Jim reports on Whedonverse and ComicCon

From the man himself:
ALTERNATE UNIVERSE/WHEDONVERSE CON:
A really nice little convention, though very nonstandard as compared to most SF cons. This was almost purely one long, structured mixer, where attendees got to bump elbows with various SF personalities–lots of photo ops, autographings, presentations by attendees, a banquet where you got to sign up with who you wanted most to sit with, etc. They had a little dealer’s room dealing primarily Buffy/Angel paraphenalia. (Is that spelled right? It seemed so much more authorly than “stuff”.) I bought lots of cool T-shirts. 🙂
The charity auction raised a bunch of money for St. Jude’s and the Pediatric AIDS Foundation. I realized when it was 2 minutes from over that I had completely forgotten to bring anything to donate for the auction, so I borrowed a page from David Weber and offered up a GRUESOME DEATH. The winner of the auction gets written into the next Dresden book I write (book 9), and DIES HORRIBLY! And they can even help choose how HORRIBLY THEY DIE! And it raised 3100 bucks for charity. Congratulations, Anna! (Pronounced ah-nah!) I look forward to GRUESOMELY MURDERING you.
The thing that most sticks in my mind is my photo shoot with James Marsters. Several folks wanted shots of me and him with them, so I got to walk up to where there was this photographer and all these huge lights and a line of people out the door. (I’ll paraphrase a bit of how it went, cause I’m a storyteller and that’s what I do.)
Photog: Jim, great. How do you want to do this?
Me: (blank look) Um. This is kind of a first for me. How about you just tell me what to do and I’ll do it.
James: (grins from where he sits on a stool) You just went ninety percent of the way to being an actor.
The photographer gives instructions and fusses with stuff while me and James get in a few words that amount to “hey, how you doing, man.” James remembers Shannon and says he’s bad with names, though he recognizes her. She says, all wry, “Here? I’m Jim’s wife.” Marsters laughs and says, “But what’s your /name/?”
Which made me think very well of him. 🙂
The first fan comes up and everyone smiles and says “hi.”
Fan: (mutters something under her breath about a Jim sandwich)
Photog: James, how do you want to do this?
James: (blinking a little at the fan) *Oh*, right. (to me) We’re the
/bread/.
Me: (bite my tongue)
James: (gets off the stool and sets it aside) I’ll just stand for these. (to me, sotto voce) But the first time someone grabs my ass, it’s going right back on the stool. Some days I get sore, man.
Me: (straight face) Life is unfair.
Many pictures got taken. Many other things happened, including me reading from Proven Guilty and lots and lots of sitting and chatting with fans and walking up to famous SF actors and introducing myself just like they were regular people. 🙂 They’re kind of a blur right now. I’m still recovering from where we went 36 hours after returning home from THIS con . . .
COMIC-CON
Comic-con is big.
It’s really, really big. They have just about everything that might possibly be vaguely related to SF/F fandom, and they have it in great big honking displays to showcase new products, etc. You can literally walk through a mile of various stalls, booths, displays and showcases.
I was on a couple of panels–one on writing fight scenes in fantasy, and one on monsters and horror in SF/F. Robert Jordan was on my first panel. People in the audience were dressed up as Aiel warriors and everything. I didn’t overly intrude on the discussion, though it was indeed interesting for all involved.
Amber Benson was on my second panel, and she remembered me from the week before and was very sweet. She also remembered Shannon and waved and smiled at her, which makes me tend to think positive about her. There’s nothing you can do to get me to like you any faster than being nice to my girl.
Anyway, I signed autographs, gave away the very last of the Dresden keychains from lo these many years ago, and met a whole bunch of really nice people who flattered me a lot. Shannon suspects that my general fuzziness of thought is due to swelling in my head, but assures me that she will take steps.
Oh, one more thing:
DRESDEN TV SHOW
I still haven’t heard anything. I’m just the writer. 🙂
That’s about it. I’m going to go hermit up for a while. Maybe blow up some virtual bad guys. Watch Empire. I’ll write more if it turns out that I forgot to tell you guys something cool. 🙂

Jim-Butcher.Com impending downtime this evening

We’re in the process of cutting our nameservice over to using goDaddy.com. In general we’re pretty happy with their service, and we wanted to get our DNS off of a host that we are less sure’s going to be around for the long haul — but in switching DNS over to goDaddy, you can’t edit the names until you’ve switched, and once you switch, it takes several hours before you can start editing the names to point where they’re supposed to point.
At any rate, the upshot of this is that jim-butcher.com’s going to drop off the net for a couple hours at some point this evening. We’ll have it back ASAP. Thanks for your patience!