NYCC: we came, we saw, we… got really, really tired…

Yes, as much as I love cons, they are exhausting. If you saw me at Rocketship on Saturday night, you may have noticed me swaying slightly, like a young tree blowning in the wind. It wasn’t the alcohol, people! Luckily, said alcohol ran out soon, so we retired to Angry Wade’s with our good friend Joe Infurnari and his collaborator Neal Schaffer (BORROWED TIME from Oni).

Picked up lots of fun stuff at the show, some of which I’ll review for Endicott (including Vess’ volume in TwoMorrows’ MODERN MASTERS series, a delightful surprise). Met Stephanie Law, an talented fantasy artist who is working on a Tarot deck that should make any publisher in their right mind completely rabid. [Confidential to the Llewellyn peeps checking in: folks, I was blown away.] The aforementioned Joe and I spent a good deal of time “working the floor,” talking to whoever would listen about a little sumpin’ sumpin’ we’ve got up our sleeves. As two natural pessimists, we were both kind of surprised at the positive response we received overall. Keep your fingers crossed for us; it’s a very cool project (okay, yeah, I’m biased).

A true highlight of the show was getting to hug my friend Gail Simone and her awesome husband. It’s been so long since I’ve seen either of them and darn it all, they’re just so cool.

And I sold a bunch of stuff at the Chemistry Set table! Booyah! Much thanks to Kevin Colden, who pulled the whole darned table thing together and put in the most face time, hands down. Caught up with several old pals at the table, including a very chipper David Gallaher (good to see you, dude).

Alongside the Vess Modern Masters thing, my personal not-to-be-missed book of the show has to be THE PLAIN JANES, by Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg. Leland found Rugg on the floor (I did not — boo) and picked up an advance copy, which I read immediately. Minx shall get off to a great start.