Charming Monsters

I’m just back from a glorious five-day writing retreat and doubling down on busy, as usual. We’re less than two weeks from San Diego Comic Con and I’m scrambling to keep on top of all the press relations, organization and general juggling required to to make sure the show goes smoothly. I’m also doing rewrites on season two of my webcomic, Rocket Fox, pulling together some pitch materials for my agent, and working on the script for book two of a classic literature adaptation project. Whew!

That said, I managed to fit in a quick chat with the podcast crew over at ShiftyLook last week, before my writing retreat, and the interview is now up! Collette, Tim and I chatted about YA fiction, writing process, and of course my ShiftyLook webcomic, Rocket Fox! The podcast is available here – I’d love to hear what you think! It’s my first audio interview, and I was crazy-nervous, hence some of the rapidfire babbling.

Technically, con season has already begun – Jim, Omar and Christine were at Emerald City in Seattle last month, representing UDON – but *my* first show is the Calgary Expo in Alberta this weekend, April 24-25th. Calgary is a great show, really well organized with a stellar guest list, so it’s a nice start to the season.

We head in a day early to help with a few pre-con events, and stick around for a few days after to hang out in Banff for some networking events. Which is awesome, but I’m rapidly reaching the point of being pinched on deadlines all around, and I suspect there’s some awkward “working from the hotel room” in my future.

May gets a little wacky, with local Toronto cons to bookend the month: TCAF on May 8-9 and Anime North on May 28-30. UDON doesn’t have a booth at either show, although some of our artists have personal booths, which will need a bit of support. TCAF will actually be busier for me than Anime North, even though it’s a smaller show: I’m friends with the organizer and will be helping with a few events, plus hosting some out-of-town friends. Not to mention that Jim is sandwiching some more travel in between the two shows, which is going to make for a fun juggling act!

No photos, which are the lazy person’s blogging tool, since I cratered my camera on the pavement outside the Amanda Palmer concert last night. I’m a little sad, but happy that Cecil’s quick thinking (and a $10 bribe) saved my cellphone, which got left in the backseat of the cab at the same time. Adventure!

That’s the bad from last night, but it really was a wonderful adventure overall: hidden restaurants where we dazzled the waiters with French, rock stars and silly songs, drinks and meeting new people and then I dashed off to a secret pizza party at the presidential suite. It was a charmed night.

Really, this whole show has been charmed thus far. We’re going into Saturday, the maddest of the mad days, but so far the booth’s been hitting a solid stride and everyone is pulling their weight, which means nobody’s been getting overloaded. I actually got to wander the show floor for a while yesterday, meeting some authors & artists on my “get stuff from” list, which was awesome – even more so because I got to do so in the company of awesome people.

Yes, I’m using the word awesome a lot. Maybe it’s just the coffee talking!

Today is Day Zero of San Diego Comic Con – the last day of set-up and the first night of exhibiting, with a short but stressful preview night cracking the seal on the exhibit hall at 6 pm (or probably earlier, if past years are any indication). It’s actually been a relaxing run-up to the show, which has us all a little paranoid that something terrible is waiting in the wings. Hopefully those fears will be proven wrong!

Otakon was an awesome show – lots of fun, lots of in-jokes, lots of great fans. Any show where our biggest problem is selling out of product early doesn’t really merit much complaint! The fault there was our own: inventory planning for cons is always a tricky guessing game. Too little product, and you wind up with limited sales and disappointed fans; too much, and you have to cover expensive shipping for the remainders.

Anyway, gotta run – hauling boxes over to the con floor now for our final set-up run. Online time’s going to be limited, as we’ve got four people sharing one computer/internet connection here, but I’ll do my best!

Also: I have tickets for the Amanda Palmer CBLDF concert, AND an awesome date for the show. Huzzah!

Another seven days in my government contract to go, which means I continue to be swamped, but I had to come up for air to announce a couple of very cool things:

The Shuster Award nominees for 2009 were announced this morning, and UDON Entertainment is up for Best Publisher! Of course, we’re up against Drawn & Quarterly, who’ve won the category in all but one previous year, but a girl can dream, can’t she? I think the last year has been UDON’s best for publishing so far, what with the original Street Fighter books (shipping consistantly on time & with great art, thanks to Matt’s awesome stewardship), the manwha and upcoming Manga For Kids lines, and the art books (Darkstalkers Tribute is going to knock people’s socks off!). Guess we’ll see on June 27th!

A couple of my friends are also up for awards: Cameron Stewart in the webcomics category for Sin Titulo, while Ray Fawkes & Cecil Castellucci are among the contenders for Best Writer. Woo!

Legends of Zork, the online browser game Jim did artwork for, launched yesterday. He’s started an art blog at http://www.jimzub.blogspot.com/ and will be posting images every day or so over the next month.

AND flights are booked for the Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo, April 25-26! This is one of my favorite shows and the guest list this year is absolutely stellar. Can’t wait!