Miscon Lives

OK. Miscon. Wow.

Let's start with Wally the Bookmoberg, because truly our Miscon story starts with this beast.

This is Wally the Bookmoberg. He's a 1986 Chevrolet G30 van with the Hi-Cube chassis option. He once served as a service vehicle at a NASA aerodrome, which is just awesome.

Now he's a camper-van. He's got four sweet solar panels on top and a convertible couch inside that, when folded out, can fit both of us on it as a bed. We recently got Wally his own trailer, in which we can store all our book table stuff without it clogging up our living room. Wally lets us attend conventions--like Miscon--without purchasing a hotel room. This is pretty key when it comes to our P&L statement from any given convention.

Miscon is in Missoula, Montana. For those of you playing along at home, that's a 537-mile drive. In Wally, the 1986 Chevy G30. Wally eschews such fancy things as "air conditioning" or "anti-lock brakes." He's a traditional sort of guy. He's got power steering, but...only at 1986 standards. He has all the aerodynamics of a brick, and his center of gravity sits somewhere around five feet above his narrow wheel base. This is all by way of saying that driving Wally 537 miles--over three mountain passes--was something of a feat to start the whole con off with.

It's worth it, though. Miscon is one of our favorite events of the year.

Don't believe me? Well...we're talking about the only convention that we've ever dedicated an entire book to. Miscon can almost always be counted on to be an absolute banger. And more than that. Things just...I don't know. Things get weird at Miscon. And I mean that in a good way.

At Miscons past, I have watched a drunken fairy princess break into a park playground in order to swing on the swing. I have encountered people playing laser tag at 2:30 AM while simply walking around outside--the entire battle swirled around me and treated me as just another moving obstacle. I have wandered upon random drum circles. I have stood outside of a grocery store with a best-selling author holding a bag full of beer while being swarmed by beagles. I have talked 1980s science fiction shows with Jim Butcher. I have given Kevin J. Anderson the best beer he's ever had poured from a two-liter soda bottle. And I have stayed until the wee hours of the morning in a hotel room with Peter Orullian and Chris Paolini pretending to burn a restaurant to the ground.

Things. Get. Weird. At. Miscon.

2026 was no exception. This year, the great Patrick Swenson was unable to attend--a first for the Miscon's I've been to. Patrick runs Fairwood Press, but his function at Miscon is not only selling his own books--he sells other authors' books on commission, as well. With Patrick gone, we got a last-minute text message from the Con Chair and SMOF Justin Barba. Justin is probably one of the best SMOF's in the industry. He is polite, respectful, and efficient. He's always been a pleasure to work with. So when he asked us if we'd be willing to fill in for Pat and provide the other Miscon authors a place to sell their books, it was a no-brainer for us to say yes.

This is a business. I have been very clear, in panel after panel, that I look on this as a business first.

But...it's also a community. The fact is, Patrick helped us sell our books when we were first getting started. We love Patrick. We love Miscon, and Justin. And we love other authors. We didn't get into this industry to make money--there are far, far, FAR better ways to do that. We got into it because we love these books. We love the people who make them. And we love the people who love them. We knew we'd be taking a bit of a financial hit selling other people's stuff, even with a commission. We didn't care--it had to be done.

I did not foresee that, as a direct consequence of accepting this responsibility, I would end up shirtless in a conversation with the writer and co-executive producer of Xena: Warrior Princess and his wife.

I should have, of course. Miscon just...gets weird like that.

See, remember when I said that Wally didn't have air conditioning? Well, by the end of the drive over to Missoula I was well into a good bout with heat exhaustion. I had stripped down to shorts only. I was coated in sweat, and chugging ice water from our 5-gallon Igloo cooler like a freshman trying to impress people at a frat party. We had everything on Wally open to the world, venting it like crazy, and I simply lay there, half-naked, trying to cool off.

In this moment, Guest of Honor Steven Sears approached Wally with his wife, Jessica Brawner. They'd been told we were taking the commissions, and wanted to discuss logistics. I was half-conscious and half-naked. To his credit, Steven handled the whole thing with grace and dignity. Which is good, because I'm pretty sure I presented as a sloppy mess.

Miscon. It gets weird, people.

The rest of the con pretty much followed suit. We got to sell books from Steven and Jessica. We sold out of Jeff Sturgeon's amazing art book. We sold books by so many amazing authors. We had to send the brilliant Sanan Kolva to Wal-mart to buy an emergency bookcase so that we could adequately display all of the books we had on offer.

One of the best authors I know helping me build a bookcase in the middle of an open dealer's room.

And we taught up-and-coming author Hunter Kay Wallace a thing or two about table sales.

She learned that when you have a bunch of high-concept, beautiful books and then also you have a book called War Hamster featuring a hamster wearing plate armor on the cover...that you'd better have extra copies of the Hamster book, cause that's what's selling out.

I spent the entire con trying to fend off anthology ideas with a stick. I am somewhat known for my inclination to generate weird anthology ideas at conventions. Three times I told someone to shut their mouth and stop talking before they saddled me with another anthology that I do not have room in the publication schedule for. Then, on the way back from Miscon, in a truck stop on the border between Idaho and Washington, the guy selling me breakfast burritos blindsided me...and I am now saddled with another anthology that I do not have room in the publication schedule for. So look forward to that!