Saturday! This was the busy day for me. So busy I didn’t get many pictures taken…eeek!

We had an Urban Fantasy panel at 10:30 and that was cool; The League of Reluctant Adults was well represented…five of the eight panelists were Leaguers! We did a little autographing after that, and then I had an interview with a blog called Comic Book Therapy. Not sure when that will be up, but when it appears I’ll let you know. I also found time to sit with Priscilla the Ultra Talented, she who makes glorious maps, and signed two dozen prints she had made of the map that will appear in TRAPPED. If you are so inclined to snag a print from her once you see it in November, I will be providing a link to do so.

The Weta booth area was ultra shiny. I’m sure you’ve seen pictures of the trolls that will be in The Hobbit. But have you seen Thorin Oakenshield’s map, complete with silver letters?

Another signing at the Random House booth at 3. Much happiness and joy there. My cousin Drew, who owns Ash Avenue Comics in Tempe, stopped by to say hello. And so did Diana Rowland! Squee! She signed my copy of EVEN WHITE TRASH ZOMBIES GET THE BLUES—and if you haven’t read her White Trash Zombie books you’re kinda missing out.

I exited and wrote a bit of HUNTED (coming in 2013!) and then headed on down for drinks by the bay with some Random House folk.

When you have drinks by the bay with Random House folk and people give you shots called Liquid Cocaine that are half Jägermeister and half Goldschläger (THANKS, GERMANY!) and yeah they give you three of them and maybe some beer chasers, the brainstorming for future writing projects can get a little loopy. Somehow we got fixated on writing mysteries featuring a private dick called Saxon Codpiece.

SAXON CODPIECE in THE BAGGAGE HANDLER

FOUL BALLS: A SPORTS MYSTERY featuring SAXON CODPIECE

And so on. I cannot explain this other than to say we thought those were bloody hilarious at the time.

Anyway, I’m back home now and after the doggies mauled me coming in the door they sat on the couch for a post-mauling nap. Have you seen my doggies? Manley is the pug and Sophie is the Boston terrier.

Can you guess how I started my day? That’s right, I went to Upstart Crow and got myself a Mexican Mocha! Nom nom nom! But this time when I went there were spiffy people to meet me there. These were people who wanted to say howdy but couldn’t make it to the con itself, so they brought some books with them, I signed ’em, and then we had a lovely time chatting together out on the patio while birds sang to us. Look! I has proof!

I didn’t spend too much time on the floor; I have this book called HUNTED due at the end of August and I really need to write all I can, so for much of the day that’s what I did. But I was a good boy and took a few random cosplay pictures as I walked around. Behold!

You know, you see a lot of the new Jokers based on Heath Ledger these days, and it may be easier to pull off in many ways than the old school ones. But Holy Wax Replica Batman, this one guy really nailed the old-school comic book Joker better than I’ve ever seen. I mean, his FACE! It’s perfect! The eyebrows! The jaw! The damned smile! Honestly this guy was kinda scary because he made the Joker real:

One of the coolest bits about Comic Con is that you can randomly run into legends. I happened to run into sic-fi legend Peter Hamilton at the Random House booth:

My wonderful editors took me out to dinner at Roy’s or Ray’s or something. Honestly I didn’t pay that much attention because on the way in my eyes were traumatized by the sign for another restaurant called Tequila in that execrable Papyrus font. DAMN YOU PAPYRUS FOR RUINING TEQUILA FOR ME!

We entertained ourselves and probably annoyed our waiter by complimenting all the food using largish words in the completely wrong way. He’d come by and ask how the appetizer was and we smiled and told him it was “perspicacious and stoic.” The beer we tried was “extremely bouffant” and the main course was “flippant yet sonorous.” For dessert I had a WTF moment. I ordered this one thing because once I read the menu it was sort of like a dare. It was called an “Almond Joy?” with the question mark being entirely intentional. Apparently you’re supposed to order it and sound like a Valley Girl: “I’ll have the Almond Joy?” But check out the description:

Okay, WTF! I thought there was only one form of coconut and it’s called A COCONUT. And what in nine hells is chocolate soil? Why would a chef ever offer to soil a plate? I had to order it just to see. So it turns out I was partially right: there was only one form of coconut on the plate and it was coconut; it did not vary from coconut at all. But they were not kidding about the chocolate soil. It had the appearance and texture of soil and it fucking tasted like soil too. I paid them to serve me dirt. WELL PLAYED, SIRS.

After dinner I went to the Penguin party because they were very kind to invite me. I got to meet authors Amber Benson and Myke Cole and Kat Richardson, all fabulous people. Kat is in The League of Reluctant Adults and I’ve wanted to meet her for a good while; she has a giant smile and we talked about how awesome her covers are. (Have you read Kat’s books, by the way?) And then I was entertained by Erica, who works for Penguin and I think may have been hired because she is the world’s leading expert in giving Anton Strout shit. Now, many people give Anton shit because, like a mushroom, he thrives on it, but Erica is a virtuoso at slinging it Anton’s way. At some point Myke Cole got up and took a picture of us with his phone and his flash lit up our eyes with the fires of hell:

If I ever run for office this picture will resurface because it looks like we are planning some seriously evil shenanigans. In truth our plans were rather tame: We planned to have another drink. Except for Anton. He planned to sit there while Erica gave him shit. Heh! Anton has a new series launching this fall, the Spellmason Chronicles, starting with ALCHEMYSTIC, so I’m looking forward to it.

Today (Saturday) I have my urban fantasy panel and I’ll do my best to take pics! More later!

WOW what a day!

There was joy. There was pain. There was Comic Con.

First—update from Preview Night: I got to meet Patrick Rothfuss again. For those of you who have followed me for a while, it is no secret that I consider him to be the finest storyteller walking the planet right now. (If you have never heard of him, I suggest you find The Name of the Wind immediately. You’re welcome.) He also happens to be an excellent human being. I met him last year and fanboyed all over the poor man. This year I managed to keep my shit together…but just barely. He has actually read the first three of my books and I gave him a copy of TRICKED. He wanted to give me something back. So I said I would trade it for a Crazy Eyes picture. Suffice to say you would not pick either of us up if we were hitchhiking:

I started my morning at Upstart Crow, which is a spiffy little coffee shop & bookstore in Seaport Village, just on the other side of the Hyatt. I discovered this place last year. Here is what they have: THE BEST COFFEE EVAR. They have this thing called a Mexican Mocha. It’s a mocha, you know…with spices. And it’s amazing. They hand-grind their chocolate, which I never realized was something that people did. OH LOOK THEY HAVE A SPECIAL JAR FOR IT.

By the way: You can’t get Mexican Mochas at Starbucks.  You can’t get them, um…anywhere else I’ve ever been. They’re amazing. BUT DON’T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT.

Ask my editor. I bought her one and brought it to the convention center. She is something of a coffee connoisseur and so I needed validation. I said, Tricia, you need to try this Mexican Mocha. It will change your life. And she tried it. And then she promptly turned into Galadriel for a few minutes. Not the scary blue one that was terrible as the sea. I mean the shiny happy one who gives strange dwarves three hairs from her head. That’s what this drink does for people. It turned me into Brad Pitt for like four seconds. And I’m talking about the sexy young one from A River Runs Through It.

After that I hit the floor. I got a signed copy of Alchemy from David Mack. I got signed copies of a special con-only foil cover of CHEW from John Layman and Rob Guillory. (If you like comics and you’re not reading CHEW…why?) Look, I has proof:

I also got to visit Cody Vrosh, an artist who did some fan art featuring Atticus and Oberon a while back. Beautiful watercolor and ink stuff. I’m going to have him do one of Atticus and Granuaile soonish. But he was turbo kind enough to give me a signed print of his first one so I could geek out:

I failed miserably at getting anything from Mattel. The line was insane. I tried three times and couldn’t get in. The aggressive bald man with a mustache at the end of the line did not want anyone else to fork over their disposable income and told everyone to move along, nothing happening here. So I moved along, and one guy tried to SELL me his spot in line, and to that guy I say, Dude. I will not leave this earth with that on my balance sheet. I will never pay to wait in a fucking line. There is some shit I will simply have to do without.

I am so glad I didn’t have to do without meeting Shawntelle Madison, the thoroughly awesome author of COVETED and the forthcoming KEPT. If you dig PNR and specifically werewolves, you’d probably dig her books quite a bit. Here’s the two of us, appropriately standing in front of a sign regarding PUBLIC DRUNKENNESS (it’s above Shawntelle’s head):

I also got to meet Scott Sigler and Troy Denning and famous agents and stuff like that. But at the end of the evening we were all standing around this fire outside of Fox Sports Grill wondering why the hell we weren’t roasting s’mores. It was not at all the sort of thing I would have expected when I woke up this morning.

Hmm. You’re probably disappointed in the profound lack of cosplay pictures at this point. I honestly didn’t take many today. But I’ll leave you with one: There was a pretty cool trio of DC comic characters walking around—Catwoman, Poison Ivy, and Harley Quinn.

More tomorrow!

WOOHOO I’m at SDCC! Shortly I will go in and buy ALL THE THINGS but first I thought I’d give you a few teaser pics of what I saw on the floor before it opened up to everyone at six. I got in early thanks to my spiffy publisher and got to walk around.

I got picked up from the airport in this hot little number:

Nah. Just kidding. But this and several other Batmobiles were outside the Hilton Bayfront hotel where I’m staying, so naturally I had to go clickety-click. Want to see another one?

So you walk in to the convention floor and WHAM HULK SMASH YOU PUNY NERD FRIEND OF BANNER!

They have ridiculously cool stuff here. Like Wampa hats. I think the Wampa hats are intended for children and I doubt they will fit my giant head but it’s my duty to try one on. They also have sweet replica Jedi stuff if you wanna practice your favorite galactic religion in style:

And yeah they have some coasters that I think are necessary in my life. I just can’t see my wife letting me put them out anywhere. She is wonderful about tolerating my nerdery but sometimes I try to take it TOO FAR and putting Westeros coasters out in our living room would probably earn me a judo chop. BUT. Aren’t these cool?!?

Anyway, you get down to the Random House booth and you see this big poster of Rob Reid’s book that just came out Tuesday called YEAR ZERO. I blurbed it, y’all. It’s funny. Uncle Kevin says, “Read it.” And then there’s a big poster for this other guy who writes a series about an ancient Druid.

Every time I see big posters of my books (which has been, uh, three times now) I feel astounded. Thank you all so much for reading and making my publisher feel that putting up a big poster of my books might be a Good Idea. It’s mind-blowing. Posters like this also make me miss my dad; he knew I was going to be published but never got to see it actually happen.

Biggest dilemma I now face is on Friday. There’s a CHEW panel at 2:30-3:30 and an Epic Fantasy panel at 3:30-4:30. I probably cannot attend them both. I will have to choose, and it’s TEARING ME APART with ultra trembly pathos like in that song by Jewel.

I’ll be going to Upstart Crow every morning for coffee because it’s insanely good. Looking forward to meeting lots of authors and geeking out on them. I’ll update with more pic-filled posts as I go, so check back!

Bacon is the Way and the Truth.