I was just wondering what your thoughts are on the fact that you had some fans wait over two hours for an autograph from you at DragonCon only to have you not show up and nobody was ever notified that you were not coming. Over two hours just for you not to show up? Doesn’t seem like you value that people that are reading your books. Sad.
Dear Melinda,
I’m very sorry.
One of the highlights of an author’s day is signing autographs. It gives us a chance to meet with the people who like our books. It’s a cool thing!
In fact, I specifically asked for an autograph session as I didn’t have one last year.
In the event, a series of unfortunate events caused me to miss my signing on Friday.
I certainly do feel that an explanation is in order.
What happened was certainly my fault. I had agreed long beforehand to work with Jody Lynn Nye on her marvelous writer’s workshop. I was supposed to present two times: once on Thursday and once on Friday both at 3 p.m. and both for an hour.
On Thursday I gave the workshop students an assignment which we would review on Friday. On Friday, I realized that I was scheduled to sign at 4 p.m. which would be right at the end of my 1 hour session. That was tighter than I wanted but might brain had fritzed and not seen earlier that a session starting at 3 p.m. implied a session ending at 4 p.m.
Foolish me. Even so, I thought I could rush to the autograph session and meet both commitments without too much hassle.
What I didn’t count on was that answering the assignment required the workshop students to take more time than a mere hour. I actually didn’t realize until we’d got to the last student that we’d run out of time — that we’d spent two hours!
Obviously, that put me beyond my one hour signing time. All the same, I rushed to the Autograph area with the intent to at least apologize to everyone.
I rushed from the Hyatt over to the Marriott where the Autograph sessions had been held for years. I got there and found no Autograph sessions. Chagrined, I looked at the back of my badge which had my schedule and saw that I was supposed to be at “International South.”
I immediately rushed back to the Hyatt and down to International South.
No Autograph Sessions!
It was then that I looked at my badge more carefully and saw that I was supposed to be at “International South (M)” — the Marriott!
So I rushed back to the Marriott, found International South in the Marriott and arrived — waayyy too late.
All the same, I found the guy who was running the Autograph Sessions and apologized. By that time, everyone had gone. Later, one of the Dragon*con people found me and we managed to reschedule a replacement autograph session on Monday.
I’m sorry I didn’t get to the original session on time. I wish it were otherwise.