest of this post I’ll shorten it to SDCC.) It’s A LOT of people crammed into a tiny portion of San Jose. I don’t like lines, so I don’t really get into panels that I’m really interested in, because everyone else is interested in those panels too. Long drive down. Longer drive back. It’ll take me a few days to fully recover. All good with not going.
And then…
My son’s ship out date got moved to the Monday just before SDCC. That would be a week ago today. Thing is, I had already made plans to go down with other friends, and made a few business meetings, so I was kind of stuck. Also, word on the street has it that if you register to go and don’t pick up your badge, it hurts your chances of getting in in future years. So, without Robert along, the prep for SDCC took a bittersweet twinge. The night before leaving for SDCC, I got a great idea on something I could do for Robert; I would ask some of the people I ran into to write a note to Robert for me to send him in boot camp.
So, Wednesday came, I packed up the car, picked up my partner in crime, Cody Parcell, and about noon-ish, we started out on the long trek to SDCC, the Mecca of all things nerdy and geeky. We took the 9-ish hours of travel time to discuss plans of upcoming projects, fine tune ideas from the show, and just generally nerd out and hype ourselves up over the weekend. We managed to get to within a few blocks of the San Diego Convention Center at 8:50, with pro-registration closing at 9:00 pm. We pulled a Chinese fire drill, and I hustled my butt the last couple blocks, getting to registration within five minutes of them closing. Out of breath, I picked up the badges and swag bags and headed back out in to the mass of people to jump back in the car and head up to Oceanside where I was staying with friends for the Convention. At that point, Cody and I were down to less than 5% each on our batteries, as the lighter in my Mini Cooper isn’t operational at the moment. Between the crowds, traffic, and low batteries, getting back together was the first great adventure of the weekend.
Thursday, Cody and I had a great breakfast with my very good friend Jason Hough. (If you haven’t read his Dire Earth books, you should treat yourself to some very entertaining books.) After breakfast, we dropped Jason off at his hotel, met up with my pal David Holladay, and hit the ground running. First thing i did, was pop over to my artist pal, Todd Lockwood’s table and asked him if he’d write a note to Robert. Robert is a huge Magic the Gathering player, and Todd’s art graces a lot of Magic cards. Being the ever-cool dude he is, Todd more than happily jotted down a quick note for Robert. 
The next person to jot down a note was someone I never would have expected. David told me that some writer pals of mine, the Winner Twins, knew Vince Caso AKA “Bladezz” from the web series, The Guild. I headed over to the Winners’ booth, and asked them about him. They pointed to the opposite corner, and… BAM! Bladezz in real life! I asked. He wrote. And I was truly off and running in my quest to collect notes from awesome people to send to Robert.
Other people I got to write notes to Robert:
Frank Beddor, author of The Looking Glass Wars. Robert has been a fan of this series since he was very young. Dino Andrade, the voice actor who did some of the voices in World of Warcraft. One of my good writer pals Maxwell Alexander Drake, lead writer for Ever Quest Next. Another writer pal, Kate Elliott. While wandering around with Kate, we bumped into David Gerrold, the guy who wrote the Star Trek episode “The Trouble with Tribbles” and some pretty bad ass science fiction books. Mr. Gerrold also told me that once Robert was at his regular station, he would send his unit some books. How cool is that? Speaking of Davids. Sunday we bumped into David Brin at the Winner Twin’s booth, and he also wrote Robert a note.
I even got a couple of cool surprises in my quest: Thursday, I went to the Ace/Roc booth, hoping to win a galleys copy of Jim Butcher’s new steampunk novel. Told the fine people there about Robert, and that he’s a big Desden Files fan. They gave me a copy to give to him to thank him for his service. Saturday, when a guy I met in the pro suite overheard what I was doing, Jason Kimble, the writer and creator of the graphic novel The Fatal Photography of Philip Frowly signed a copy of the graphic novel and asked me to give it to my son.
Before I get to what I think will be the coolest out of all the notes I collected, I wanted to say how awesome and gracious everyone was about them. Even one of the guys who was charging for prints and signatures (it’s a thing at comic cons, usually set up by agents) didn’t charge me for the note. However, one person I asked, blew me off. That kind of sucked. Please don’t ask who it was. I’m far too professional to call someone out like that. Thanks to everyone else for being so cool about helping do something cool for my son.
I collected those over the course of SDCC, and posted them as I saw them in the stack I have. Now, onto the one that I think Robert my think is the coolest of them all. Wait. Gotta hold that thought for a minute, because it comes after the biggest downer of Comic Con for me.
One of my very first fans set up a fan gathering for me for Friday. That fan and my buddy Cody were thew only ones to show up. As you can see, the room sits quite a few people. Well over 150. That was a punch in the gut. Over the course of the day, I recovered, slowly. Mostly I’m going to use this as a memory to keep me humble if I ever reach levels of GRRM superstardom.
Okay… Now back to the really cool one. This one happened Saturday, after my gut punch of a fan gathering, after getting snubbed. For being at SDCC, I was feeling pretty down as my pals and I went to the pro suite for a little down time, recharge our phones, and some refreshments. As we made our way to a mostly open table, my buddy David points out that Felecia Day is sitting at the table next to us. Felecia freaking Day! If you don’t know who she is, go watch Doctor Horrible’s Sing Along Blog, The Guild, and check out Geek and Sundry. She is probably the closest thing to a patron saint of geekdom we’ll ever have on this planet.
I glance over my shoulder, recognize her, and my brain set my goober fanboy levels to ultra. I debated about going over to her and asking for a note for Robert. I talked with my friends. I texted my wife Robin. I weighed the awesome of getting a note versus her just wanting some quite time in the pro suite. Ultimately, Robin decided it for me when she sent the text, “And how many opportunities are you going to be told, ‘no,’ by her?” Her being Felecia freaking Day. I flashed to Strictly Ballroom and the line, “A life lived in fear is a life half lived.” So, I sucked it up, and as politiely as I could, suppressing all my fan-boy gooberisms, explained about Robert’s situation, and she graciously wrote a brief note for him. That moment was worth the drive and the crowds and the gut punch and the exhaustion.
Now, moving on. Let’s talk networking at SDCC. Couple of rules to consider while seeking contacts and networking opportunities. These will work at other events, but some are specifically important to SDCC.
Everyone is busy. As one of the most coveted media events on the planet, everyone wants to make the most of it. Sometimes people set up meetings and such well in advance of arriving at SDCC. Respect people’s schedules and time. If you set up a meeting with someone, keep it. If you can’t keep it, let them know asap. Don’t get bent out of shape if they can’t reschedule for another point during the con. Give yourself at least five extra minutes to get to somewhere.
When meeting someone for the first time, keep everything concise. Have your script for the first two minutes of interaction with people down pat. What do you do? Have the answer in one sentence. What are you working on? 30-45 seconds max. Heck, you should have one for every project, whether published, in progress, or even somewhere in the recesses of your mind. The last thing you want to do is be overly complex when telling someone about your work and have them zone out.
Be aware of body language. Few people are going to tell you to go away, no matter how much they want to. If you get anything resembling a “I would rather be doing something else” vibe, have a list of practiced lines to get out of a conversation. While you may not make any deals in that conversation, the person you are talking to might respect you for not being a barnacle.
If the person is remotely more famous than you are, don’t nerd out over them. Treat them like a normal person. You can tell them how much you admire their work without gushing all over them. Refer to rule three.
When in doubt, any kind of doubt, the smallest sliver of doubt, DO NOT APPROACH someone you’re hoping to use as a business contact in the future. This is not the same as being nervous. Nervous is okay. What I’m talking about is if they look like they are on their way somewhere. They just removed themselves from a group of people all vying for their attention. “But Todd,” I hear you saying, “what about your experience with Felecia Day? Seems like you had some doubts there.” Not the same thing. I didn’t approach Ms. Day seeking a business contact. I didn’t say, “I have a great idea for a show on Geek and Sundry.” (Even though I do). In that moment, I was a fanboy. And because I might have an opportunity to speak to Ms. Day in the future as a fellow professional, I kept my interaction with her as polite and concise as possible.
Be patient. Be prepared to play the long game with networking and gaining business contacts. Don’t expect people you meet and exchange cards with to turn into business right away. Today’s chance encounter may become something in a couple of years, maybe longer.
If you’re going in a professional capacity, don’t cosplay. I shouldn’t have to explain why.
People asked me over the weekend if I went to any good panels. I’m not one to try and get into panels at SDCC. The ones that interest me coincidentally are the ones that interest a huge portion of the other 100,000+ attendees as well. That translates into lines that you have to get into hours or even days before hand. I heard that people got into the coveted Hall H line for Friday on Wednesday afternoon. Well, Thursday evening, I went looking for the front of the Hall H line to verify this rumor. After a long journey that took me behind the convention center, I found Joell who had indeed gotten in line Wednesday afternoon so her family could get into see The Walking Dead panel on Friday. 
Since she had already been in that line over 24 hours, I figured the least I could do was give her something to read. She was so grateful, I decided to do it again Friday night. That’s when I met Celina. She was equally happy. Friday evening, I also found out that they had a separate line for the disabled in another location. So, after meeting Celina, I started out again. Because that line was fenced off, I had to toss the book and I never learned the lady’s name who was at the front of that line, but they shouted back that they would share the book around. I missed it Saturday because I was networking and making sure I got into a Saturday evening event. I think this is going to be a regular SDCC thing that I do.
On Saturday, Cody and I started doing what we called “Hit and Run Interviews” with people we thought were cool. At first it was just me talking to people that I thought were cool and weren’t in the big press areas but that I thought some of my fans might enjoy hearing about. Cody and David both told me that I was pretty good at the interviewing thing, so we decided to run with it. So now, “Hit and Run Interviews” are going to be a thing coming to my YouTube channel. It’s going to be pretty rudimentary at first, because we’re all pretty new to this YouTube thing. As time goes on, and we become more and more comfortable with it, things will get better. From SDCC, I think we have between half-a-dozen to ten videos. I don’t remember exactly, because my brain is still kind of much, and Cody has all the clips. Really excited to see how this little project develops. See the first on here.
I’m absolutely sure I’m leaving some stuff out, but man, even two days later, I’m still brain fried. Feel free to ask questions in the comments. I’ll be happy to clarify, expand on anything.
Cheers for now.
Next stop: The Central Coast Renaissance Faire this weekend.
Until next time, may all of your stories have happy endings.
