Hurry Up and Wait

I've started and stopped this post about four times in the last day.

Gonna do it again. This time I'm just going to ramble through and see what happens.

Tart's good enough. She's smart enough. And doggone it, people like her.

I've aped Stuart Smalley's catch-phrase as my mantra to get me through the next three days.

This weekend is the sort of the public debut of Tart at Miami's SuperCon. And the nerves are starting to kick in. Not scared or nervous, but chomping at the bit to just GET THERE ALREADY!

I'm like a kid who has a date with a girl I've liked forever, but it's days away. And I know I can knock it out of the park if things go right (I've got a great comic, with beautiful art, a stunning model who's going to walk the floor funneling people to me, and a group of What the Flux writers, artists, actors etc who will  be working together to help each other out). But if it goes wrong...

What do I do then? Or more to the point, what can I do NOW to make sure it doesn't go wrong?

The only answer I can come up with is: nothing.

So I pace. Jump on the elliptical (gotten on three days in a row and probably hadn't gotten on three times in the last month total - nervous energy can be a good thing). Start and stop the same blog post over and over. Snack (ok, so nervous hunger can be a worse thing than nervous energy can be a good thing). And fret.

I simply can't prepare for what's about to transpire. I have never done anything like this before. I have no experiences to relive and learn from that would prepare me for selling an unknown comic to a convention crowd. I don't even really have a clue what's going to happen.

Sure, I'll introduce myself and Tart to anybody who comes by the booth, but though I'm thoroughly comfortable meeting new people, I'm less comfortable with the carnival barker role of luring those people my way.

As a current card dealer, and a former bartender, entertaining strangers is a breeze for me. But these are people who self-select. In a restaurant, the people who sit at the bar CHOOSE to sit at the bar. Then I worked to make the experience so fun, they HAD to come back. At my tables, the players walk up to me. Until they've played at my table, I'm no different than any other dealer. I work to make it as fun as I can, so the next time they see a group of dealers, they pick me out as the guy they want to play with.

But neither of those jobs help me when the situation calls for baiting people to come up. Not sure if it's shyness, or maybe I just don't want to be seen as pushy, but this has never been me.

And I'm guessing that a little bit of me is going to have to do that.

Thanks for the therapy guys, I think I just needed to put those fears out there.

Kevin

PS - if you preordered, Larry is bringing your copy of the trade paperback down to SuperCon for me to sign (the printing got delayed a week, so we decided to get an autograph on all of them as a thank you for your support and patience before we mail them out).

With Ludovic's in France, getting his signature will be a bit more work, but a much better story. Whether we fly him to the states and you get to the convention he visits, or you head to Europe, I want to hear from the first person who gets both my, and Ludo's autographs in their book.