In which dreams, again, take us to Comicon.
Last night's dream was set, near as I can tell, somewhere around 2012. The first four Toby books were in print (Rosemary and Rue, A Local Habitation, An Artificial Night, and Late Eclipses of the Sun), the fifth was in editorial review, and I was -- in my usual 'getting ahead of myself' way -- doing frantic revisions on the eighth, which meant I looked harried and muttered about people no one had actually encountered in the series yet. And I did that a lot. Really, really a lot.
At the time of the dream, I was living in the Pacific Northwest, having invested the money from the sale of the first three books in a small house about a mile and a half from where Tony still lived. Nyssa had passed away, and been replaced by both the planned Siamese kittens, a Sharpei-mix named Hyacinth, and three iguanas whose names had no applicability in the dream, and thus didn't really come up. And yes, all this background information had been SPEED-LOADED into my brain before the dream began, with me stepping off a plane in Las Vegas*, travel-weary, slightly cranky, and facing the potentially biggest weekend of my life.
ComiCon.
(*The San Diego ComiCon is facing relocation in the next two years. Yes, probably to Vegas. Life is weird.)
Kate and Vixy, who had come in on the plane with me, walked with me to baggage claim, where we met up with Rae, Sunil, and Constance, who had agreed to come and fetch us from the airport. (Actually, only Rae agreed, but her group had somehow grown.) They assured us that Mars, Phil, Shawn, Terence, Rand and Erin were already at the hotel, and that our rooms had been checked into. The CW had booked us as a block, and had made sure that the two rooms being shared between myself, Kate, Mars, Vixy, Amy, Rae, Meredith, and Tara would be held until we could arrive. And that was A Very Good Thing, because I might have committed a homicide without a place to strip, shower, and eat something which would allow me to take painkillers.
Kate commandeered the unpacking process to unwind, while the rest of us took care of fixing our own sanity. This was made more challenging by the fact that we knew the publicity people would be arriving just as soon as they realized I'd arrived -- oh, right. This would be where the dream actually bothered to inform me that we were at Comicon because Warner Brothers had purchased the television rights to Toby, and October would be premiering on the CW in the fall. And we were at the con to do a Q&A panel with the stars, and attend a sneak peek screening of the first episode, 'Rosemary and Ruin'.
Thanks for the early warning, dream. Thanks a lot.
Vixy got a call from Erin, who was down in the lobby getting Starbucks for the mob, and who had just seen the publicity people arrive. What followed was best referred to as 'speed Barbie dress-up', as all the girls in the room descended en masse to make me presentable. Kate's had a lot of practice at this, as had Merav, but not at anything near that speed. I seriously thought someone was going to get a kitten heel to the head. In the end, they got me dressed just before company (and Starbucks) arrived, and it was time for the weekend's itinerary. Note to self: if real Comicon itineraries are anything like the dream ones, Comicon will be very, very tiring, should this ever come up. Multiple interviews, a panel on the future of the books, the premiere episode, a signing session for the books, a signing session with the cast, two more TV-related panels...I did not cry and ruin my mascara. Kate told me later that she was very proud.
This was one of those dreams that moves effectively in real time -- we arrived in Vegas Wednesday afternoon, and the dream lasted until we were boarding the plane on Tuesday morning (at which point, Vixy asked, kind of meekly, if this was a dream, and I replied in the affirmative). This means that there was a lot of 'filler' material; things like 'going to the grocery store because Seanan refuses to eat anything from the buffet', 'Merav has a meltdown because she's been so busy feeding everyone else that she's forgotten to eat', 'Kate acquires a small cadre of smokers to be her minions', 'Vixy has to be removed forcibly from the Browncoat booth', and 'Seanan looks uncomfortable and confused when confronted by her first really scary fanboy'.
Thursday night, we had dinner with Joss Whedon, who was at the con promoting a new project, and wanted to go out with Sean Maher, who was already going out with us. Between Sean and Joss, Vixy lost all capacity for speech or rational thought, and mostly just sat there looking faintly shell-shocked. I poked her several times with my fork, and Tara told me not to put my fork into anything I wasn't planning to eat. Good times were had by all.
Friday was the only day at the con where I didn't have any other commitments, and we took advantage of that fact, hitting Comicon like an invading Mongol horde. Our only rule was 'no wearing of October merchandise', as we really didn't want to get recognized and have our party thwarted. (I got the distinct feeling that the Toby books were kind of middle-of-the-road in terms of series popularity, but that buzz on our show was very good, and that some of our cast members came with the kind of fanbases that get you instant 'I want in on the ground floor' mobbing at a place like Comicon.) Any book dealers who recognized me promptly got everything they owned signed, in exchange for not making a fuss. For the most part, this ploy worked, as authors are not particularly recognizeable (with a few exceptions), and even when they are, they're really not expected to be mobbing the booth that sells antique My Little Ponies and squealing.
We finally found Kate a corset that was both attractive and comfortable, and as it cost less than we would have been paying for our hotel room (had the CW not been footing the bill), we agreed that it would be her manager's fee for the weekend. Vixy, meanwhile, just kept vanishing back over to the Browncoat booth. They had figured out who we were by that point -- Browncoats know Vixy, know Vixy knows me, and knew that Sean was in my new project -- and kept pressuring her to tell them who else might be guest-starring on the series. "I'd tell you, but she'd hit me," was her polite (and honest) reply. They gave us all free T-shirts, probably hoping we'd wear them on the panel.
Ah, the panel. And the premiere. My head is really good at cutting together fictional TV shows. Seriously. They brought us all out (and some of us got a lot more screaming than others, with me being, frankly, at the bottom of the pile), and then aired the ninety-minute cut of the pilot, which was...amazing. They changed some things about the story that I wouldn't necessarily have chosen to change, but then again, I write for novel pacing, not for television. The casting was largely dead-on, and the few exceptions were close enough that I could genuinely see why they'd chosen to go to the places that they did. And people really seemed to like it, which was dead exciting.
The cast, as I remember it:
* October 'Toby' Daye. Kristen Bell. (She's played a PI before, she's good at snarky, and she was several years older, which wore very well for Toby. Blonder than I would have chosen, but she played it very well.)
* Tybalt. Sean Maher. (Wow, was this the bit of casting I remembered fighting the hardest. Wow, was I wrong. Especially once the leather pants came out. Ahem.)
* Sylvester and Simon Torquill. John Simm. (Um. Thank you, dreaming mind, for giving me an excuse to sit at a table with John Simm. I love you lots.)
* Luna Torquill. Paula Marshall. (I fear the show-killer.)
* The Luidaeg. Zooey Deschanel. (Probably the most 'wish fulfillment' bit of casting...but dude, the chick has a summer home in the Uncanny Valley. Finally, she gets to play to it. Although she laughed at me when I explained Martin's Passage.)
The rest of the 'main cast' -- Quentin, Stacy, Mitch, Raj, Walther, Julie -- were people I didn't know from anything else. The panel went well. The show went over well. I didn't faint.
The best thing about these dreams is how purely in-character everyone is. Like the reactions when we were in the green room, and found out that Nathan Fillion had agreed to guest as Blind Michael in an episode towards the end of the season (Vixy didn't faint, but she wobbled; Tara ignored this nonsense, and kept chatting with John Simm). And Amy playing fiddle reels on the edge of the stage to keep people calm (she'd also done a great deal of incidental music for the series, because dude, she's right there). And me trying to sell people on the Newsflesh movie. And Mars and Rae hanging out with Kristen Bell, while Mer was still on cloud nine from dinner with Joss...and me wandering off to draw comic strips when I got overwhelmed.
We did, in fact, have a big guerilla dance number in the dealer's hall Sunday afternoon, when anonymity was no longer possible. Tom Smith had shown up, and so we were able to do 'Another Mad Science Love Song' with the full cast. We got applause and a scolding from security.
Good dream. Now let's just hope I'm psychic.
At the time of the dream, I was living in the Pacific Northwest, having invested the money from the sale of the first three books in a small house about a mile and a half from where Tony still lived. Nyssa had passed away, and been replaced by both the planned Siamese kittens, a Sharpei-mix named Hyacinth, and three iguanas whose names had no applicability in the dream, and thus didn't really come up. And yes, all this background information had been SPEED-LOADED into my brain before the dream began, with me stepping off a plane in Las Vegas*, travel-weary, slightly cranky, and facing the potentially biggest weekend of my life.
ComiCon.
(*The San Diego ComiCon is facing relocation in the next two years. Yes, probably to Vegas. Life is weird.)
Kate and Vixy, who had come in on the plane with me, walked with me to baggage claim, where we met up with Rae, Sunil, and Constance, who had agreed to come and fetch us from the airport. (Actually, only Rae agreed, but her group had somehow grown.) They assured us that Mars, Phil, Shawn, Terence, Rand and Erin were already at the hotel, and that our rooms had been checked into. The CW had booked us as a block, and had made sure that the two rooms being shared between myself, Kate, Mars, Vixy, Amy, Rae, Meredith, and Tara would be held until we could arrive. And that was A Very Good Thing, because I might have committed a homicide without a place to strip, shower, and eat something which would allow me to take painkillers.
Kate commandeered the unpacking process to unwind, while the rest of us took care of fixing our own sanity. This was made more challenging by the fact that we knew the publicity people would be arriving just as soon as they realized I'd arrived -- oh, right. This would be where the dream actually bothered to inform me that we were at Comicon because Warner Brothers had purchased the television rights to Toby, and October would be premiering on the CW in the fall. And we were at the con to do a Q&A panel with the stars, and attend a sneak peek screening of the first episode, 'Rosemary and Ruin'.
Thanks for the early warning, dream. Thanks a lot.
Vixy got a call from Erin, who was down in the lobby getting Starbucks for the mob, and who had just seen the publicity people arrive. What followed was best referred to as 'speed Barbie dress-up', as all the girls in the room descended en masse to make me presentable. Kate's had a lot of practice at this, as had Merav, but not at anything near that speed. I seriously thought someone was going to get a kitten heel to the head. In the end, they got me dressed just before company (and Starbucks) arrived, and it was time for the weekend's itinerary. Note to self: if real Comicon itineraries are anything like the dream ones, Comicon will be very, very tiring, should this ever come up. Multiple interviews, a panel on the future of the books, the premiere episode, a signing session for the books, a signing session with the cast, two more TV-related panels...I did not cry and ruin my mascara. Kate told me later that she was very proud.
This was one of those dreams that moves effectively in real time -- we arrived in Vegas Wednesday afternoon, and the dream lasted until we were boarding the plane on Tuesday morning (at which point, Vixy asked, kind of meekly, if this was a dream, and I replied in the affirmative). This means that there was a lot of 'filler' material; things like 'going to the grocery store because Seanan refuses to eat anything from the buffet', 'Merav has a meltdown because she's been so busy feeding everyone else that she's forgotten to eat', 'Kate acquires a small cadre of smokers to be her minions', 'Vixy has to be removed forcibly from the Browncoat booth', and 'Seanan looks uncomfortable and confused when confronted by her first really scary fanboy'.
Thursday night, we had dinner with Joss Whedon, who was at the con promoting a new project, and wanted to go out with Sean Maher, who was already going out with us. Between Sean and Joss, Vixy lost all capacity for speech or rational thought, and mostly just sat there looking faintly shell-shocked. I poked her several times with my fork, and Tara told me not to put my fork into anything I wasn't planning to eat. Good times were had by all.
Friday was the only day at the con where I didn't have any other commitments, and we took advantage of that fact, hitting Comicon like an invading Mongol horde. Our only rule was 'no wearing of October merchandise', as we really didn't want to get recognized and have our party thwarted. (I got the distinct feeling that the Toby books were kind of middle-of-the-road in terms of series popularity, but that buzz on our show was very good, and that some of our cast members came with the kind of fanbases that get you instant 'I want in on the ground floor' mobbing at a place like Comicon.) Any book dealers who recognized me promptly got everything they owned signed, in exchange for not making a fuss. For the most part, this ploy worked, as authors are not particularly recognizeable (with a few exceptions), and even when they are, they're really not expected to be mobbing the booth that sells antique My Little Ponies and squealing.
We finally found Kate a corset that was both attractive and comfortable, and as it cost less than we would have been paying for our hotel room (had the CW not been footing the bill), we agreed that it would be her manager's fee for the weekend. Vixy, meanwhile, just kept vanishing back over to the Browncoat booth. They had figured out who we were by that point -- Browncoats know Vixy, know Vixy knows me, and knew that Sean was in my new project -- and kept pressuring her to tell them who else might be guest-starring on the series. "I'd tell you, but she'd hit me," was her polite (and honest) reply. They gave us all free T-shirts, probably hoping we'd wear them on the panel.
Ah, the panel. And the premiere. My head is really good at cutting together fictional TV shows. Seriously. They brought us all out (and some of us got a lot more screaming than others, with me being, frankly, at the bottom of the pile), and then aired the ninety-minute cut of the pilot, which was...amazing. They changed some things about the story that I wouldn't necessarily have chosen to change, but then again, I write for novel pacing, not for television. The casting was largely dead-on, and the few exceptions were close enough that I could genuinely see why they'd chosen to go to the places that they did. And people really seemed to like it, which was dead exciting.
The cast, as I remember it:
* October 'Toby' Daye. Kristen Bell. (She's played a PI before, she's good at snarky, and she was several years older, which wore very well for Toby. Blonder than I would have chosen, but she played it very well.)
* Tybalt. Sean Maher. (Wow, was this the bit of casting I remembered fighting the hardest. Wow, was I wrong. Especially once the leather pants came out. Ahem.)
* Sylvester and Simon Torquill. John Simm. (Um. Thank you, dreaming mind, for giving me an excuse to sit at a table with John Simm. I love you lots.)
* Luna Torquill. Paula Marshall. (I fear the show-killer.)
* The Luidaeg. Zooey Deschanel. (Probably the most 'wish fulfillment' bit of casting...but dude, the chick has a summer home in the Uncanny Valley. Finally, she gets to play to it. Although she laughed at me when I explained Martin's Passage.)
The rest of the 'main cast' -- Quentin, Stacy, Mitch, Raj, Walther, Julie -- were people I didn't know from anything else. The panel went well. The show went over well. I didn't faint.
The best thing about these dreams is how purely in-character everyone is. Like the reactions when we were in the green room, and found out that Nathan Fillion had agreed to guest as Blind Michael in an episode towards the end of the season (Vixy didn't faint, but she wobbled; Tara ignored this nonsense, and kept chatting with John Simm). And Amy playing fiddle reels on the edge of the stage to keep people calm (she'd also done a great deal of incidental music for the series, because dude, she's right there). And me trying to sell people on the Newsflesh movie. And Mars and Rae hanging out with Kristen Bell, while Mer was still on cloud nine from dinner with Joss...and me wandering off to draw comic strips when I got overwhelmed.
We did, in fact, have a big guerilla dance number in the dealer's hall Sunday afternoon, when anonymity was no longer possible. Tom Smith had shown up, and so we were able to do 'Another Mad Science Love Song' with the full cast. We got applause and a scolding from security.
Good dream. Now let's just hope I'm psychic.