After 30 straight years of attending the San Diego Comic-Con–the grandaddy of them all–I stopped going. That show is amazing…but it’s huge, and so so so crowded. I was there the year an exhibitor put out free shopping bags, and the crowd surged toward it so suddenly that a woman caught up in the swarm broke her toe. It’s hard to get hotel reservations, and they’re expensive. Meals in the Gaslamp District are expensive, and during SDCC the restaurants are packed (though there are many great restaurants down there). For the last few years, massive numbers of attendees have come down with Covid.
It’s a great show, but unless I have a special reason to be there, I won’t be going back.
Instead, the one comic-con Marsheila (Marcy) Rockwell and I always try to do is the Tucson Comic-Con. We’ll be back this year.
Tucson Comic-Con is smaller than SDCC, but big enough to matter. The con gets great guests, and it’s intimate enough that attendees can actually find them and interact with them. In years past, guests have included comics legends Neal Adams, Denny O’Neil, Jim Shooter, Michael Golden, Carl Potts, and many more. This year’s comics special guests include writer-editor Roy Thomas, who wrote (among many other things) the Conan comics I loved as a kid, and Terry Moore (Strangers in Paradise, etc., with whom I worked in my WildStorm days. In addition, the con hosts a who’s who of Hollywood types (this year including Dee Wallace from E.T., The Howling, and Cujo, and John Ratzenberger from Cheers!).
It’s a friendly atmosphere, with events and attractions for tiny tykes through oldsters like me.
Marcy and I will be there with new books, older books, comics (including the debut of my most recent comics story!), and we look forward to seeing friends and fans and readers. We’ll be in Artist’s Alley (AA)033 and AA048–two adjoining tables facing the main aisle, so we’re easy to find. We’re also on two panels:
Monsters and More in Horror Comics!
Friday August 30, 2024 5:00 pm to 5:50 pm
Shannon Eric Denton, Jay Fotos, Jeffrey J. Mariotte, Marsheila Rockwell
Comics pros Denton, Fotos, Mariotte, and Rockwell will share their decades of experience telling spooky stories via the comics medium. Learn the tips, tricks, and treats of crafting terrifying tales and hear the behind-the-scenes stories of horrific lives in comics.
Writing Tie-In Fiction and Comics :: Panels 105 (Spotlight)
Jeffrey J. Mariotte, Marsheila Rockwell
Sunday September 1, 2024 :: 10:00 am to 10:50 am
What job lets you work with Deadpool, Captain Kirk, Superman, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Spider-man, Tarzan, CSI, Dungeons & Dragons, Marvel Zombies, and many more? Writers of tie-in fiction and comics are limited only by what contracts they can secure and the boundaries of their own imaginations. Authors Marsheila Rockwell and Jeff Mariotte have written books set in all these universes, and then some. They’ll share tricks of the trade, how to break in, what to look out for, and tell horror stories of what can go wrong.
We hope to see you there!
Other News
For our upstart startup Western-fiction publishing house Silverado Press, I ran a Kickstarter to launch our first anthology, Silverado Press Presents: Western Stories by Today’s Top Writers! We reached our goal and one of three stretch goals, so the book is happening. I’d always heard that running a Kickstarter was a chore, and it turns out everybody who said that was right. But I already have stories coming in, and I’m already sending checks out, and getting writers paid is a wonderful thing. The book will be released widely in December or January. And we’re hoping to do another volume next year!
Marcy has a brand-new poetry chapbook out, which you should immediately snap up (she’ll have it at Tucson Comic Con if you’ll be there). It’s called Blood Quantum & Other Hate Crimes, and she says it “contains speculative and non-speculative poems about Indigenous existence, past, present, and future.” Montana’s poet laureate had great things to say about it, which you can see at her blog.
I’m working on various other projects now. I wrote a sword & sorcery short story for an anthology that is also being Kickstarted (though the Kickstarter’s almost over–70 hours to go as I write this, so if you want to read it get over there now and pledge!).
I’m also working on a horror short story, a horror novel, and some horror and horror-adjacent comics projects. I have a new Western novel I want to get going on, and a historical thriller waiting in the wings.
I’m reading Stephen King’s Some Like it Darker, which is incredible, and on the stack after that are Paul Tremblay’s Horror Movie, Christopher Golden’s The House of Last Resort, and the massive Southern Man by the great Greg Iles.
When I came to write this entry, I had to delete 440+ spam comments (mostly in Russian). I didn’t look at them all, so of there were any real comments in there, I’m sorry, but they’re gone. I think I need to turn off commenting (or come here to post daily so I can just delete a dozen or two at a time. Given my schedule, though, that’s not realistic. If you have a comment about a post, please find me on my various social media.
As always, thanks for reading!
#Tags: books, comic books, horror, Tucson, Westerns, writing