Interaction 2005:
Alan Lee Near the Beginning of His Signing
Due to being unemployed, I took on some extra jobs at Interaction, including being Alan Lee's guest liaison. Being a guest liaison usually involves helping the guest go from place to place (as needed) and getting them to and from the con. Being Alan's guest liaison meant helping to organize the logistics behind his special signing on Friday afternoon. HarperCollins UK decided to have a pre-launch of The Lord of the Rings Sketchbook roughly two months before the book would be formally published. It was challenging for a number of reasons, but we finally got it all worked out.
However, since the signing was Friday afternoon, and since I had to be onsite to help make sure the signing was going off OK, I had to delegate picking Alan up to someone else. Parris MacBride volunteered, and that worked out fine. Much to my surprise, Alan and Parris showed up at the convention center about 45 minutes earlier than expected, and Alan went almost straight to start his signing.
Alan signed some books as donations to the Macmillan Cancer Relief (Interaction's official charity), then started signing for the line of people who'd already assembled (probably some 40 or so at this point (over a half hour before the signing was due to start)).
© 2005 Photo by Laurie D. T. Mann