Keycon is our local science fiction convention. It’s never been that big – in the largest years they have claimed attendance of ~500, but many years have been much less than that. We used to go all the time but don’t go as often lately. I even ran the gaming room for a few years in the 90s.
But Jim Butcher and Jeremy from Black Magic Craft were the guests, so we definitely wanted to go this year. Jim Butcher is one of our authors and he writes The Dresden Files. While Black Magic Craft is one of the youtube crafting channels that I follow.
In April, our friend Chris called us to see if we would be guest liaisons for Jim Butcher and Jennifer Blackstream. We would have to get them to and from airport, and make sure that they made it to their panels. They wanted someone who would not be too starstruck to be responsible for them. After confirming that we would not have to attend meetings, we accepted.
Chris was also running programming at the convention, and asked me if I would do an interview with Jim on the Saturday. I agreed, and tried to find some questions that he had not already answered a bunch of times. Because I was dressing as Captain Hammer on the Saturday, I wrote the questions on cue cards that I could keep in my glove. I’ve often complained that the people doing the interview don’t seem to ask the obvious follow up questions, so this was my time to see if I would fall into the same mistakes.
While we had read the entirety of The Dresden Files, we hadn’t read his other two series, or any of Jennifer Blackstream’s books. We made an effort to get the six books in the Codex Alera series, as well as the two Cinder Spires books. We also ordered the first three of the Blood Trails books. I was able to read the first two of Jim’s Codex Alera books, as well as Deadline, the first book in Jennifer’s Blood Trails series.
On the Friday, we picked them up from the airport. Since the convention started later, we took them to dinner, and then took them to the local grocery so that they could get some supplies for the weekend. We made sure that they got to their panels on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.. We got invited to the after-con dinner which allows the convention chairs a chance to interact with the guests. On the Monday after checkout, we took them for lunch, and then back to the airport and made sure that they got on their flight.
As guests, they were lovely. Jim was very engaging, and was quite good about posing for pictures and signing autographs. A few people had brought a lot of books for him to sign (three at a time), and he was very generous about signing all of them. He even stayed beyond his allotted time to ensure that he signed everything.
Jennifer Blackstream was adorable. She was also great about taking photos, and had a great panel with Tanya Huff which gave both perspectives – both from an older writer and from a newer one. Her shark movie panel with Jim was very fun and engaging. It sounds like they might try it again at DragonCon so, if you get a chance to see it, I highly recommend it.
Canadian author Tanya Huff was also there as a guest. While we did watch her Blood Ties TV series, we haven’t really read any of her books yet. She came across as feisty in her panels though, and we definitely will need to check out some of her work. She had a great panel with Jim where they discussed the tv adaptions of The Dresden Files, and Blood Ties, which both had one season in 2007.
Due to scheduling, I wasn’t able to catch any of Jeremy’s panels. They had sounded interesting, but we just couldn’t get to everything.
After the convention, we ordered another dozen of the books in Jennifer Blackstream’s Blood Trails series. She has been pretty prolific, but that gives us the first 15 of the 19 books.
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