My First Autograph

I can now say I have signed my first autograph. I find that hilarious. It's strange the things that happen in your life sometimes:

I once made the Atlanta news attending the funeral of UGA IV, the University of Georgia's mascot.

Stan Lee, creator of Spider-Man, Fantastic Four and the X-Men, once told me "You're my hero."

I've been the onstage cameraman for Kenny Rogers and a rapper named Li'l Romeo.

I've directed Bart Starr and Mia Hamm.

I've even had a goat slain in my honor as an entire village sang my praises.

But none of those are as strange as attending a Sci-Fi/Fantasty Convention.

At one of these events, you can easily find yourself with a guy dressed as Chewbacca on one side of you and the actress who voiced the 1980s cartoon character Jem on the other side. Or you might see a panel discussion labeled "Hard Science" moderated by a girl dressed in faerie wings.

Those are actually two examples that really happened to me at ImagiCon in Birmingham on March 29th. And while it is a place to buy anything from old comics and Star Wars toys to replica swords from Lord of the Rings, it is also an opportunity for small-press genre publishers to market their books directly to the public.

My novel will be published by White Rocket Books, the company created by Van Plexico. And as it happens, Van was invited as a guest and was set up with a booth space for White Rocket. So I headed downtown to catch him there, hang out for a while and help with a comics-related panel.

And although my book isn't out yet (I'm still waiting patiently for the cover art), the short story anthology The Sentinels: Alternate Visions is available and Van was selling it at his table. While I was there behind the table with Van, a guy came up and bought the final copy. Van had brought 5 or 6 copies to the show, along with all the other books from White Rocket, and he sold out of the anthology early on Saturday.

So when the guy bought the book, Van signs it and then slides it over to me because two of my stories are in it. Suddenly, I'm staring at the title page of the book with a pen in my hand. I tried very hard to keep the grin off my face as I signed my autograph. For my fan. (Okay, more like "customer", but still...)

I don't know how prepared Sci-Fi Convention attendees will be for a book like mine with such strong spiritual content, but it also has plenty of swords, castles, creatures and catapults to interest fans of that genre.

Regardless, once my book is out I'll probably do more of these types of events as one way of marketing and selling it.

So I can look forward to signing more books for fans.

Even if they are dressed like Spock.