The John Scalzi Library

This summer when we were at GenCon, we had a 20-foot U-Haul truck (one of the big ones) filled with Tinker’s Packs merchandise to sell, as well as games for our Worldbuilders Party. The truck was vast overkill, but they didn’t have anything smaller. As it turns out, that was an amazingly good thing, because we had to pick up a few books from John Scalzi.

We touched on it in our GenCon blog, but here’s the long version! While Rachel, Anne, and Mike set up our booth at the convention center, Amanda and Brett took the U-Haul to Scalzi’s place. It was a couple hours on the road, but they talked about stuff and were super happy they didn’t have to set up the booth in the non-air-conditioned expo hall. It was in the mid-90s (or about 34 degrees for the rest of the world) and humid, and for those blissful two hours in the air-conditioned truck, they had no idea what awaited them.

When they got to Scalzi’s place, he showed them the books, which were in boxes and totes stacked in every conceivable place in his basement. Like, right up to the door. Amanda and Brett would actually be clearing a walkway to the rest of the books by loading the U-Haul. While Scalzi played gracious host and got them some ice water, Amanda and Brett proceeded to haul box after box of books out of the basement and into the impossibly sunny, hot, and humid day, filling up about a third of the U-Haul in a couple hours.

It was horrible. But super awesome, because all those books were coming back with them to get added to the lottery. So that thought kept them going. They also joked a lot about how they have very strange jobs.

We feel we should mention that while Amanda and Brett headed back to Gen Con all sweaty and gross, they stopped to get some fast food because they were super hungry. This was a bad idea. Friends shouldn’t let friends eat fast food.

But by the time they made it back to the expo hall, the rest of the team had finished setting up our awesome booth and we had a little time to rest and get de-gunked before dinner, which was delicious and made everything better.

It took Jenny, Rachel, Maria, and anyone else who wanted to help (including volunteers Chris, Jill, and Alisha) a couple weeks to unbox and sort all the books, and by the time they were done, we had a massive wall full of books.

All of these are in the lottery.

There are some complete series, some beginnings, some ARCs and limited books, some signed, and a few rarities. They’re all completely awesome, and we’ve been drooling over the sheer amount of good books in this. There are 2,500 prizes here, meaning a lot of people will get to add some serious coolness to their book collections – and every $10 donation gets you the chance to be one of those people!

Then, for a little bit of extra coolness, some of the team went through and specially picked out some books – books or authors we love, some of our favorites, books we think everyone should own.

We’re putting all these books and more in one giant Bundle of Awesomeness: over 50 books, worth over $1,500, and all of them can be yours!

So we have to give a big shout-out to John Scalzi, who gave us a treasure trove of fantasy and science fiction to add to our lottery this year. We’re really excited with the titles filling our wall, and we can’t wait for you to read them!

Tomorrow things get serious, since we really need to discuss your gaming habits. Hint: they’re the best, don’t ever change. Double hint: we’d like to add to your gaming shelf.