FRIDAY 23 July 2004
Things went even more smoothly on Friday.
Les Dabel picked them up again and I met them at the curb. RJ was in a great mood and had a smile on his face pretty often. This time we went right to the autograph area where a table had been setup for him to sign books. The Dabel Brothers and their team were all there. There were other celebrities nearby: I think Stan Lee was over at the next table signing photos of himself.
RJ signed books for about an hour. Again, he was able to personalize most of them, and there were few enough people where he was able to sign as many as they brought. One guy had 12 or 13 things for him to sign: all ten WoT novels, plus the Guide, some promo items I had sent out, and even some copies of Jordan’s other books.
After the signing was over, Harriet and RJ had some lunch plans. I met up with them a few hours later when it was time for the second panel discussion. This one was entitled “Painting the Big Picture—Speculative Fiction on a grand scale”.
During this discussion, RJ was much more talkative. He spoke quite frequently, at length at times. He cracked several jokes. He talked about many things he’s talked about before: how he writes seven days a week, sometimes misses lunch, how Harriet can tell when he’s been writing Padan Fain, how when we goes fishing and they aren’t biting he feels like he should still be writing instead, and how he is the OLD TESTAMENT GOD in the lives of his characters.
Afterwards, I met up with him and Harriet and escorted them over to the final book signing of the weekend. It was by far the most popular one, and so I suggested that people just have two books signed per trip through the line. (If you were somebody in line with more than two books, sorry!! That rule always bugged me whenever I went to book signings, but now I see why they do it.) In the end, everyone had time to get all of their books signed. The few people who had brought suitcases of books (yes, suitcases!) were patient enough to just wait until the end, and then RJ signed all of their stuff.
After the signing, the Dabels took them back to their hotel and I went to go watch the special The Return of the King footage from the Extended Edition DVD. :)
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