The View From Drew

Went back to the hotel for the Meet the Pros gathering.  It was a little intimidating at first, especially when I saw all the cool posters, free samples, and cover art cards some of the authors had to promote their work and all I brought were a handful of The Dome CDs.  Fortunately, I was seated at the same table with glennhauman who, though I haven't seen in some fifteen or more years, is exactly the same person.  In fact, I don't think he's aged.  He's got this cool new start-up venture called Comicmix.com featuring all new stories of characters such as Jon Sable and GrimJack.  Mike Grell is on board with this and the best part - it's all free.  New material is being posted each week with the plans to move this into a dead tree format at some point.

And that's my plug for the day.  ;)

Anyway, with another author from Creative Couplings with me, it made it easy for people who wanted to get the book signed to find me.  The thing was that they didn't just come with their Creative Couplings.  First, I actually sold and signed two copies of The Dome.  That was a real thrill as most people didn't ask much about it or if they did they listened politely, sniffed, and moved on.  Audio drama - pfst.  What was even cooler was when kradical came up later and told me he signed one of them.  kradical had brought numerous copies of The Quality of Leadership with him and though he said he didn't sell as many as he liked, I certainly felt like I signed enough of them.  I signed for family and friends who didn't come.  I signed for new series fans who were now discovering the old series.  (I kinda envy them and the adventure that awaits them.)  I signed for longtime fans.  We talked about our favorite doctors and episodes.  It was interesting to hear about other people's experiences with discovering the show.  I signed a couple of copies of The History of Christmas.  I even signed one copy of Missing Pieces, the fan charity anthology that I contributed to many moons ago.  That was especially cool.

In addition, I got to meet face-to-face, daytonward, jmswallow, steve_mollmann, tiggerallyn (who hooked me up with copies of the fan Doctor Who audios done by Gary Russel and crew before they became Big Finish), michaelschuster, Richard White (EDIT: nightwolfwriter), Kevin Lauderdale, and Dave Galanter.

I was going to stay for a drink or two at the bar, but I got a call from Sue.  Mikey wasn't taking to his new environment too well and wouldn't go to sleep.  I went back to lay the "Daddy Smackdown" (it's not as bad as it seems), but by then with the exhausting trip down and all, I didn't feel like going back, so I crashed until now.

The nicest part of the whole experience though was talking to some of the people.  In my bio I state, "John S. Drew writes stories he hopes someone will enjoy."  A lot of times I feel down as I don't write as much as I should and that has been moreso the case lately.  Listening to some of the comments the convention goers made about my work really helped inspire me.  It was especially nice when I saw the Missing Pieces anthology.  That was a large tome and for someone to remember I had a story in it meant she remembered it.  I have a lot to think about this week.

Oh, and I also walked away with a cool huge cutout of the artwork of Creative Couplings which I will place in my classroom, but it will also come in handy at any other appearances I make.  I really need to develop some of those items for The Dome.