After my last book signing on Monday I went to the airport, where US Airways totally hosed me. Originally I was on a different return flight, but because of a scheduling conflict I had to cancel it and book this one last week. That last minute booking put me into the wonderful world of BOARDING ZONE 4. It also meant that I had to switch planes in Charlotte. Keep those facts in mind, because I’m sure they contributed to the resulting screw ups.

Apparently, since US Airways likes to overbook their flights, there would be no overhead storage for ZONE 4. So we all had to check our carry ons. See all that stuff above about fans giving me gifts? Yep. Most of them were in this carry on. Also, since I had DragonCon Day 4 Brain, my car keys were in that carry on too, and I didn’t think to pull them out just in case. So I checked my bag at the gate.

And then waited, and waited, and waited, oh yeah, because the US Airways flight crew was an hour late for their own flight. We started boarding when we were supposed to be taking off.

Remember that thing about the connecting flight in Charlotte? Yeah. My one hour layover turned into an awesome 5 minute layover. Plus, Zone 4, I get to be one of the last people off the plane (really, jackasses up front who have plenty of time or this is your final destination, you couldn’t bother to stay seated for a few more minutes? Or hey, maybe our one hour late flight crew could be bothered to make an announcement saying please let the poor dumb schmucks in back trying to catch a connection go first)

And since we landed at terminal A and my connection was in terminal D I had five whole minutes to make it across the entire airport. So if you were in the crowded Charlotte airport Monday night, yes, I was the 300 hundred pound 6’5” man sprinting through there bellowing MAKE A HOLE, COMING THROUGH, and SORRY. I caught my flight to Salt Lake as they were doing final call and closing the door.

Big men hate running. I’m actually a far better sprinter than you’d guess by looking at me, but that doesn’t mean I like it. Oh hey, other passengers crammed next to the giant panting man, sorry I’m suddenly drenched in sweat. Nice to meet you too.

But I made it. Yay! Only when I landed in Salt Lake, I discovered that my bag didn’t make it. Oh, it had time to make it to the right plane, because it didn’t need to run across four crowded terminals, so should have made it, and probably would have made it, except for—according to the US Airways luggage employee in SLC—they shipped the item with that tag to Pittsburgh instead…

And nobody is answering in Pittsburgh, because apparently that is where luggage goes to die.

Did I mention I left my car keys in that carry on? So my car is in long term parking but my keys are in the Twilight Zone. Oh, by the way. I don’t live in Salt Lake. I live in the mountains an hour and a half from the airport. So now that it is 11:30 at night and you guys are just now figuring out that you sent my bag to Pittsburgh and nobody there is answering the phone, let me call my wife and wake her up, so that she can drive an hour and a half to Salt Lake international to give me the extra car key.

Yay.

But I didn’t have it the worst. Of the other DOZEN people standing in line because US Airways lost their bags on other flights, one poor bastard plugged his phone in to charge at a wall socket, and while the US Airways employee was helpfully explaining they had no clue where his luggage ended up, some asshole stole his phone too. Holy shit, just pile it on. There’s theft, and then there’s theft with added dickery.

US Airways didn’t call me yesterday. I called their help number this morning, and the automated system basically said  WE DON’T KNOW WHERE YOUR BAG IS GO TO HELL AND DIE (I might have added that last part, I think it was actually something about checking back again later).

UPDATE:

I wrote the above at the end of my DragonCon AAR, but figured I’d save it until I saw how the situation resolved.

Wednesday they called me, but I missed it. When I called them back I got no answer and left a message. But then at about 9:30 Wednesday night I got a knock on the door. It was my luggage!

I got all my autographed books, ARCs, and fan presents back. I wasn’t worried about the other stuff because that’s all replaceable, but I hate losing fan gifts. That’s the part that really irked me. When fans make stuff for authors, that’s like the ultimate compliment. When other authors you’ve inspired give you signed copies of their books, that’s the kind of thing you always want to keep.

So US Airways has been spared from the wrath of the International Lord of Hate. Wendell has ordered the horde of orcs to stand down.

I got back from DragonCon at 2:00 AM Tuesday morning. My brain has now recovered enough to write an AAR.

I love DragonCon. It is Nerd Mardi Gras. It is a non-stop party. Officially there are something like 70,000 people there, spread across a couple of blocks of Atlanta. Unofficially, it is insane. I couldn’t tell you how many people show up for the parade, but it packs the streets. The line to get into the dealers room is 3 blocks long, and even then, it moves.

If you haven’t been there it is kind of hard to describe. DragonCon isn’t like any other convention. It is far more energetic than most. The average attendee  age is young, probably mid-twenties. DragonCon isn’t snooty or pretentious. The people there don’t  care what you are into. They’re not stuck up. They’re not going to tell you that you aren’t a Trufan. They’re there to have fun, see cool stuff, make friends, and have a big party.  Well, actually it is more like 200 smaller parties that are all smooshed up next to each other.

There are thousands of costumes. I took a lot of pictures, but they were on my phone and I’m a terrible photographer. Just google DragonCon pictures and you’ll see what I mean.  If you want to see why this giant nerd party attracts so many single young people just google Women of DragonCon.

In between the parties, there’s programming. I don’t know how many hundreds of events there are, but if you’re into something, there’s an event for it. I was there for 4 days and I saw a fraction of it. I barely even made it into one of the three main hotels because I didn’t have any panels in the Marriot this year.  My schedule was weird, with no panels the first day, only one the second, and then five panels, a signing, and a luncheon on the third day. That was hectic.

This year I did two signings at the Missing Volume, and a bunch at Kevin J. Anderson’s Wordfire Press booth. I can’t even guess how many books I signed. It was a lot. I don’t know if it is my record (that might still be SLC ComicCon) but I signed books pretty much nonstop.  Because I’m signing at the Wordfire booth at two more cons over the next three weeks, they ordered a lot more books than they thought they would need for me. It didn’t matter. The fans still about cleaned them out.

One quick note on Sad Puppy related topics, because it came up a lot in conversation over the last few days. CHORFs like to constantly bitch about how cons needs more “diversity” and “inclusion” while their snoot fests are white as mayonnaise and the average attendee is 87 years old. Meanwhile, DragonCon looks like America and is fucking awesome. Why? Because normal people just want to be entertained and have fun.

I have to admit it was pretty neat how many people came over to talk to me about the Sad Puppies campaign. Lots of them weren’t regular fans, or had never heard of me before this, but they were in the same boat, and were tired of the preachy, bossy, snooty, pretentious nonsense sucking the fun out of their hobby too. Oh, those folks loved the wooden buttholes. Strangely enough there was only one really negative douchebag experience I’m aware of, and sadly that doofus didn’t talk to my face, but instead got all bitchy at the poor unaffiliated dude running the booth I was signing in, and I missed it!

But then I was presented with the super prestigious LaMancha award during the super prestigious first annual LaMancha award ceremony, by the ever prestigious John Ringo.

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The fact that the gnome is tilting at that windmill with a nazi tank is just one of the added touches that make the LaMancha so prestigious.  It is crafted out of the finest southern bass wood and delicately hand carved with a poignant message. I was honored to accept this prestigious award on behalf of Brando TorgersOn, because he’s busy defending America.

I was on a bunch of panels about a bunch of different topics, and if I try to list all of the various writers I was on there with I’ll probably screw up and forget somebody. So since I have post-DragonCon brain I’ll refrain from listing them all. It is kind of fun to be on a panel with somebody you know absolutely hates your guts and talks lots of crap about you online, but when that happens I just smile and remain totally polite. I’m a professional like that. It is always amusing how I’m never called a racist/sexist/homophobic hatemonger of hatey hate-hate in person to my face.

As for highlights, the urban fantasy panel was a lot of fun, because we had me, Jonathan Maberry, James Tuck, John Hartness, Carrie Vaughn, Faith Hunter, and Laurell K. Hamilton.  That is a great bunch of authors there. Those are also some of the top sellers in the entire genre, all on one panel. Sadly, no Butcher, even though he was at the con I never crossed paths with him. I’ll see him in a couple of weeks at Salt Lake ComicCon (we are playing Fiasco one night!). Speaking of Jim Butcher, total geek cred nerd moment for me, I was told about this later by people who’d been in the audience. Butcher was on a panel and they were asked the question, other than your stuff name one thing that you would really like to see made into a movie or a TV show, and Butcher said Monster Hunter International… Oh, hell yeah.

After that panel I got to hang out and eat dinner with Laurell and her crew. They’re just great people.

Then late Sunday night I was on what had to be one of the weirdest panels I’ve ever been on. It was First Contact Improv. Now, keep in mind, I’m not a comedian. I don’t know how to do improv comedy. This was run by Speaker to Lab Animals, everyone’s favorite super genius neuro scientist Ted Roberts.  The panelists/test subjects were me, Keith DeCandido and Kal Spriggs. The set up was that we were on a mission to make first contact with an alien species, and Speaker would pull random cards out that complicated matters.

It got off to a rocky start. None of us really knew what we were doing. Some people in the audience left. But then about ten minutes in… Well… It started getting weird.  I figured what the hell. Let’s run with this. And then it got weirder. The aliens communicated only via LOLcat memes, but it didn’t get really weird until we discovered you could get high by licking the alien LOLcats. And then it got really weird.

So by the end we were trafficking in shaved, butter greased LOLcat anus, through the empire of giant penguins who communicated through flatulence, and then it just degenerated into fart noises and me can-can dancing with the audience.  Long story short, I’m told it was really funny, and I may have inadvertently touched Speaker inappropriately while I was pretending to be Jar Jar Binks, but it was okay, because he was William Shatner… No. Actually that makes it worse somehow.

One cool thing about going to cons as a minor celebrity is that fans make cool stuff for you and give you presents. I FedExed a couple of boxes home. There was really no way I could get the four foot long spiked club through the TSA.

I also got this, machined from a solid chunk of aluminum (which sadly, is in my missing carry on, but more on that later).  There was a bunch of other stuff given to me too.

And Larry Elmore gave me an autographed print of the Son of the Black Sword cover. Larry is the coolest person you’ll ever meet.

There were several people doing cosplay from my books. I thought I got a pic of the husband and wife hunter team, but I didn’t. But holy crap, check this out.

That’s just freaking cool.

But you know you’ve made it when Cookie Monster and Dora the Demo Expert show up to your panel (and give you Torx wrenches!). Yes. Not even cosplay from books, but cosplay from internet threads!

CM was his usual self, but after REDACTED REDACTED we got it all worked out with the Atlanta PD.

I started writing up the awesomeness of US Airways managing to screw up my flight home and losing my luggage, but that turned out to be big enough that it is getting its own blog post. 🙂

EDIT: I forgot to talk about the Monster Hunter panel! It was me, John Ringo, and Toni Weisskopf. It was fun. They put us in one of the big movie star rooms and we still filled most of it. We talked about the upcoming MHI projects, Ringo read from Monster Hunter Grunge.

Also, very important, because this is the first time I think we’ve officially announced it (well, Toni was there, so that makes it official) after the next solo MHI novel by me (back to Owen) there is going to be a Julie Shackleford novel called Monster Hunter Guardian cowritten by me and Sarah Hoyt! There you go. That’s now official.

Jack Wylder here. As most of you know, the ILoH is currently holding court at DragonCon so it falls on me to give the update. The Series II funding portion has now officially closed! So what’s next? I’m tabulating all of the results now and I will place the full order on Tuesday. (The full order will consist of enough to cover all orders received, plus we’ll round up the numbers.) The mint has already completed all of the molds so the manufacturing time shouldn’t take too terribly long. I will post an update as soon as I have an estimated time of delivery. Once I have them all in hand I will pack these orders up and get them out to you just as quickly as possible. (Again, I will keep you all updated as to the progress of the project every step of the way.) Judging by last time, it is important I make this note: Once we post here that all orders have shipped, if you do not receive your order within say 2 weeks max LET ME KNOW! Do NOT contact us in 2017 to ask about an order that should have been received in 2015. I can not stress this enough- I can’t track orders from 2 years ago! I can be reached at CorreiaTech1911@gmail.com if you have any questions or concerns.

The members of the Monster Hunter Nation are amazing and we appreciate every one of you. On behalf of the International Lord of Hate and Wendell the Manatee, we at CorreiaTech would like to thank you for supporting Capitalism. Thanks!

I should have posted this earlier, but I was in New York for the last few days. Originally we were going to take orders until today, but we had a bunch of requests come in to delay it for people who are paid on the 1st or Friday. So our cut off for taking coin orders is now Saturday the 5th.

These are going to be awesome. I expected the second run to be smaller than the first, but we’re actually closing in on the last run’s total number. Considering we’re not doing it through Kickstarter this time (and saving 10% processing!), that’s pretty darned cool.

http://mhiswag.myshopify.com/collections/frontpage

Here is my DragonCon schedule. I will also be hanging out and selling books at the Wordfire Press booth between these events.

Title: Hunting Monsters
Time: Sat 05:30 pm Location: Augusta Ballroom – Westin (Length: 1)
Description: Whether a job or a calling, our panelists’ protagonists track down and destroy monsters

Title: Dieselpunk and Raygun Gothic in the Media
Time: Sun 11:30 am Location: Augusta 3 – Westin (Length: 1)
Description: Alt-history subgenres dieselpunk and raygun gothic, from Tomorrowland to Hellboy.

Title: Baen Books Traveling Slide Show & Prize Patrol!
Time: Sun 01:00 pm Location: Regency V – Hyatt (Length: 2.5)
Description: Editors at Baen Books show us what is coming up, answer questions, & yes, give out prizes!

Title: Monsters & Mayhem
Time: Sun 01:00 pm Location: Embassy D-F – Hyatt (Length: 1)
Description: Plot developments that make readers beg for more—twists and obstacles to keep us reading.

Book signing at the Missing Volume
Sunday at 3:00 Booth 1301

Title: Want to Be a Monster Hunter?
Time: Sun 07:00 pm Location: International North – Hyatt (Length: 1)
Description: Learn how the Monster Hunter International series is expanding to other authors.

Title: First Contact Improv!
Time: Sun 10:00 pm Location: Embassy A-B – Hyatt (Length: 1)
Description: With prompts from our MC, the panelists will create a first contact situation.

Book signing at The Missing Volume
Monday at 1:00 Booth 1301