This was my first year at Comic-Con in San Diego, an intimate little affair with 130,000 of my closest compadres. Folks who, like me, had been bitten by the radioactive bug of pop-culture literature, were raised on the hero tales of caped crusaders and barbarian warriors, and just couldn't get enough. Like most other writers, I was so spellbound by a story as a young person, that I wanted to be able to cast my own spell, a story that could stand alongside all those wonderful words that built my brain, hammered my world into place, and hinged open the horizon.