Flexing Sci-Fi Muscle

This is what the Spectra booth looked like before the madness that is the New York Comic Convention finally wrapped up on Sunday. Didn’t it look rather pretty?
Perhaps I’m a bit biased, as I spent what feels like the better portion of my life in the confines of that booth, but I think we did a rather nice job.
Over the course of the three days, apparently over 77,000 people walked through the exhibition hall of the Javits Center.  I feel like I talked to most of them, and at least half of them, of course, asked about a certain upcoming George R.R. Martin book.
Okay, that could be a bit of an exaggeration.  But, seriously, by my tally, I personally fielded over 100 questions about the release date for A Dance For Dragons.While I think Shawn did a great job laying out why it’s late, I might have gotten a little aggressive with some of the Martin fans, and for that I apologize. I’m now re-energized, and I’m much more likely to be civil in telling you: I don’t know when it’s coming out. Sorry.
What I did find was that there was actually one good thing about the book being late, and that is we got a lot of questions about our other great authors and books (oh yeah, folks–we put out more than just Martin). Scott Lynch’s Gentleman Bastard series, Alan Campbell’s Deepgate Codex, not to mention Catherynne Valente, David Williams, Black and White (which someone stole my display copy from my table, that’s how popular it was), Baltimore, Thunderer, Keri Arthur, Kelley Armstrong…people were stopping by the booth and were interested in what we’re doing.
We do some decent work, in my humble opinion.
And, as exhausting as it was (and that’s where the title comes in; who knew my hamstrings would be sore after a Comic Convention?), I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I might do away with the feeding frenzies that accompany the ends of every convention I work at (”Yes, you can have a free display copy, but let’s pretend that this isn’t the last loaf of bread in the supermarket on the eve before the storm of the century”), but overall, I was really glad to meet all those people interested in science fiction and fantasy, interested in reading, perhaps just interested in the great art on the covers (or the pretty girls who helped me staff my booth throughout the weekend–okay, I have a feeling I’ve got the winner there).
Of course, this is what the booth looked like at the end of the day…