When We Last Left Our Heroes…

I know I know. I’m being silly, but sometimes it feels that way for us with how fast life is going. So there’s a few announcements and one recap. One of the announcements is more or less expected the other was a shocker to me too.

First, the bestest news. We’ve been accepted to Vikingscon in La Plata, MD on Nov 4-5th. I mean, why not? We’ve done a Ren Faire a Celtic Fest/Highland Games and now for the Vikings. It helps that Akiniwazisaga fits so well with all that. This is going to be our farthest ranging event so far. Hopefully it’ll be a big turnout and we can get seen a bunch by a new market since this is in the Washington DC are.

Our next event is going to be Big Lick Comicon as you all know. First weekend of August in Roanoke, VA. I’ve been looking forward to this one for a while. I really need to try and tear myself away at some point to see some of the guests there like former Marvel Editors in Chiefs, Tom DeFalco and Jim Shooter. The pop culture stuff is cool and all, but I won’t have time or the budget to go get autographs and I hate the way I take a picture anyway. Besides, I really love the comic creators as I used to want to be a writer for Marvel some thirty yadda-yadda years ago. Maybe someday.

Now a bit of sad news, Dualcon which we went to last February is no more. It tried and just couldn’t make it to year two, so, we won’t be doing that next year. It was a bit of a surprise, but what’re ya gonna do?

As my wife keeps telling me, this year is our testing year. Finding what sort of festivals, cons and shows work best for us to go and sell at. To that end, going to the West Virginia Celtic Festival and Highland Games up in Beverly, WV was a very pleasant surprise. Only a one day event, the weather cooperated, keeping the showers away till after we were set up and didn’t show up till after we got home. This was our second outdoor event, but unlike the Ren Festival 2 weeks prior we had to set up our own canopy and shelter. Which was fine. It was just like camping except for having a lot of visitors and the booth was a few hundred yards across a field from our camper at Camp Pioneer.

Being this was the first year, they did rather well, all things considered and so did we. We had some nice neighbors with really spectacular set ups. Because we had a lot of extra room, we got to spread out a bunch too.

The worst part of the day was the unpredictable wind that was able to upend some vendors tables on occasion. We had to be careful with our games, as we’ve discovered that the glass gems we use for game pieces can act like little magnifying glasses and get blisteringly hot! It was a lot of fun teaching children, their parents and grandparents how to play Morris. Our soaps sold pretty good too.

The crowd was great. Lots of kids and families with a fair amount of dogs. The sheep herding contest with the dogs was funny. We could see it at a distance, but unfortunately, we couldn’t see the highland games. They were on the other side of a pavilion.

The musical acts were quite different. Somewhere between hard rock and bardcore. Bagpipes and dual electric guitars was a cool sound.

I swear! I was speaking to someone there!

We were very happy with Camp Pioneer, a 4H camp. It was well maintained, had a good firepit next to a stream in a deep gully, and our camper fit perfectly in the site.

All in all, the festival was good enough for us to want to come back the following year. There’s talk of making it a two day event, and if so, we definitely want to keep it in our show rotation.

Anyway, that’s sort of what we had happen there. The trip up and down to the show was phenomenal. Went by the Greenbanks Observatory again, and enjoy the beautiful drive.

Also, Book 3, “The Waking Nightmares” is being edited and it’s coming along pretty good.

Next Saturday, July 15th, we’re going to be doing the first episode of “Tales From the Dream Nebula” RPG from the Dragon’s Den in Beckley, WV on Twitch. Follow the adventures of Suave Johnson, Cookie Jarvis, Lucky and Chaara as they begin their adventures in the vicinity of the Chimera Belt in the Dream Nebula. You can watch us here. We’ll be starting about 1pm eastern.