A Wonderful WonderFest Weekend!

(Some of the works from Whitworth Sculpture Studio, who were located close to my booth at Wonderfest)


This past weekend was a bit of an experiment, as I took off for Louisville, Kentucky for WonderFest 2011. WonderFest is primarily an event focusing on the world of model kits, sculptures, toys, and the like, mainly in the scifi/horror/fantasy and military arenas.

It draws a couple thousand folks in, and has a number of panels and other activities, including the famous Rondo Awards. My booth was in the corner of one of the main vendor halls, adjacent to a fine fellow named Sean Kotz, who was assisting a dealer of toys/resin cast statues/model kits, and David and Cindy from Amazing Figure Modeler Magazine. At Cons, it is always a boon when you get good neighbors, and in my case I had two outstanding ones.

I didn't know how well my booth would go over, as I was one of the only "book people" in a hall filled with dealers, suppliers of kits, clay, and all kinds of things relating to the core elements of what WonderFest is about. It was truly a bit of an experiment, but I figured that I wrote in the right genre, so I had a shot. LOL

I am happy to say that things turned out very well. I ended up meeting some wonderful fantasy readers, ran into some of my friends that I see on the Con circuit, like Carrie Galloway, author Nicole Cushing, C.T. Brannon, and many others. The vibe was good all throughout!


(Me with Carrie Galloway...FINALLY got a pic with her! LOL She's as cool as she is pretty too!


I got to attend the Rondo Awards for the first time. It is an award named for B-movie villain Rondo Hatton, and the award is a bust of his very distinctive face. The awards featured a number of categories, ranging from best films, to best magazines, podcasts, and even a hall of fame.


(William Stout giving his induction speech for the Hall of Fame at the Rondo Awards)


Some of the presentations involved humor, such as the Rue Morgue Magazine win for best podcast, and some involved some emotional moments, such as when William Stout, one of the forces behind movies such as Wizards, was inducted into the Hall of Fame. You could tell that he was genuinely moved by the award, and he gave a really personal, heartfelt speech.

My host for the weekend was none other than Ken Daniels, the king of Fandom Fest, who was busy shuttling down on Saturday to a horror and tattoo convention in Nashville TN. I think Ken was trying to kill me on Friday (I came up a night early to set up for the Saturday-Sunday event), as he kept giving me organic food at his house. As everyone knows, good food needs good additives and artificial flavoring. Organic food is...well...we'll be polite, especially when it comes to the organic biscuits that Ken had.

Luckily, I had a stock of Monster Energy to detoxify myself from the organic array, LOL.

Myra Daniels and Melissa Majors came up on Sunday, and, lo and behold, they brought more of their magic, as readers of this blog may remember from my Metropolis Weekend. I knew it was coming when Myra went to get a hot dog to tide herself over until dinner. This began a sequence where whenever Myra and Melissa stopped by the booth, people bought books. It was uncanny, and just as surreal as Metropolis. I swear if they hung out with me every time I was at a Con, I'd hit the New York Times list. It is a really strange phenomenon, but I swear it happens!


(The unrivaled M&M's, Myra Daniels and Melissa Majors, double the trouble and twice the magic!)

I met many wonderful new reader friends, including a couple, Karen Jones, and Kim Doom,who blew me away by jumping into the deep end of the pool by getting all four of the available novels, in both series. I had to get a pic of this moment, as they had come up to the table at the same time.


(a pretty amazing moment documented here, Karen Jones on the left, and Kim Doom, on the right, back to back each got all four of my available novels. Wow, that was cool!)


I really love meeting readers face to face. I'm not one of those reclusive types when it comes to my reader-friends, and it is always a special moment when I meet a new reader-friend. Here are a couple more photos of some of the newest ones who have come aboard my crazy epic fantasy journey!


(Kaitlyn is one of my new reader friends who I met last weekend!)



(Me with Mary, who got my two Fires in Eden Books and is a lover of epic fantasy! She and her husband have fantastic taste in music, including Motorhead and Metallica!)

The weekend was capped off wonderfully with a great dinner shared with Myra, Ken, Melissa, horror film genius J.D. Feigelson,and Chris from VCI Entertainment. It was a blast listening to some pretty amazing stories, and looking towards some great things in the near future involving Fandom Fest. People definitely need to look towards coming to Louisville in July...it is going to be really exciting!



(Me with Ken Daniels, who made this great weekend possible, and who is a guy I consider a friend and a visionary)

I've got another short week, as Friday I'm heading to a Author Fair in Piqua Ohio (just outside of Dayton). It is a one day event, and I'm really looking forward to seeing some authors like Stephen Hines, Bonnie Stewart, and James Barnes. The Con/Event season is fully underway!

DemiCon and a Brand New Interview at Up Around the Corner

To say things have been busy is an understatement. As many know, I am an active part of the public relations outreaches for Seventh Star Press, working with C.C. and the others who help in this area. This month involved the launch of Jackie Gamber's Redheart, the first YA fantasy novel for SSP. As most of you probably know, YA, or Young Adult, literature is huge. The outreach took a herculean effort to reach out to the great number of potential reviewers and sites with possible media opportunities for Jackie.

All of that was piled on top of doing full time hours for the broadcast team at Keeneland, working hard every morning on the third book of the Rising Dawn Saga, and duties as the programming director for the Writers Track at Duckon and the Literary Track at Fandom Fest.

Has been a little crazy, the average night of sleep was around 4 hours, and I apologize for being sporadic lately on the blog. Thankfully, Monster Energy keeps me rollin'! :)

I will be hitting the road hard again starting this weekend at DemiCon in Des Moines, Iowa. The four week run at Keeneland wraps up this week and I am heading out for my second visit to DemiCon. This Con was superb to me when my mother went into the hospital with an emergency health matter last spring and I had to cancel with only a few days notice. They invited me back, and we're first class and understanding about my situation. I just love this crew for how cool they've been. A couple of them, Mandi and Rachelle, even got together a large number of SCA clothes to lend to the production of Swordbearer!

I am looking forward to seeing two very special author friends, Lettie Prell and Shirley Damsgaard. Lettie hosted me on my trip west to Beaverdale Books for a signing later in the summer last year, and Shirley has been a very dear friend, and a person that I consider a mentor in many ways. Shirley's just a great lady, and she's got some big things on the horizon. It will be a lot of fun to see both of them!

There will be a screening of Swordbearer on Saturday, and I will be doing some panels and a booth this weekend. Can't wait to get back into the DemiCon groove. if you are in the area, and can make it, I recommend this Con a lot. Very enjoyable and run by some really first rate individuals. www.demicon.org is the address.

I also wanted to post a link to a brand new interview that went up today at Up Around the Corner. It is a really nice interview, with a good overview of my work and some excellent questions, given to me by fantasy author Terry Ervin. If you do check it out, please leave a comment to let Terry know that you stopped by!

here's the link: http://uparoundthecorner.blogspot.com/2011/04/interview-with-sffantasy-author-stephen.html

Don't forget to keep passing the word out that the Seventh Star Press eBook sale (Try Seventh Star Press for Two Dollars) is still going! Just $1.99 for Crown of Vengeance and The Exodus Gate (as well as Jackie Gamber's Redheart and Steven Shrewsbury's Thrall), and $2.99 for The Storm Guardians and Dream of Legends. And that's for all formats...Kindle, Nook, iPad, and Sony.

here's the link to the sale:
http://seventhstarpress.com/documents/ebooks.html

That's all for now, but i will check in shortly with some DemiCon posts!