“Oh shit this is really happening!”
So this happened last weekend—my very first table, my first ever “con” (is that how you say it?). Granted I’ve never been to a convention before and my very first one was tabling and promoting my book—in other words I really had no idea what to expect or what to do! Luckily I had angels to guide me and help me get out of my dungeon and be a social butterfly for at least three days.
Not gonna lie. Thinking it was a comic book convention (and not a novel convention—do we even have those?), I was really only expecting to sell maybe 2 or 3 books if I was lucky. But alas, to my surprise, I sold almost all my inventory.
Imagine that!
So thank you for all your support—both old and new—and I promise I won’t disappoint (if I do you can always firebomb my place, I don’t give a shit I got renter’s insurance).
Below are some of the pics we took. And although I never got to meet Stan Lee, Jim Lee, Rob Liefield, Todd McFarlane, Carrie Fisher, Summer Glau, and the muthafuckin Grumpy Cat (because I had to stay at my table and pimp my book out), I did meet a lot of other wonderful people in the trenches of Artist’s Alley.
Enjoy! And from the bottom of my bottom thanks again for all the love and support!
The setup.
The team: my sister, who is basically my PR manager, and her boyfriend, Juan, the Oliver Swift-looking enforcer.
The eye candy–the one on the left of course!
Just doing the grind.
Mingling and being social, emerging out of my cocoon, know whatamsayin?
Bastard took all our candy! But he’s cute so…
First time a total stranger asked for my signature. “Gotta remember his name! Gotta remember MY name! Shit I don’t have spell-check! We’re fucked!”
“Cloud ain’t no muthafuckin brunette!”
Bein gangsta with the homie!
These guys decided to stop by and block traffic!
Don’t know who this is, but just Wow!
Chillin with the Empire, talkin shit about stem cell research funding.
And after 3 days of fun it’s time to pack up and leave…
…and of course, go for Ramen at Daikokuya, oh yeah!
Often we hear that the world of fantasy and fiction is a place where we can lose ourselves and be someone else, but maybe that’s just one way of looking at it. Maybe another way is to find ourselves, to be who we truly are—heroes and villains, sexy and grotesque, amazing, spectacular, ultra, hiding in plain sight, regular by day, super by night.
The masks we wear are necessary and real. They are more real than our public face, which is often compromised and homogenized by our daily lives. These masks allow us to act on our instincts, it gives us consent to portray despair and mirror madness, to show teeth and skin, and to show the world a glimpse of something more than what we are already tired of seeing. Then, after we’re done, we can take it off whenever we want to.
Till next time!
—RGT
R.G. Tamaki 