Saturday, July 28, 2007

Back from Comic Con

Sorry I didn't post for a couple of days -- had no Internet access while attending Comic Con in San Diego. We just got back to Liz's house in LA and tomorrow we are heading off to Cabo in Mexico for 4 days, so I figured I'd better sneak in an entry now. If I get ambitious, I'll upload a few pics later tonight.

Before I go into details about Comic Con, I want to be sure to mention that Michelle Rowen is giving away a copy of MOONGAZER on her blog. So head on over and post a comment to be entered to win. :) Michelle is also an upcoming SHOMI author -- her book (which sounds utterly FAB) will be out next June. Can't wait for that!!

Okay, back to your regularly scheduled Comic Con programming. As you can imagine, it was a BLAST. It was a bit overwhelming, but totally cool. So many awesome costumes -- it just astounds me how creative everyone was. I loved it. I felt so at home there - my dorky, geeky self. These were soo my peeps.

Anyway, while there, Liz and I handed out excerpt booklets for the Shomi line. We didn't have a booth, so we just stood in a corridor and gave them out as people passed by. The target audience came in droves -- and they all seemed very excited to receive the booklets. We probably gave out about 500-600 all together. It was a great opportunity to reach a readership that might not otherwise have heard of Shomi line because they wouldn't normally peruse the romance section. Hopefully they will like the excerpts and end up checking out the books themselves. I would love to count some of the amazing, creative costumed girls we gave booklets to as my readers.

Today we had lunch with Sherrilyn Kenyon and her son (who was the cutest ever.) Sherri is amazing -- so giving and open and wise. Just a genuinely nice person. I have to say -- what a wonderful positive thing to come out of the whole costume controversy -- making a personal connection with a writer who has always been such an inspiration to me. Both Liz and I walked away so impressed by her. It's great when people you admire by far live up to expectations. Sherri actually exceeded mine.

Let's see, what else? One of the coolest things I experienced was meeting Peter Beagle, who wrote The Last Unicorn (book and movie). It has been one of my favorite movies since I was a little kid, so that was quite exciting to meet the man behind it all. I bought the book (which I haven't read) and a copy of the digitally remastered movie and he signed them both for me. Definite highlight.

My other purchase? Pooka, the Goblin Cat. Picture to come.

Guess that's all for now. It was a wonderful, amazing, overwhelming experience all together. I definitely want to go again next year.

Will write more once I upload the pics. :) (And yes, I did dress up in costume.)

Marianne

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

YAAAY! I'm so glad you had a blast! That's wonderful. I can't wait to see pics and enjoy your time in Mexico!

Diana Peterfreund said...

Great recap, Marianne! I'm glad you had a good time.

Two questions:

1) Did Beagle ever resolve the legal issues he was having with the moviemakers? I heard he wasn't getting money off any sales of the videos.

2) Did you mention my book? ;-)

Mari Mancusi said...

Yeah, Diana, he is still having the legal problems. You can read about it on his website, which is peterbeagle.com. It's sad. But if you buy the newly remastered DVD from him on his site (or in person as I did) he will get some of the proceeds. I wanted the digitally remastered version anyway, cause I am a HUGE Last Unicorn fangirl and I heard this one has better quality video and extras than the crappy original DVD they came out with (I will let you know when I watch if this is true) and so it was a great chance to meet Peter and help him out at the same time.

You should TOTALLY get him to do a quote for your book!! That would be so awesome!!!