It was a long, but eventful day yesterday. It began at 10:30am where I met Mercurio Rivera at Comicon 2007, held at New York City’s Javits Center. My sister had a booth there for her company, Collectors Quest, and as part of a deal Mercurio and I helped her hand out business cards offering free DVDs with highlights from the event and in return she got us free passes to the Con.

I text messaged my sister when we first arrived, saying, “Where are you?” She said, “At the front entrance.” If you’ve ever been to the Javits center, you know the front entrance is about a half mile long. So I responded, “Which entrance?” She said, “By the storm trooper.” Clearly, this was her first Con. There were at least three dozen storm troopers roaming the floor. Anyway, we eventually found her and got our free passes inside, bypassing a line of literally 10,000 people.

We didn’t do much paneling, but we did get to see the Battlestar Galactica panel with the actors who played Baltar (James Callis) and Number 6 (Tricia Helfer). The panel was hosted by Kevin Smith who has a mouth like a garbage can (there were 10 year old kids in the audience), but he was able to ask great questions and has impeccable comedic timing. One asshole fan in the Q&A session at the end of the panel decides to spoil the entire season for 1000 rabid fans by repeating a disturbing rumor on some Canadian message board. Everyone booed him, but James Callis (Baltar) received much applause when he declined to comment, saying he didn’t want to spoil the season for anyone. Cheers to him.

After the panel we met Tempest Bradford for lunch, and I told her, after she revealed that Del Rey gave her an advanced reading copy of China Mieville’s new novel, that I like China’s work and have read everything of his, but I had some criticisms of it. And she said, “This is great stuff. You and he should have a public dialog about this, because they are common criticisms of his work.” So off she runs (she’s friends with him from Clarion) to ask him if he wants to discuss this with me. More on this in a minute.

After lunch Mercurio and I handed out business cards for my sister’s company in the panel hallway. (She’s giving away free DVDs with video highlights of comicon 2007.) We saw some interesting costumes and I discovered that people are much more likely to take flyers from a stranger while they are walking. Once they stop to wait in a line, people become shy and fearful of people handing out stuff. Who knew?

We finally got to hit the exhibitors room where we instantly ran into John Joseph Adams and Andrea Kail. Andrea just won the Writers of the Future award and will be reading alongside my friend and fellow writers group member, Lauren McLaughlin, at the March 6th NYRSF reading. At the book dealer tables we ran into Delia Sherman and Ellen Kushner, who just returned from a trip to Paris, and also Gavin Grant and Kelly Link. Kelly said my face still looked swollen from my wisdom teeth extraction. I think my face is just fat. Ellen Kushner introduced me to China Mieville and I had him autograph a free copy of Perdido Street Station they were giving away. He wrote, “Dear Matt, ‘City is Hell.’” When I told him I was friends with Tempest, he gave me a double take. I would, of course, never say, “Hi China, nice to meet you. I’m a fan of your work, but I have some criticisms…” How impolite would that be? My comment to Tempest was that I think China’s attempt to subvert genre expectations sometimes works in his favor and sometimes works against him. But that can be said about any author, truly.

I left Mercurio at around 4:45 to go meet Marvin Kaye and Stephen Segal at midtown’s Jekyll & Hyde’s where Marvin works part-time as an actor. We ended up eating at Rue 57, an expensive but classy restaurant across the street. It was the first time I met Marvin, and I found him fascinating and totally humble considering how much he’s accomplished in his lifetime. We talked about many interesting things at dinner, including a possible collaboration on a project in the near future which I am very excited about.

After dinner, we took the subway all the way downtown to Lauren McLaughlin’s apartment, where she had a party celebrating her recent two book deal with Random House. We met up with Devin J. Poore and Paul Berger and many others.  It was a nice end to a long day, and just a perfect wrap up, especially with Lauren’s husband, Andrew, who made all these delicious appetizers to keep us munching all night.

Here are some more pictures from yesterday, from the Con and otherwise.