{"id":342,"date":"2008-02-25T13:51:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-25T13:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/2008\/02\/25\/thank-you-austin\/"},"modified":"2014-12-14T18:48:33","modified_gmt":"2014-12-14T18:48:33","slug":"thank-you-austin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/2008\/02\/25\/thank-you-austin\/","title":{"rendered":"Thank you, Austin"},"content":{"rendered":"<body><p><\/p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/02\/AUSTIN2233.jpg\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px;\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/02\/AUSTIN2233.jpg?w=680\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\"><\/a><br>Wow\u2026the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.austinbooks.com\/index.html\">Austin Books<\/a> signing for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Elric-Stealer-Chronicles-Emperor-Melnibone\/dp\/0345498623\/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1203949132&amp;sr=8-1\">ELRIC: THE STEALER OF SOULS<\/a> was a massive success, to say the least. Thanks to everyone who came out and patiently stood in line Saturday. It was a pleasure to be there with you. Mike Moorcock kicked it off with a reading from the novel THE STEALER OF SOULS, and then he and I did a quick Q&amp;A. During that time, the people just kept streaming into the store. From there, it was a solid two hours of signing books and visiting with good people. Take a look at the photo above\u2026.I made the grievous mistake of looking up from signing books and assuming the end of the line visible in the photo was the \u201cend of the line.\u201d Then someone informed me that the line wrapped behind the bookshelves, and kept going. Wow.<br><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/02\/AUSTIN2232.jpg\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px;\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/02\/AUSTIN2232.jpg?w=680\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\"><\/a><br><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/02\/AUSTIN2231.jpg\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px;\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/02\/AUSTIN2231.jpg?w=680\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\"><\/a><br><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/02\/AUSTIN2234.jpg\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px;\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/02\/AUSTIN2234.jpg?w=680\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\"><\/a><br><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/02\/AUSTIN2236.jpg\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px;\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/02\/AUSTIN2236.jpg?w=680\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\"><\/a><br>Huge thanks to Brad Bankston, Brandon, and all at Austin Books for putting this together. 1\/3 of the store is under a major renovation and Bankston shrewdly housed the signing event in that space, while the other 2\/3 of the store was the usual comics nirvana that makes it one of the finest comic-book stores in America.<br><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/02\/AUSTIN2235.jpg\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px;\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/02\/AUSTIN2235.jpg?w=680\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\"><\/a><br>Special shoutout to Eric (pictured above), who came all the way down from Minnesota just to attend this event and meet Mike and me. He flew in the day of the event, did it, dined with us afterwards, and then flew back home six short hours later. You\u2019re an animal, man! That was impressive. Great to meet you\u2026.we\u2019ll be in touch. Speaking of dinner, we all had dinner afterwards at the excellent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.claypit.com\/Home.asp?LOCID=2\">Clay Pit<\/a>, a nouveau-Indian restaurant near downtown Austin. Traci and I loved it, and we\u2019re sure to return. Joining Traci and me, and Mike and his wife Linda, were my good friend Brian Farrens (who took the photos here\u2026.thanks, man.), Eric from Minnesota\u2013and a terrific surprise\u2013Allison Baker of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.monkeybrainbooks.com\/\">MonkeyBrain Books<\/a> fame. It was a great, great day\u2026.I\u2019m ready to do it again! \ud83d\ude42\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wow\u2026the Austin Books signing for ELRIC: THE STEALER OF SOULS was a massive success, to say the least. Thanks to everyone who came out and patiently stood in line Saturday. It was a pleasure to be there with you. Mike Moorcock kicked it off with a reading from the novel THE STEALER OF SOULS, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":923,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-conventions"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/02\/AUSTIN2233.jpg?fit=622%2C467","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5te7x-5w","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}