DragonCon

As I write this I am in my hotel room watching the Weather Channel's coverage of Hurricanes Gustav and Hanna. Tomorrow morning I hit the road back to central Florida after a terrific weekend (continued)....

First, though, I want to send thanks to everyone who tunes in here. I had the thoroughly neat experience of meeting a gentleman who reads my entries and who was pointed in my direction by someone else. We bumped into each other by the freebies table where I'd set down various and sundry material. Makes me feel good when people like to visit!

This was my very first DragonCon and my first visit to Atlanta. I left home on Thursday morning shortly after sunrise, with a lovely waning crescent moon hanging in the pink-tinged east. My only wrong turn was overshooting the Days Inn.

My latest driver's accessory is a sippy cup, the type you find in the baby aisle at the supermarket and seen below, next to the TV. It fits the cup-holder and doesn't spill, and I could suck my coffee through a hefty straw. I powered my iPod through the cigarette lighter, played it through my cassette adapter, and sailed up here to the music of J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations (Glenn Gould at the piano); Kate Bush's Hounds of Love album; various pieces by Khachaturian, Kodaly, and Korngold; and topped off the trip with a gaggle of Hungarian Rhapsodies by Liszt. Took four breaks overall for gas, food, and stretches. Around 11 miles short of crossing from Florida into Georgia my 18-year-old car crossed the 30,000 mile mark. (Working out of my home has its advantages.)



Days Inn, room 531. Home away from home for me, Bo and Tom Savino (Aisling Press and the upcoming Internet streaming video show Sci-Fi Times TV), and K.L. Nappier.



The skyline from our balcony. Click here for the large view.

DragonCon was loads of fun -- and, at an estimated 30,000 attendees, a bit overwhelming. I'm used to convention activities centered in a single hotel. DragonCon's activities were spread among four, with additional hotels used for lodging. I am impressed and awed by all the work the volunteers put in to make this con happen; by a crowd that kept its cool even when the escalators got tired; and by the security officers who elicited the occasional, "Oh, wait, that's not a costume, that's real."

I would have loved to have gotten a shot of some of those officers posing with the Reno 911 group...



The crowds were still relatively small the morning of the first full day --







-- but eventually fired up to full capacity:







I was on two panels, "To Be SF ... or Not To Be SF?" and "Small Press & Self-Publishing," and otherwise hung out at the Aisling Press table.



Here's more of our set-up, including books by me, Kathy, Bo, and Tracy A. Akers:









Kathy Nappier got to say hello to Mama Bear, who simply stole the show on Friday.



Other tables in our row included M.B. Weston, Tony and Glenda Finkelstein, and Selina Rosen and Lynn Stranathan of Yard Dog Press, with Chris A. Jackson around the corner from us. If a small press is family, a line of small presses is extended family.

Kathy took this shot of me --



-- and here's a separate one of the Jedi Knight.



Many other knights (Jedi and otherwise) were in attendance, likewise Star Wars Storm Troopers, which start out young:







Plus various other iterations, together and separately, as in this quartet of Leias and friend:



Starbucks caffeinated all manner of life forms -- and while posing in costume was de rigeur, the candids provide some great juxtapositions.



Here a Spartan fuels up for battle at the Peachtree Center Mall's food court.





I got out to the freebie tables early and put out postcards for Covenant and for Electric Velocipede #14; book catalogues for Broad Universe; and flyers for the Science Fiction Poetry Association, Riffing on Strings, and the forthcoming Unspeakable Horror anthology. Note the organizers' optimistic use of masking tape here. Note also that I have not yet learned that putting freebies out early means exhuming and repositioning them later on, when the freebie tables become the advertising equivalent of bazillion-layer cakes. Fortunately, I also took copies with me to my spot at the Aisling Press table, where the info moved quite well (and, given the space to move between tables, in more ways than one).

Along with the costumes I had to take a couple artsy shots of the Marriott, which contained the dealer room.





DragonCon also had an ongoing Music track.



Rapid fire of costumes (identified where I know who's what), beginning with Ariel...















R2-D2 and the robot from Lost in Space...







Ghostbusters...





The Joker follows a Harlequin...



Jack Sparrow...



Several Atlanta streets were closed off on Sunday morning to make way for the DragonCon parade. I snapped a few early shots of the waiting crowd before heading down to our table.







The banner begins to show up in the distance...







The Queen of Hearts...



Xena...





Cornelius...



Tom Savino poses with Indiana Jones...



Wonder Woman photographs Supergirl...



My collection closes out with the Flying Spaghetti Monster...



Next up: Book-signing on September 13 at The Book Basket in Homosassa, FL.

Covenant, the first volume in the Deviations Series, is available from Aisling Press, and from AbeBooks, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Book Territory, Borders, Buecher.ch, Buy.com, BuyAustralian.com, DEAstore, eCampus.com, libreriauniversitaria.it, Libri.de, Loot.co.za, Powell's Books, and Target. Deviations: Appetite is now available for pre-order at Barnes and Noble. The Deviations page has additional details.

---

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.