The Start of Comic Con

San Diego International Comic Con starts this Wednesday, July 17th, with preview night, but I've already started getting ready for the craziness. Not only have I been trying to get my costume and book-selling paraphernalia together, but I've been helping my G-pa get stuff ready for his booth since that's my ticket into the show. If this isn't my tenth year of Comic Con, it's certainly getting close to that. I'd like to think of myself as a Comic Con Veteran, so I'm really excited to have two new-comers this year, some awesome friends from Kansas: Tommy and Chris. :D

Now I started working on Friday with my G-pa, going through boxes on boxes of merchandise that he has recently moved into a couple of storage units. We have to get to work early because it gets very, very hot and there is no shade anywhere. In fact, I am picking up Tommy and Jesse at 5:45 AM so we can start working at 6. We gotta pack up the truck with shelving units, display cases, a couple of walls, and boxes of wood carvings and other crazy pieces for sale. I'll try to get a picture of the finished booth so y'all can see the stuff he sells. Probably his most popular sellers are the sterling silver jewelry pieces, including twenty something trays of rings and several displays of earrings and pendents. The designs are so cool! I've never really seen stuff like it here because a lot of them are hand made! But my favorite thing he displays are the dragons. Every wood carving is hand carved, but some of the dragons he has... Amazing. I hope he brings a big one to the show so I can include it in the picture. They're so cool.

But after we pack everything, we have to transport it to the convention center, unload it, unpack it, and then set it up, make it look pretty, and make sure everything is priced! It's a crazy process and the set up starts on Tuesday. We finish it up Wednesday and get ready for the preview night attendees that usually come as we're still getting everything ready. Then I put on my best seller's face and try to get people to buy everything since that means less stuff to pack up at the end. :D Though we do have to restock every morning. The rings are the most tedious things to do since you have to find the rings that have been sold and then measure the sizes around the sold space so you can put in the right size. And you have to polish them so they look pretty, haha. But we get a lot of people down our aisle in Artist's Alley so it's a lot of fun to see the costumes and weird things people buy. Comic Con is always worth it.

New to this year's booth is the addition of Meet the Author! My G is letting me put up a sign to show off when I'll be in the booth so people can buy my book, talk to me about it, and basically just let me share it with the Con-goers. I feel so weird promoting my book since I'm not exactly full of compliments about myself, but I'll have to suck it up and act super cool so I can convince people to help promote my college education. My mom is also convinced I'll sell out of my thirty copies really quickly, but I still think I ordered quite a few. It'd be quite awesome if I sold them all, though! I also got some pretty sweet business cards to help promote my sales while I'm walking around or if I do sell out of books. I've just always wanted to have some business cards, so I thought this was as good a time as any to make some! I hope they work, haha.

Besides that, I've been working on my costume which is pretty easy, but there has been one thing I still haven't figured out, and that is Rayne's trusty sidewalk scraper! I want to go out tomorrow and get one because a zombie hunter costume isn't complete without the main weapon! I also want to put some fake blood on my goggles (which I just got in the mail the other day) and scraper, but so far my best idea is getting some plasti dip and flicking it on each. The problem is that the red I can get is very bright and I don't think zombie blood would be that color. So I'm thinking I can perhaps sharpie some black on it after it dries or I can buy some black plasti dip and mix a little in. The only problem with the second idea is that I'd have to pay $20 instead of $10. :( And as I'm typing this, I realize it'd be pretty cool if I could get her knife and thigh holster, but I don't know where I could get one that I could take in to the Con... So I hope the scraper is enough! I'm just so excited. :D

I also have a few questions for anyone that reads this. Any better ideas for zombie blood? Any better ideas for promoting my book? I'm hopefully gunna make a sign to hang from my scraper so when I rest it on my shoulder it hangs above the crowd for people to see. Anything I should say in particular to get people to spend $9 on a book? How do I sound cool and knowledgeable without being a jerk? Should I wear my costume every day? I think that's all I have on my mind right now, though, haha. I'm so ready for this nerd fest. :D