Reading, with dinosaurs
Yes, dinosaurs. As in, I make toy dinosaurs fight.
How can you possibly resist?
If you should happen to find yourself at NASFiC/Archon on Thursday afternoon, August 2, at 4:00 PM, clearly you can’t.
I’ll be reading from my finally-nearing-completion-dammit high fantasy epic novel The Dinosaur Lords. The excerpts I read at the Albuquerque Science Fiction Society meeting last month got a pretty rockin’ reception from the audience. Of course, you could probably read from the phone book white pages and get a good reaction if you accompany it by having a molded-plastic Allosaurus bite a model Corythosaurus on the neck.
(Friendly tip: if you write to tell me Allosaurs weren’t, so far as we know, contemporary with Corythosaurs, I shall mock you. They are on my world, buddy boy. As I’m at pains to tell my audiences right off, it ain’t Earth. Please feel free to go back and review the definition for “high fantasy” if you need a refresher, here.)
So anyway, of course I have to schlep a pack of the things in my luggage to St. Louis. This will complicate my keeping my checked bag under the airline’s 50-pound limit. One is tempted to stuff ‘em in the backpack. One can, however, too readily imagine the grotesque melodrama that would educe from “security” screeners. That’s enough of a nightmare already, thank you kindly.
Oh - just struck me: I’ve actually made to-scale plasticine dudes, weapons, and even a howdah to help me visualize my action scenes. I’m sure the bitty figures would not survive the trip, so I thought about just taking a block of modeling clay and making them up when I get to the hotel.
Then I thought again. That’d go well, given the most recent phony terror scare. So, sadly, the fans’ll have to settle for dinosaurs sans riders.
Anyway … Dinosaur Lords is a smokin’-hot yarn, even without the visual aids. On the other hand, if you’ve never seen a middle-aged 230-pound guy with a ponytail thrash around onstage making model dinosaurs attack each other while making growling noises - and very, very few have - it’s not to be missed.
Really.
And if you have to miss it, there’ll be another performance at Bubonicon in August. Even if you have caught a prior reading, I should be reading different excerpts. And there’s no telling what’ll happen when I get rolling with the ’saurs!
And of course, Friday the 3rd is my birthday. Just to drop an unsubtle hint like a brick, there.
Hope to see you soon. The cons really will be fun. Both of ‘em. And so will my readings.