Unexpected Madison Trip

Saturday morning started like any other, but within a few hours of waking it was starting to look like I was going to need to visit Madison, WI. Why? Well, the North American Discworld Convention just happened to be in Madison while our special Munchkin/Discworld cross-over card — announced at the SJGames website — was not in Madison.

And that was a very, very bad thing. You see, we had promised that the card would be at the show and shipping issues were making that not happen. So before noon I had a flight to Madison planned, a bag packed, and 1,000+ copies of the special card in my hands and all set to go to Madison, Wisconsin.

My flight landed in Madison at about 11 Saturday night and soon my old friend Christopher Shy (Studio Ronin) had grabbed me and run me to my hotel. The last time we had seen each other was back when he was working on Friday the 13th in Austin (mentioned here), so getting even 15 minutes to chat while riding in the car was great.

Sunday morning I was picked up by John Kovalic (website, Twitter) and we rushed over to the convention to deliver the cards. Mission accomplished! But, you know, since I’m in Madison it would be wrong to not chat with Terry Pratchett.

So that’s what I did.

Terry and I had an excellent meeting (the new edition of GURPS Discworld is coming together nicely) — he was quite friendly and chatty — but Terry couldn’t chat for more than about 15 minutes because he had to rush to his next event with Neil Gaiman (website, Twitter). Of course at the time very few people knew Neil was going to be there, but one benefit to my work was that John and I were a few of the “people in the know” at the time. You have gotta love a job that lets you in on big secrets like that.

And on the Neil Gaiman front, I actually bought two books with his work while I was at the show. A signed and limited edition of Melinda* and a signed edition of Shelf Life* . . . but that one is very special because it is signed by all of the authors. That’s right. Signed by Harlan Ellison. Signed by Ramsey Campbell. Signed by Charles de Lint. Every single author. I know, only I would be excited by this.

Sunday night ended with dinner with Christopher. We chatted about some of the different things we had been working on lately and just generally caught up. E-mail and phone is no replacement for a nice, relaxing dinner and it’s too bad we live so far apart these days.

And now it is time for me to pack my bag and return to Austin. My vacation is over and it’s back to the office, but only for one week because next week is San Diego Comic Con! I’ll be at the convention again this year where I’ll spend my time teaching games, answering questions, and trying to avoid a heart attack courtesy of Matt Doughty’s (Onell Design) insisting that I eat the massive and terrifying burger (need proof? See last year’s SDCC report at the SJGames website where you can see pics of Matt and Jesse both going to town on insane burgers).

SDCC is gonna be a blast!