In a world of “normal” people, there is a world of faintly normal people, and in that world, is a world of even further faintly normal people. This normal world I talk about is my everyday world; the things I do everyday, the people I see everyday. My parents and sister, my friends, my classmates, and teachers; going to school, playing soccer, acting. Those are the elements of my normal world.
My dad brings me into his own separate element of his world; the environment that holds the faintly normal folks. Since 1997, two years before I was born, my dad, David B. Coe and also D.B. Jackson, has been a sci-fi, urban fantasy, and historical fiction author. He’s had nineteen novels published and is still writing. It’s his one true love, besides my mom. Despite his sometimes low self esteem, as everyone has at one point or another, my dad has been more successful than I understand and more successful than he likes to give himself credit for.
I went to my first Author's Convention that I vividly remember when I was twelve years old, and Cons are not hard to forget. I sat in on panels my dad was on, listening to him describe the difficulties, pleasures, and rules of writing. I met many of my father's fans, who are also hard to forget. Every fan has something different that they love about the author's work. I'm sure that's why my dad enjoys talking to them and getting to know them so much. Not only does he learn about their personality, he also learns about the strengths in his writing that they enjoy, some of which are weaknesses in his eyes. Through Conventions over the five or six years I’ve been attending them, I have met my family outside my family. I’ve discovered that instead of one father, I have four: David Coe, A.J. Hartley, Ed Schubert, and John Hartness. Instead of one mother I have added two more: Faith Hunter and Lee Watts. All these people are authors, editors, and damn good people. Each of them has earned my full trust with my own writing and my own life. There’s nothing more satisfying than knowing I will have family away from family and away from home, in the states I might attend college in.
Watching my dad pitch his books to people, and seeing them respond with such positivity that they want to read his work is one of many reasons I love being a part of his “other life.” At this point, I am fully certain I could pitch any of his Thieftaker series (historical fiction set in Boston during the American Revolution, with a twist of magic), or the Fearsson series (an urban fantasy about a weremyste who is also a private investigator but goes crazy every month at the full moon) to anyone who asks. He has touched so many lives through his writing, whether his readers tell him such or not. He inspired certain fans to begin writing themselves, and his continuous publishing keeps those people writing as well. Knowing my father very well, I know that the people who tell him how much they appreciate what he does, are the people who keep him in the business. I also know this is true for most other authors.
Everywhere you look in the hallways at Cons, you’ll see a different type of person. There are people in full costume, fully encompassing the Stormtrooper persona. There are people wearing way too much for the hot weather, and people wearing much too little for the comfort of everyone around them. There are people who will talk for hours despite the fact that your interest abandoned you after fifteen minutes. However, everyone means well. There is hardly anyone in any Con situation who doesn’t mean well and who isn’t just trying to make friends or sell their work. As exhausting as Cons can be, every person that says it is all one big happy friend group and family coming together for a weekend, is so very right.
