Today was a monumental day for me. I took my son to his and my first-ever ComicCon, the 2024 Silver Age Comic Convention in Reno. It was relatively small, I'm told, but it was pretty interesting. I saw a few people I know working booths including a couple writers from the Sierra Muse Meetup group where some of my first short stories were critiqued.
More importantly, it was nice to bond with my son over a shared interest. Although my love of comics revolves more around western material (Spider-Man 2099, the first comic I ever bought, is a perfect example), and his love of comics is based more on anime and manga (he wants to cosplay as Kokushibou), there's enough overlap here that we have a lot to talk about.
Speaking of cosplaying, I would say over half of the attendees were dressed up, and over half of those people were either anime or manga characters. I didn't see any One Punch Man, Akira, or Ghost in the Shell, or DragonBall characters (the only anime I'm remotely familiar with), but my son pointed out a lot of Demonslayer characters I can't remember or pronounce. I suppose this is what my dad thought when I was young and talking about cartoons and comics.
I'm putting the finishing touches on my second book, Aric Hunter: Statcatcher, the first in a four-part series. This follows my first book, a collection of five short stories called Your Love, The Night, which was released in December 2023. The process of writing is easy at first, at least for me, but more difficult when editing for publication, so this injection of inspiration is really helpful. It makes me want to keep working. It makes me want to succeed. It renews my love of fiction and adventure.
Maybe someday I'll attend a convention as a vendor. Who knows? Until then, see you at the SNAFU Anime Convention in November.
-Ellis Novak
2024-07-13
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