A Conversation with Michael D. Pederson

[00:00:00] The Spaceman: Thank you for turning in to the Halfling and the Spaceman. If you're new to our show, we welcome you and hope you are entertained and inspired to start your own journey into active fandom. If you are a returning listener, thank you for choosing to spend some more time with us. Today, we're excited to be talking to Michael Pederson of RavenCon.

[00:00:20] The Spaceman: He'll be talking with us about his journey from being a fan to being a convention chair at one of the Southeast premier fan conventions. Mike, welcome to the show.

[00:00:29] Michael D. Pederson: Thank you.

[00:00:30] The Spaceman: Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do?

[00:00:34] Michael D. Pederson: Absolutely. Sure. I am currently the convention chair for RavenCon, which is a fan convention held every April in Richmond, Virginia.

[00:00:44] The Halfling: And it's a lot of fun.

[00:00:46] Michael D. Pederson: Thank you. 

[00:00:47] The Spaceman: Yeah, both of us can attest to that.

[00:00:49] The Halfling: Yeah. Absolutely. Besides your busyness with the convention, you've got some other things going on too, don't you?

[00:00:57] Michael D. Pederson: Oh, I've always got a few weird little side projects going. Yeah. For better part of 15, 15 years, I edited and published, a science fiction fanzine called Nth Degree.

[00:01:08] The Halfling: Mm-hmm.

[00:01:09] Michael D. Pederson: Back in the nineties I wrote and published a comic book, with an artist friend of mine. A couple years ago we put out as a fundraising project, Corvid-19, as a way of an anthology that we did to raise funds for the convention.

[00:01:22] Michael D. Pederson: It's 19 stories feature in Corvids. I'm currently working on volume two of that.

[00:01:27] The Halfling: Oh, wow, wow! That's pretty cool. So you've got some irons in the fire, so to speak, that's wonderful.

[00:01:34] Michael D. Pederson: One or two. 

[00:01:36] The Halfling: [laughter]. 

[00:01:37] The Halfling: Well, so tell us, what exactly does the word fandom mean to you? What does it generate in your mind when somebody, mentions fandom or they're a fan of something and what are you a fan of?

[00:01:51] The Halfling: What types of fandom are you engaged in?

[00:01:53] Michael D. Pederson: When I think of fandom, it makes me think of my adopted family. It's the people that I'm closest to, that share similar interests to me. For me, those interests are fiction books, writing, editing, science fiction. I'm more of a spaceman than a halfling myself. 

[00:02:09] The Halfling: [laughter] Oh, fair enough, fair enough.

[00:02:12] Michael D. Pederson: I've always preferred the, uh, you know, that's not say that I don't like fantasy. But, I tend to, when I'm looking at fantasy, I tend to judge a little harsher. If it comes off too strong as a Tolkien ripoff I lose interest very quickly but science fiction is such a broad spectrum of material that, it just sucks me in.

[00:02:28] Michael D. Pederson: I love sci-fi

[00:02:29] The Halfling: I can understand that and I'm not all halfling by any means.

[00:02:33] The Spaceman: No, you're only Most Halfling. And remember Mostly Halfling

[00:02:37] The Halfling: Oh, come on. Let's, let's don't go there. . And

[00:02:41] Michael D. Pederson: more, more with Threequarterling.

[00:02:45] The Halfling: So Michael, what are some of your earliest memories of being a quote fan of something?

[00:02:51] Michael D. Pederson: Well, are you speaking in the terms of organized fandom or just really, really enjoying things?

[00:02:56] The Halfling: Okay, I'll give you a personal, for instance, my earliest memory of being a fan of something was when I was in elementary school with the Nancy Drew books and how a friend of mine and her brother, we would get together and we would actually act out Nancy Drew's stories. And so that's kind of my earliest,

[00:03:18] The Spaceman: And she's been acting out every day, ever since. 

[00:03:22] Michael D. Pederson: Well then this won't, this won't come as any surprise to you, but the first thing that I became a real fan of was Poe.

[00:03:30] The Halfling: Oh, wow. 

[00:03:30] Michael D. Pederson: I have very, very strong memories of, uh, we were living back in Brookfield at the time, up in Northern Virginia. So that meant it would've been kindergarten or first grade.

[00:03:42] Michael D. Pederson: First half of first grade, actually. So very young and I heard several Poe stories on public radio. The Gold Bug, Telltale Heart. Oh, what else? I think the Black Cat was another one. And I just fell in love with Poe immediately and I've loved all things Poe since and right at that same time, I also remember my buying my very first book, which I still have at the kindergarten book fair, which was a copy of Robert Lewis Stevenson's, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

[00:04:17] The Halfling: Wow. Kindergarten or first grade. You're reading these. That's amazing. 

[00:04:24] Michael D. Pederson: I was reading at a very, very early age. Yes. 

[00:04:27] The Spaceman: That's quite precocious.

[00:04:29] Michael D. Pederson: Yeah. Yeah. I was.

[00:04:32] The Halfling: I don't think we're too surprised by that . That's very cool. That's very cool.

[00:04:38] The Spaceman: Let's step back to the fandom thing a minute Before we go ahead. Let's talk a little bit about how you got involved in organized fandom, because, you were a fan of Poe, but it's a long road from being an elementary school student who buys a book of Edgar Allan Poe's work to being the chair of a convention, a writer, a magazine publisher in the many hats you wear.

[00:04:58] Michael D. Pederson: Hmm. Do you want the short story or the long story?

[00:05:01] The Spaceman: We got all day.

[00:05:02] Michael D. Pederson: All right. Uh, let's go back to the early to mid 1990s, then. That was when I was publishing a comic. Called Raven, no connection, to to Poe actually. The Raven, mythology came in via Celtic myths but it was an independent superhero story that R. Craig Ensslin and myself put together.

[00:05:24] Michael D. Pederson: We did four issues, before he moved away. And, the project fell apart. But while we were doing that, we did a huge tour, a lot of conventions and a lot of comic shops and a lot of bookstores. We were signing everywhere. And that was when I got into fandom as a pro. And I had been attending conventions since the 1980s as just, an attendee and as a fan.

[00:05:52] Michael D. Pederson: And I fell in love with them. For my first convention I went to, but in 93 when we started the comic book, I became immersed as, a panelist and I got to see conventions from a whole different angle. We had tables in the dealer's room, so we're vendors and we were doing panels, so you really see it from a different angle when you're on that side you all know what I'm talking about.

[00:06:12] The Spaceman: Oh, certainly, certainly. 

[00:06:13] The Halfling: do you, you're right

[00:06:14] Michael D. Pederson: It just made it even more fun. As much as I enjoyed conventions as a fan, I enjoyed it more as a pro. And we looked into starting, a fan group in Richmond at the time. We put out some feelers and we were gonna hold a convention. We found a hotel. We talked to some guests.

[00:06:32] Michael D. Pederson: I had a friend that was gonna help organize it, but we really knew nothing about how con was put together at the time. So aside from putting out some feelers, nothing really materialized from it until many years later. When I was working on the magazine Nth Degree, I was doing the con circuit again and I was hitting conventions, you know, I was doing about 18 conventions a year.

[00:06:54] The Halfling: Oh wow.

[00:06:55] Michael D. Pederson: Yeah. It keeps you busy.

[00:06:57] The Spaceman: It does! 

[00:06:58] Michael D. Pederson: There was one weekend where I hit three conventions in one weekend. I was literally bouncing back and forth from, you know, it was tiring, but it was fun and I made some really good friends on the con circuit, Tee Morris and Tony Ruggiero, both authors, we were all living in Virginia and we're all going to the same events.

[00:07:19] Michael D. Pederson: So we would all travel together and hang out together. And we were at one convention, uh, fall of 2004, and it was a much smaller convention. They had moved from their usual hotel to a different hotel and attended to, dropped off that year. But we're sitting in the hotel bar and I turned to Tee and Tony and I said, you know, I'll bet we could do this. And I figured they would both say no. There's no way in hell we could run a convention. Instead they both looked at me and said, yeah, we probably could. And we kinda launched right into it. Now, none of us had ever worked on a convention before. We had seen it from, an author's point of view, but we'd never really been on staff anywhere. So that was the angle that we took when we started it. We wanted to create a convention that was as much fun for the attendees, oh, I'm sorry, for the programming guests as it was for the attendees and we learned a lot of lessons. Really, if you showed me a guest list, I could tell you what convention it was based solely on the guest list.

[00:08:19] Michael D. Pederson: Cuz I was seeing the exact same people every year at every con. There was one convention where me Tee and John Wright, and Jaji Lamplighter Wright, were all on the same Harry Potter panel three years in a row at the same convention. I knew, you know, in addition to making it fun for the panelists, we had to keep things fresh.

[00:08:40] Michael D. Pederson: We had to rotate guests out. We had to rotate programming out. We had to make a lot of changes from year to year to year. Uh, so that was kind of the angle that we took, the approach that we had when we started out.

[00:08:50] The Spaceman: Okay.

[00:08:51] The Halfling: Well, so I have a question. I'm gonna step on Spaceman's toes for a second, talk a little bit more about RavenCon itself and like for instance,, how did you get your staff, because it wasn't just you and a couple others. I mean, running a convention, the size that you do takes, you know, takes more people.

[00:09:13] The Spaceman: We've done it. We know. Yeah. 

[00:09:15] Michael D. Pederson: It's a lot of work.

[00:09:16] The Halfling: Yeah.

[00:09:17] Michael D. Pederson: Uh, well, with anything similar, you start in the same place that you always start, and that is you recruit your friends. I've been doing that my entire life. I've always come up with weird projects and I'll go to my friends and go, Hey, what do you guys think? Let's try this.

[00:09:31] Michael D. Pederson: I'm very Kermit the Frog in that way.

[00:09:33] The Spaceman: So do we need to be mindful? If you show up at our place with a minivan,

[00:09:37] Michael D. Pederson: Oh, yes. Yeah. And my friends were more than happy to jump in. And after that, people see us having fun and they're like, how do I get involved? And we go to other conventions and we talk to people and we have tried very hard not to steal staff from other conventions.

[00:09:57] Michael D. Pederson: Because I have had people recruit from my convention and it kind of rubs me the wrong way a little bit sometimes. We will happily go and volunteer at other cons to help out. I have spent a lot of time helping out other local conventions. Um, but, um, yeah, everybody knows everybody and everybody wants to join in and have fun with you. So people volunteer a lot.

[00:10:22] The Halfling: Well, that's good because conventions rely a lot on volunteers. 

[00:10:27] The Spaceman: They do. 

[00:10:27] The Halfling: Yeah, the volunteers are a big piece of what makes the convention possible. Your staff, they're your core, but without the volunteers it just wouldn't happen. 

[00:10:40] Michael D. Pederson: Yeah, you've gotta have the volunteers.

[00:10:44] The Spaceman: You gotta have the volunteers.

[00:10:48] Michael D. Pederson: that's another one. You know, a lot of volunteers end up, they'll volunteer one year and then they'll be staff the following year.

[00:10:54] The Spaceman: Yeah. Yeah. That's true. That's been us a couple of times. Other conventions.

[00:10:58] The Halfling: Yeah. Yeah. So, Michael, who would you say is the most interesting person that you've met in all of your adventures in conventions and so forth?

[00:11:08] Michael D. Pederson: That's a tough one. Cuz I've met so many people and I've kind of become the go-to guy for interviews up and down the East coast, so I've gotten to interview so many professionals, probably over a hundred at this point. Hugo winners and Grand Masters and actors and game designers and you name it, I've interviewed them. But you know, there are a couple that still stand out. David Kyle, I'm very glad I got to meet and become friends with David Kyle. Cuz he was part of first fandom. He has stories going back, to the beginning of when fandom was organizing.

[00:11:42] Michael D. Pederson: So every time I got to see him and sit down and chat with him was particularly fun. I miss him, he was a good guy

[00:11:50] The Halfling: Yeah. Yeah. Well, is there somebody that you would like to meet that you haven't had an opportunity to meet yet?

[00:11:58] Michael D. Pederson: That I haven't, uh, most of the people that I would like to meet, um, that I haven't met have passed away. A lot of the early authors, you know, Asamov, I would love to have met Asamov, current authors. There's some English authors that I haven't had the opportunity to interact with. I would love to. Steven Baxter, love his work. Um, but we don't see him in the states very often. China Mieville is another British author. So yeah. Uh, the ones that I want to meet are just the ones that I just haven't had the access to.

[00:12:29] Michael D. Pederson: Yeah.

[00:12:30] The Spaceman: You know, it's funny, the only author right now that I'd really like to meet is Christopher Moore, 

[00:12:35] The Spaceman: and he's completely outside of the genre of what we cover. Well, maybe not completely,

[00:12:41] The Spaceman: but

[00:12:42] Michael D. Pederson: Genre adjacent. 

[00:12:43] The Spaceman: Genre adjacent. But, it's amazing cuz so there's so many of the golden age writers are gone now and we have their work and their legacy and some of it is aged very well, like a fine wine.

[00:12:55] The Spaceman: And some of it is aged like milk and So you always have to read golden age sci-fi with a certain type of lens. It makes it interesting, especially when you're trying to bring on new readers to it.

[00:13:11] Michael D. Pederson: Yeah,

[00:13:11] The Spaceman: Because what they thought were progressive sentimentalities back in 1940 something are purely antiquated today.

[00:13:21] Michael D. Pederson: well, and then the stuff that was being considered progressive when we were coming up, the new wave of authors of the sixties and seventies, Ellison and Niven, you know, it's hard to get young fans to, to go back that far even.

[00:13:33] The Spaceman: Right, right. And I will understand because there are so many great new authors.

[00:13:38] The Spaceman: there are.

[00:13:39] The Spaceman: and you can't keep up with all of it. There was a time as a science fiction fan, in the golden age where you could read the entire corpus of science fiction published in a year. You can't do that anymore.

[00:13:50] The Spaceman: Even if you don't include indie publishers. Even if you don't include self-publishers, if you only include the main line titles, there's no way a single human being could keep up with it. 

[00:14:00] Michael D. Pederson: oh yeah, you know, when I started in fandom in the 1980s, everybody had read the same books, they'd read the same magazines. We had the same six movies that we all loved. It was a much smaller field back then and now it's just so broad. It encompasses everything.

[00:14:16] Michael D. Pederson: Science fiction is mainstream now.

[00:14:18] The Spaceman: that's right. But it also gives us an opportunity to have access to new works of fiction that we might not have gotten in the past. One of our early guests was Nicole Givens Kurtz of Mocha Memoirs Pressed, and she was talking about how there are now opportunities for voices that hadn't been traditionally heard in speculative fiction.

[00:14:36] The Spaceman: And I think that's a good thing to see.

[00:14:38] Michael D. Pederson: Yeah. The field is so much broader now than it had ever been at any time.

[00:14:42] The Halfling: I'm reminded of that Twilight Zone episode where, you have the banker and all he wants to do is read his books. Do you guys remember that episode? And then at the end of the episode, he's the sole survivor and he finally has time to read all of his books, all of the books that he's surrounded by.

[00:15:04] The Halfling: And then of course he breaks his glasses. I'm reminded of that talking about, how much there is out there now and it is impossible for one person to be able to read everything that they would want to read in a lifetime. 

[00:15:20] Michael D. Pederson: Yeah. 

[00:15:21] The Spaceman: I can't even watch the TV programs I wanna watch. 

[00:15:23] The Halfling: yeah. So,

[00:15:25] Michael D. Pederson: Oh, I'm so far behind because there's, there's so much,

[00:15:28] The Halfling: Yeah. 

[00:15:29] The Spaceman: you know, everybody tells us we need to watch The Expanse. I will probably never watch The Expanse because I can't keep up with the things that I'm already watching. But that's a side issue. So let's circle back around to the convention for a few minutes. So you've talked a little bit about how you got started, how you were going to other conventions said, I can do this, we can do this.

[00:15:49] The Spaceman: And then you went out there and you recruited your friends and you said, we're gonna do this. But if you were getting started today, if you had a young person you were mentoring and they really wanted to start a convention, and before you actually told them all the horror stories and they ran away, way screaming, what advice would you give them that you wish you would've known when you got started.

[00:16:10] Michael D. Pederson: I had some good advisors when I got started. I talked to people that ran conventions. So there really wasn't anything that, that I wish I had known that I didn't know at the time. Honestly, if someone came to me and said they wanted to start a convention now, I would tell them not to. It's not a good time.

[00:16:28] Michael D. Pederson: Fandom is still very much in flux from the two year shutdown and prior to the shutdown, there was, an over expansion of fandom because of comic cons popping up everywhere. So the market was getting glutted anyways, and then everything shut down. And hotels are changing a lot of their policies now, which are making it even more difficult, for starting conventions.

[00:16:51] Michael D. Pederson: It used to be that you'd put down a deposit, then you would pay the rest after the convention from your at the door receipts. And now pretty much every hotel is demanding the entire payment up front.

[00:17:03] The Spaceman: Wow.

[00:17:04] Michael D. Pederson: which makes it, you know, if you're starting up and you don't have, the capital, it's a difficult thing to do.

[00:17:11] The Spaceman: Alright 

[00:17:11] Michael D. Pederson: So, yeah, I wouldn't recommend trying to start a convention right now.

[00:17:14] The Spaceman: okay. Now, when you were talking about the ComicCons that are popping up everywhere, I've never been to one of the local Comic-Con I've been to more, gaming or literary or just locally organized conventions. How are these ComicCon type conventions organized, you know?

[00:17:30] Michael D. Pederson: They're basically just a big giant dealer's room. They're more of a trade show than a convention. They'll have limited programming. Well, you go to a convention or a large regional con like Balticon or RavenCon or any of the other, you know, nice local Phil Con, Arisia, every big area has one, and you'll have at least a dozen tracks of programming, hundreds of hours of programming going on over the course of the weekend that cover every aspect of fandom. From filking to art, to writing to TV shows, to movies, to anything you can think of fandom related will be represented at one of those conventions at a sci-fi con.

[00:18:07] Michael D. Pederson: But you go to a ComicCon and there will be maybe a handful of panels and they'll all, almost all be about either costuming or TV and movies.

[00:18:17] The Spaceman: Do you believe that pulls people away from the local conventions?

[00:18:21] Michael D. Pederson: Well, if they're cross, cross programmed. If you have a big event like Galaxy Con or something moving into your town the same weekend as you, yes. They will pull people away. But otherwise, no, I don't think that they do. What they do though is pull, attendees away. Or not attendees, I'm sorry.

[00:18:40] Michael D. Pederson: Programming guests.

[00:18:42] The Halfling: Oh yeah. Yeah.

[00:18:44] Michael D. Pederson: are a lot of programming. Guests can only afford to do so many conventions at a time. And the big comic-cons, they're there for the hobbyists. You know, that's the normals, the muggles, the straits will go to those because they want to go in and get an autograph and be seen with a celebrity.

[00:18:59] Michael D. Pederson: Uh, and it's great for that. And if you're a vendor and you have the opportunity to put your stuff in front of 10,000 people, you're gonna take it cuz you know, those ComicCon are a great way to, to sell your product. If you've got a small book that you've just put out or you're doing a comic book, or you've got some type of art that you make, they're great places to go and sell your goods.

[00:19:21] Michael D. Pederson: But it's not fandom really. It's not, you know, you're not there with family like you are at a sci-fi con.

[00:19:26] The Spaceman: Right. The term we've coined to talk about. This is wide fandom, not deep fandom.

[00:19:33] Michael D. Pederson: Yeah.

[00:19:35] The Halfling: And it's almost like comparing apples to oranges. The whole feel of that type of convention versus a convention like RavenCon, where it's sort of homegrown, so to speak. Just very different feel, very different atmosphere and people go for different reasons.

[00:19:52] The Halfling: But I hadn't thought about the fact that, these bigger conventions might pull away guests, but yeah, I mean, that makes sense. 

[00:20:01] Michael D. Pederson: Well, the other thing that they've done, is it used to be possible for a small science fiction convention to bring in an actor for the weekend and you pay their travel and their room and board and maybe give 'em a thousand dollars and they would come and then they would sell autographs to make up some more money.

[00:20:18] Michael D. Pederson: And that was enough for them. But now they're making money handover fist at the Comic-Con, so they won't do the small conventions for the rates they used to. So it's been harder for sci-fi cons to get celebrities.

[00:20:31] The Spaceman: Ah, yeah, I can see how that could hurt.

[00:20:34] The Halfling: Yeah.

[00:20:35] The Spaceman: One of the things that we appreciated about MystiCon in Roanoke Virginia was they had a celebrity every year but you had to pay an additional fee, if you wanted to come to the meet and greet, which seemed to work out pretty well for them.

[00:20:49] The Spaceman: We never went to the meet and greet because we were so busy doing all the stuff they brought us there to do, talk to people, talk about our miscellaneous things,

[00:20:58] Michael D. Pederson: From what I gather it'd been more and more difficult for them to get celebrities every year, too. 

[00:21:04] Michael D. Pederson: Carla, who runs MystiCon, she's one of the best con runners out there. She really knows what she's doing. I've enjoyed working with her over the.

[00:21:11] The Spaceman: Okay. We've enjoyed attending, MystiCon as well but Janet, you wanna talk a little bit more about, RavenCon?

[00:21:17] Michael D. Pederson: What aspect would you like to focus on?

[00:21:19] The Halfling: What has been your biggest attendance in numbers? 

[00:21:22] Michael D. Pederson: Because of hotel problems, we had to leave Richmond at one point for a couple of years before we left Richmond, we were doing 1500 every year.

[00:21:29] The Halfling: Yeah.

[00:21:30] Michael D. Pederson: We did that for a couple of years, and then, we moved outta town. Our attendance started dropping, and then the pandemic hit and that wasn't good.

[00:21:40] Michael D. Pederson: So we're back in Richmond now and we're working on getting ourselves back up to that 1500 mark.

[00:21:44] The Halfling: Well, we certainly wish you all success, because we've enjoyed being there.

[00:21:49] The Spaceman: I have to say I like the new space.

[00:21:51] Michael D. Pederson: It's a beautiful hotel.

[00:21:53] The Spaceman: it is, it is. And it's well laid out. The going between the two buildings is a little annoying if you're on two different tracks, but, It's not nearly as bad as some of the larger cons where you have four and five and six buildings that you have to hoof to.

[00:22:06] The Spaceman: Richmond is a big metro area. You would think that there would be plenty of venues, but there does seem to be a lack of venues appropriate for a mid-size con in the Richmond area.

[00:22:16] Michael D. Pederson: There are about four venues that would fit a convention of our size, and three of them are owned by a company that doesn't seem to wanna work with conventions. They were the reason we had to lead Richmond at one point.

[00:22:31] Michael D. Pederson: Out of the last three hotels we've had, they bought two of the three.

[00:22:35] The Spaceman: That's not good.

[00:22:36] The Halfling: Wow.

[00:22:37] Michael D. Pederson: and when they bought the first one, we were paying $2,000 for the function space and then selling out the hotel and doing $30,000 in food and beverage,

[00:22:48] The Spaceman: Oh

[00:22:48] Michael D. Pederson: which is great numbers and they looked at those and said instead, $2,000, we want $18,000.

[00:22:54] The Halfling: Oh, good lord.

[00:22:56] Michael D. Pederson: And, you know, that's not, there, there is no science fiction convention that can afford that kind of jump in, 

[00:23:02] The Halfling: no. 

[00:23:03] Michael D. Pederson: pricing.

[00:23:03] Michael D. Pederson: And like I said, they own three of the four hotels in Richmond that have enough space for us. So it's been a fight, it's been a struggle.

[00:23:13] The Spaceman: So you guys are coming back to the same hotel next year,

[00:23:16] Michael D. Pederson: We are.

[00:23:17] The Spaceman: and could you tell our listeners what hotel that is?

[00:23:20] Michael D. Pederson: Yes. That is Virginia Crossings. It is a Hilton property. It is absolutely gorgeous. The whole place is built in that, wonderful colonial architecture. So it looks like you're on the campus of U V A or William and Mary. And it's just, it's gorgeous. It's absolutely beautiful. When we were there, literally carload after carload after carload of teenagers were coming in to have their prom pictures taken on the property because the property is so beautiful.

[00:23:49] The Halfling: Yeah, we saw that

[00:23:50] Michael D. Pederson: you know, that's one of our big selling points. I think if you are a cosplayer, I can't recommend this property enough. Come do your cosplay and take a million photographs here cuz it's just a gorgeous hotel.

[00:24:02] The Spaceman: As funny as it seems, when we first saw the first group show up, we were thinking, okay, what anime is this from?

[00:24:13] Michael D. Pederson: It took me a little while to figure out what was going too.

[00:24:16] The Halfling: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:24:17] The Spaceman: So, it just shows how out attuned the Spaceman is?

[00:24:21] The Halfling: well, it is a little incongruous, you know, and it's sort of like the year that we were working with Anime Mid-Atlantic and the hotel had booked both that convention as well as, I don't know if it was like some class reunion. 

[00:24:37] Michael D. Pederson: Was that when AMA was at Koger Center?

[00:24:40] The Spaceman: I believe it was. 

[00:24:41] The Halfling: Yeah, I think so. And, yeah, that made for an interesting time.

[00:24:46] The Halfling: We had similar, bookings when we were at the Koger Center as well. there was one year that, prom was going on upstairs and we were going on downstairs.

[00:24:54] The Halfling: Oh, Okay. 

[00:24:56] The Halfling: Yeah.

[00:24:57] The Spaceman: You know, I think we were actually there that year. Was that 2012?

[00:25:02] Michael D. Pederson: Uh, I think it was, yeah,

[00:25:04] The Halfling: Okay, maybe that's the one I'm thinking about. Then it escapes me exactly what the other group was doing. I couldn't remember if it was a class reunion, but it could have very easily been the prom.

[00:25:16] The Spaceman: Well, you know, we were just talking with, another friend of ours who's gonna be another guest, and, he was telling us about a convention that he worked, that he heard about that's for furries and how they had a high end wedding at the same hotel of just the most normy normies. You could possibly, and said that was an interesting time.

[00:25:35] Michael D. Pederson: There were several years that BaltiCon, shared a hotel with a national rugby, championship. So that was always interesting.

[00:25:44] The Spaceman: It's always good if you're organized a convention to let the hotel know the type of people you can expect at your show. Everybody I know in the science fiction and fantasy fandom communities, no matter what their thing is, they're usually pretty open-minded and accepting and willing to welcome the outsider and the stranger. Some other groups look at us like we're weirdos.

[00:26:08] Michael D. Pederson: My favorite cross programming, instance where there were two groups scheduled the same space at the same time was Millennium Phil Con, so 2001 Philadelphia is the World Science Fiction convention. And the convention Center also has a Southern Baptist women's group meet there.

[00:26:33] The Spaceman: Oh, 

[00:26:33] The Spaceman: oh, I'm sorry.

[00:26:35] Michael D. Pederson: and I was in a group, that was there for the masquerade, the costume contest.

[00:26:41] Michael D. Pederson: That night, we ended up winning Best In Show, no, I'm sorry, not Best-In-Show, Best-In-Class master's division.

[00:26:48] Michael D. Pederson: Best-In-Show show was a Twilight Zone recreation. It was outta this world. It was amazing. 

[00:26:53] Michael D. Pederson: But the presentation, at the time, Phantom Menace hadn't been out very long. And apparently on the cons circuit, there were a lot of people at costume contests doing variations on the Darth Maul costume. So, my friends, who are amazing costumers, Craig Ensslin and Ray Bradbury, different Ray Bradbury. She is a costumer from the Northeast. That is her work is just stellar but they had put together a presentation called Preemptive Strike

[00:27:26] The Halfling: Mm.

[00:27:27] Michael D. Pederson: where they were doing every possible variation on the Darth Maul costume that you could think of.

[00:27:34] Michael D. Pederson: And they were all mostly puns. So you had, Darth Gall and Darth Y'all, and Darth Brawl and Darth Fall, and Darth, you know, Darth squall, literally dozens of them. And they did the presentation at costume Con, and they did very well with it. And when they took it to World Con, they wanted to add a twist to it.

[00:27:55] Michael D. Pederson: So I was invited to become the Showstopper because they wanted me to recreate an old costume of mine, but put a Darth Maul spin on it.

[00:28:06] The Spaceman: Okay,

[00:28:07] Michael D. Pederson: So I became Darth AniMaul, a combination of animal from the Muppets and Darth Maul.

[00:28:14] The Halfling: I love it. 

[00:28:14] The Spaceman: that would be awesome.

[00:28:15] Michael D. Pederson: So we are heading to the masquerade, all in full costume. And I've got hair everywhere and I look amazing if I do say so myself, and I see just this endless spread of Southern Baptist women, around tables for some event. And I couldn't resist myself. And I had one of the other participants was holding my chain at the time,

[00:28:43] The Halfling: Oh Lord.

[00:28:44] Michael D. Pederson: And I told him, I said, hang on tight, because I'm going to go crazy.

[00:28:48] Michael D. Pederson: And he was like, what? And then I lunged at the Southern Baptist Convention screaming

[00:28:56] The Halfling: Oh no, you 

[00:28:57] Michael D. Pederson: and everybody lost it. It was just this, you get a bunch of geeks and a bunch of Southern Baptist women together and something's going to happen. So, yeah, that's my favorite story of mismatch programming for an event.

[00:29:10] The Spaceman: Something's gonna happen, and we desperately hope it's not the return of the Satanic panic

[00:29:15] The Halfling: Oh Lord. Uh oh. Uh, you know it amazes me that there are people that don't believe that was a thing. But we know different because we sort of had experience, 

[00:29:28] The Halfling: we 

[00:29:29] The Spaceman: lived it. 

[00:29:29] The Halfling: with it , you know, we, we sort of had experience with it. You had parents thinking that their kids were turning into Satan worshipers and summoning demons.

[00:29:39] The Halfling: It was, it was a bad time for

[00:29:41] The Spaceman: The 80s gave us a lot of good things. They gave us decent music. You know, they gave us Smiths, the Cure.

[00:29:48] Michael D. Pederson: Oh

[00:29:48] The Spaceman: It gave us a few bad things too, but the satanic panic was definitely not something we can definitely leave behind.

[00:29:54] The Halfling: uh,

[00:29:55] The Spaceman: But anyway, I wanna circle back around to a topic we briefly touched on earlier when you were talking about your CV for setting up RavenCon.

[00:30:04] The Spaceman: Let's talk a little bit about Nth Degree. I'm a former magazine publisher myself and kind of a semi sort of magazine publisher now for some value of magazine. So it's something I have a very deep, deep interest in. How did you get started in that?

[00:30:18] Michael D. Pederson: I had, I'd done the comic book in the nineties and then after that I put together a group that did a local entertainment magazine for a few issues and I couldn't keep a staff for that. Eventually at reached point where I was the only one working on it. So I put the whole thing to bed.

[00:30:32] Michael D. Pederson: And this was right around the time where I had kind of gaffed for a little bit. I wasn't really doing a lot of conventions at that point. Cause I was no longer a pro, so I couldn't do the panels and I think I was attending Mars Con. That was about the only convention I was going to anymore. and I was looking for something, some way of combining the two interests, my fandom love and my publishing interests. Cause, in addition to being a writer and edge, I was working as a professional graphic designer at the time.

[00:30:57] The Spaceman: Oh wow.

[00:30:58] Michael D. Pederson: I'm the complete package when it comes to doing a magazine.

[00:31:00] Michael D. Pederson: I can do the whole thing myself if I have to which I have and it's exhausting.

[00:31:06] The Spaceman: It is.

[00:31:08] Michael D. Pederson: Um, but I wanted to combine all that into one. So I came up with November, 2001, I had the brainstorm to do the equivalent of a local entertainment magazine for conventions.

[00:31:21] The Spaceman: Mm-hmm.

[00:31:22] Michael D. Pederson: And, you know, in Richmond the equivalent I'm talking about will be style weekly.

[00:31:27] Michael D. Pederson: It's one of those papers that you can get for free at coffee shops or bars or, and it tells you what's going on in the area. So I wanted to do that with conventions. So Nth Degree was originally designed as something that I would print a whole bunch of and then send 'em to conventions and they would be distributed for free.

[00:31:45] Michael D. Pederson: And it would have, each issue would have a couple of stories and maybe some poems and filks. And then reviews of books and movies and convention reviews.

[00:31:55] The Halfling: Okay.

[00:31:56] Michael D. Pederson: Um, and we did that for several years under that particular model. And it was going really well. Unfortunately, though a lot of us creative types have problems with the business end of things.

[00:32:08] Michael D. Pederson: And ad sales is not my strong suit. And we were relying on getting ad sales to make this happen. And that just wasn't happening as much as I wanted. So after a few years like that, we repurposed it and turned it into an online fanzine where it was distributed as a PDF,

[00:32:26] The Halfling: Mm.

[00:32:27] Michael D. Pederson: and we kept going for several more years like that.

[00:32:30] Michael D. Pederson: And, it was a lot of fun. It's a lot of work.

[00:32:32] The Halfling: Well, I have a question in regards to that. Was there a particular, or any particular barriers to entry on getting started with that or did you just immediately meet with a certain amount of success with it?

[00:32:48] Michael D. Pederson: No, no barriers really. If I called up a con and said, "Hey, can I send you 500 free copies of a magazine?" they would always say yes.

[00:32:54] The Halfling: Mm-hmm.

[00:32:56] The Spaceman: Oh, 

[00:32:56] The Halfling: okay.

[00:32:57] Michael D. Pederson: Yeah. Cuz you know, conventions like to have something that they can put into the registration bags, something, you know, a free giveaway.

[00:33:02] The Halfling: Right.

[00:33:05] The Spaceman: Yeah, we did the same thing with our gaming magazine only. It was never intended to be free, but we did the first two issues that way and it got our distribution jump started.

[00:33:16] Michael D. Pederson: Hmm.

[00:33:16] The Spaceman: So, yeah.

[00:33:19] The Halfling: With respect to RavenCon, did you have any barriers to entry with that? With starting that up?

[00:33:28] Michael D. Pederson: It was tough getting a hotel at first. There was a hotel we knew we wanted. It was the Koger Center in Richmond, it was a Holiday Inn at that point. And they had in the nineties expanded, from one wing to two wings. So they had a second level with a second ballroom.

[00:33:44] Michael D. Pederson: So two ballrooms means lots of space, which is good and we're very interested in it. And we went and we talked to the hotel, and we booked the location and I wasn't getting a contract though. I kept asking the head of sales saying, Hey, when are you gonna send me the contract?

[00:34:02] Michael D. Pederson: You know? He said, we've got you down for the weekend. You're reserved. Don't worry about it. I'll get you the contract. And then after a few weeks, I got a call from the general manager saying, Hey, we just fired our head of sales. He had four events booked into the hotel the weekend that you wanted.

[00:34:20] The Spaceman: Oh lord.

[00:34:21] The Halfling: Oh gosh. 

[00:34:22] Michael D. Pederson: he was doing that for every weekend.

[00:34:24] The Halfling: Oh, good heavens.

[00:34:27] Michael D. Pederson: So he helped us find another location, which was the Double Tree at the airport, which was tiny.

[00:34:35] The Halfling: Yeah.

[00:34:36] Michael D. Pederson: But the staff was amazing. It's still one of the best staffs I've ever worked with. They loved having us, we loved being there, but we were busting at the seams the minute we walked in the door there.

[00:34:46] Michael D. Pederson: We did two years there and then we moved over to a hotel that is now no longer exists up on Broad Street, which was, I think it was another Holiday Inn actually and we did two years there. And then by this point, there was finally an opening at the Koger Center when we were able to get back in there and we did six years there before it was bought out from under us and we were forced to leave. So yeah, getting hotels has always been the challenge. That's always been the biggest barrier.

[00:35:19] The Halfling: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:35:21] The Spaceman: Do you have any advice on dealing with hotels?

[00:35:23] Michael D. Pederson: Do your homework? Know going into it, what they're gonna want and you learned that by talking to other people in the field.

[00:35:29] The Halfling: I think Spaceman also had it right when he said, warn the hotel or the tentative hotel warn them about the type of attendees that you're gonna have. 

[00:35:41] Michael D. Pederson: most of them are actually really excited about the type of attendees that we bring in. 

[00:35:45] The Spaceman: It's not usually the hotel, you don't want to like the Southern Baptist women. You know, you really don't wanna have that type of conflict.

[00:35:51] The Halfling: Yeah. One of the things that we have enjoyed about MystiCon is the fact that they book their hotel solid every year, and I think a lot of the hotel staff have been there for several years. And so they actually really look forward to MystiCon coming and they love the attendees and the panelists.

[00:36:11] Michael D. Pederson: Actually the staff at the DoubleTree at the airport was the same way. And the staff at the DoubleTree in Williamsburg was always really good about that as well. And I'm finding that the staff at Virginia Crossings is very welcoming as well. We're like MystiCon, we have the entire hotel, so it's entirely RavenCon there, 

[00:36:27] The Spaceman: It makes a difference. 

[00:36:29] Michael D. Pederson: A huge difference 

[00:36:29] The Halfling: Mm-hmm. 

[00:36:31] The Spaceman: All right, so let's talk about your writing, because we've talked about your magazine, talked about your convention, but I imagine that all this is just an offshoot of your writing,

[00:36:44] Michael D. Pederson: I wish, I've got a stack of stories that I've started and haven't finished. Running a convention, takes a lot of time. I discovered over the last year that, editing the anthology, I discovered that I can, between a full-time job running a convention and editing an anthology, I can at any given point do any two of the three. So it's a juggling act. It's okay, I've got to do less work on the convention this month, cuz I'm working on the anthology or maybe not putting a overtime at the job this month because I've gotta focus on the convention. It's very much a juggling act. So yeah there is no time for writing right now, unfortunately.

[00:37:22] Michael D. Pederson: I wish I had, Mike Ventrella had one of his many anthologies that he was working on. They had a great idea for it. And I got partway through his story and I just didn't have the time to finish yet. I wish I had more time for writing.

[00:37:34] The Spaceman: I understand. During the pandemic, I started a new game book project and I wrote up a, I guess what you would call a prospectus, and I started farming it out to different writers and I had this idea, but there's no way that I could do that and the podcast and get Crimson Streets back running again.

[00:37:49] The Spaceman: And work, that's why I'm so eagerly looking forward to in a few years when we can retire. 

[00:37:54] Michael D. Pederson: Yeah, the comic that I did back in the nineties, at the time it wouldn't have been considered such, but now it would be considered urban fantasy. And because we didn't finish it, I've got a whole arc planned for that I never got to conclude. I would love to go back and rewrite that in novel form at some point.

[00:38:11] The Spaceman: Okay,

[00:38:12] Michael D. Pederson: It's just another one of those projects that's just sitting gathering dust right now. I'd love to start up an online geek radio station at some point. I've got a million ideas, but limited finite amount of free time.

[00:38:22] The Halfling: Do you ever sleep? Probably not . 

[00:38:26] Michael D. Pederson: I, I I try to get in a little bit every day.

[00:38:29] The Halfling: like maybe two or three hours. ? 

[00:38:31] The Spaceman: Well, I wanna give you a shout out for RavenCon because RavenCon is the reason this podcast exists.

[00:38:37] Michael D. Pederson: Oh, wow.

[00:38:38] The Spaceman: yeah.

[00:38:39] The Spaceman: We were at RavenCon this year for Crimson Streets, and we were at the Comfort Inn. And Bryan, The Writer, Bryan Nowak, was at the little breakfast. Continental breakfast thing, and he saw our badges.

[00:38:53] The Spaceman: He said, are you guys with the convention? And I said, yeah, yeah, we're attendees at the convention. And we started talking. And I didn't know Bryan, Bryan didn't know us. And the next thing I know, I invited him to sit down with us and we got to talking about his podcast. And before the pandemic, we had actually been planning to start a podcast for Crimson Streets.

[00:39:13] The Spaceman: That was gonna focus on hard-boiled detective stories and gangland stories. And that didn't happen because of the pandemic. So we had the conversation with Bryan, which was just really great. And we came home and we were talking about, well, what area can we serve? And ultimately we decided that the thing that we can do is we can surface people's stories and we can encourage others to find their creative spark.

[00:39:42] The Spaceman: And also help build a community while we're at it. So had it not been for that one meeting at one convention, so I would encourage people out there, go to conventions. Conventions are great and if you're looking for somebody and we're there and you just wanna come up and talk to us, come up and talk to us.

[00:40:03] The Spaceman: We don't 

[00:40:04] The Halfling: it. We don't 

[00:40:04] The Spaceman: don't 

[00:40:04] The Spaceman: bite. 

[00:40:05] Michael D. Pederson: I've heard several stories, that start like that, that this project exists because of RavenCon and I get such a warm, fuzzy feeling every time I hear that

[00:40:13] Michael D. Pederson: it's, uh, 

[00:40:14] The Halfling: you do. Yeah. ,I'm sure that has to be very rewarding. I'm sure that it makes you realize that, all the efforts you put into it is al is always worthwhile. 

[00:40:26] The Spaceman: Right. In, in addition to the type of conversation we're having today, as part of our normal, menu of types of podcasts we're gonna be doing in the future is we're gonna have discussions which are a little bit like convention panels. And one of the topics that we want to touch on is conventions for the socially awkward.

[00:40:43] The Spaceman: So a lot of people I know, especially in the literary community, are not necessarily always the most outgoing folks. A lot of them are introverts. Some of them have social anxiety, but they want to connect and meet with other people, but they're afraid to. And as a personal story, when we were first getting back into doing something creative, we were getting Crimson Streets up and off the ground.

[00:41:07] The Spaceman: I had to lean on a friend of mine from the gaming industry, to introduce me to a few people because I have social anxiety and I'm not good at that initial touch, that initial contact and a lot of people aren't. So we're trying to help folks with that too. But generally speaking the people in the fan of community are great.

[00:41:31] The Spaceman: We've met a few bad actors but they're the significant minority.

[00:41:38] Michael D. Pederson: One of the things that we always look for when I'm scouting out a new location for a convention is does it have good common areas?

[00:41:46] Michael D. Pederson: Are there places where people can just gather and have little social interactions? Because that seems to ease a lot of it, if you can just find a little comfortable spot where you, where you've got a nice little comfy chair with, you know, one of your friends and you can watch the convention going on around you.

[00:42:03] Michael D. Pederson: And occasionally people will come over and talk with you and these will turn into the little meetup groups and it's nice having those little breakout spaces that aren't officially part of the con, but are there. I think that helps, it gives you a little social lubricant.

[00:42:16] The Spaceman: It really

[00:42:16] The Spaceman: does it really?

[00:42:17] The Halfling: does. Oh,

[00:42:18] The Spaceman: and you sit down in these little lounge areas and you meet people you haven't met before, and you might not have anything in common. You know, their fandom might be completely different from yours. And the next thing you know, you're talking about Star Trek

[00:42:29] Michael D. Pederson: Yep.

[00:42:30] The Spaceman: because it all comes around to one of the stars, Trek, Wars, 

[00:42:34] The Spaceman: you know, , 

[00:42:37] The Spaceman: uh, 

[00:42:38] The Halfling: Well, Michael, talking about, the small spaces for those intimate contacts, that people can be comfortable just watching the convention and maybe interacting with one or two people. Do you ever have people, whether they're volunteers or whether they're actual staff, that go around and kind of watch people and look for people who may be having difficulty, finding some interaction, difficulty finding a connection.

[00:43:09] The Halfling: Did anybody do that?

[00:43:12] Michael D. Pederson: No one whose specific job that is, but I encourage my staff to do that, to go around and interact with everyone as much as possible. I do that myself. I wasn't able to this year, I couldn't because of the whole mask thing, which is another story. I generally try and go around and talk to as many people as I can, and especially if I see someone that, I don't recognize, I try and engage them, ask 'em how the con is going.

[00:43:39] The Spaceman: Okay. Segueing into something that's sort of related, but not really. One of the things that I noticed at a lot of conventions is security tends to be obvious, but I didn't really notice that strong of a security presence, or at least not an obvious one at RavenCon, how do you handle security at the convention?

[00:43:57] Michael D. Pederson: We have it, we don't call it security, because I kind of feel that if you acknowledge that you have security, you are acknowledging that there's a problem that needs to be addressed. So we don't call it security, we call it operations and they have a couple of spots where they camp out, and they are in charge of making sure that everything runs smoothly and that there are no major hiccups.

[00:44:21] Michael D. Pederson: We have had problems in the past. We had, a big name guest who was dealing with a stalker one year, but we handled that. I think that went very well. We had pretty much the entire staff was in the room where we knew what was going to happen,

[00:44:37] The Halfling: Uhhuh.

[00:44:37] Michael D. Pederson: but, we try and stay tuned into everything that's going on. I've always preferred to be proactive rather than reactive. 

[00:44:46] Michael D. Pederson: So I do everything I can. I encourage my staff to do the same. We try and identify every issue before it becomes an issue.

[00:44:52] The Halfling: Yeah. That makes a lot of sense and you can cut down on a lot of grief by that approach. For sure. For sure. Tell us what people can expect with the next RavenCon.

[00:45:04] Michael D. Pederson: We just made the announcement of our guests of honor recently. We've got Esther Friesner. I'm very excited to have her. I've been at Cons with her in the past. She is an absolute sweetheart. She is the type of guest we always look for. She's someone that will go out and interact with the public and she's happy to talk to whoever she can.

[00:45:25] Michael D. Pederson: And she's just a fun person to be around. We've also brought in our first media guest. We have the horror host that I grew up watching. He was also the kids' TV host on the channel that I grew up watching. That is count Gore Deval, who is celebrating 50 years of hosting Creature feature this year.

[00:45:45] The Halfling: Oh wow.

[00:45:46] Michael D. Pederson: So we will have him, and it's looking like a couple of other horror hosts there this year.

[00:45:52] Michael D. Pederson: So if you are that kind of fan, this is a good event to be at and he is such a wonderful guy to begin with. I first gotta meet him at a BaltiCon years ago, and he's another one of those that just loves being around his fans and he is very personable and very friendly and very outgoing.

[00:46:09] The Halfling: Mm-hmm.

[00:46:10] Michael D. Pederson: So yeah, it's gonna be a good year.

[00:46:12] The Halfling: Mm-hmm.

[00:46:13] Michael D. Pederson: We've also got, Charles Pellegrino, who is an author who has worked with James Cameron. He was a consultant with Cameron on a few movies. He's also a specialist on the Titanic. And he knows a lot of stuff, so he's got some very good, specialty information that, that he'll be able to impart.

[00:46:32] Michael D. Pederson: So I think we got a really good, good lineup. Plus we've got all of our usual, we'll have, around a hundred programming guests all total, covering every aspect of the fandom that we can. We always shoot for around 300 hours of programming

[00:46:44] The Halfling: Wow. I didn't realize it was that extensive. I mean, I knew you offered a lot, but wow!

[00:46:49] Michael D. Pederson: Uhhuh .Oh, yeah. Well, you run a dozen tracks of programming, you know, from nine in the morning till midnight, three days in a row, and it adds up. It's a lot of hours.

[00:46:59] The Halfling: sure, sure. That's awesome. That's awesome. Sounds

[00:47:04] Michael D. Pederson: Uh, and of course, we're back at Virginia Crossings, which is, like I said, it's such a great hotel. The staff is friendly and outgoing. The grounds are beautiful. There's a lot of space.

[00:47:14] Michael D. Pederson: We'll do a little bit of walking, 

[00:47:16] The Halfling: yeah.

[00:47:18] The Halfling: Yeah. 

[00:47:19] Michael D. Pederson: it's, a great location.

[00:47:20] The Spaceman: Well, Michael, before we go tell our listeners how they can find out more about RavenCon, about Covid 19 and about the other projects that you might be involved with currently.

[00:47:34] Michael D. Pederson: You can get all the information for that at our website, RavenCon.com. You'll find everything about Covid 19 on there as well. You can order the book through the website.

[00:47:41] The Halfling: Oh, okay.

[00:47:43] Michael D. Pederson: It's the same page you can go to register for next year's convention as well. You can buy your badge for 2023.

[00:47:50] Michael D. Pederson: Buy a copy of Covid 19. Give yourself a t-shirt, get yourself a button all at the same time, all at the same place.

[00:47:56] Michael D. Pederson: One stop shopping. 

[00:47:58] The Spaceman: And just so our listeners, know this RavenCon is Halfling in Spaceman approved.

[00:48:04] Michael D. Pederson: Yes. 

[00:48:05] The Halfling: Absolutely

[00:48:06] Michael D. Pederson: I encourage everyone to go out and support us. COVID was rough on us because we had to cancel three weeks before the convention in 2020.

[00:48:14] Michael D. Pederson: So we had spent over 11 months planning and spending for convention and then spent the next three months giving refunds.

[00:48:21] The Halfling: Yeah.

[00:48:22] Michael D. Pederson: It hurt us. And it was between our last convention before Covid. and the one we were finally able to have post covid that was a three year gap.

[00:48:33] The Halfling: Yeah.

[00:48:34] Michael D. Pederson: And it's, it's really hard to survive that. And when we signed the contract with the new hotel, we had signed it with the expectation, pre covid with the expectation that we would be at our usual, Richmond numbers of around 1500 every year.

[00:48:48] The Halfling: Mm-hmm.

[00:48:50] Michael D. Pederson: And then Covid hit and those numbers dropped big, so we have to have a couple of really good years, to keep the convention running. So, yeah, if you guys, if you like local conventions, if you like science fiction conventions, and if you wanna see one, you know, every year in the Central Virginia area, then please, please support us.

[00:49:12] Michael D. Pederson: I hopefully we'll see, lots and lots of people at RavenCon 2023 this year.

[00:49:18] The Halfling: Well you'll see us for sure

[00:49:20] Michael D. Pederson: Thank you,

[00:49:21] The Halfling: For what little that's worth. We'll, we'll be there.

[00:49:24] Michael D. Pederson: We love having you guys

[00:49:26] The Spaceman: that and five bucks gets you a cup of coffee at Starbucks So, oh. Anyway, well, it's about time for us to wrap up. We've had a great conversation, Michael, and thank you so much for coming on the show. We also wanna thank all our listeners for tuning in today, and we hope you've enjoyed and maybe become inspired by the journey of our guest, Michael Pederson.

[00:49:47] The Spaceman: We want to give Mike a huge shout out and a thank you for joining us today.

[00:49:51] The Halfling: And this is the halfling of the Halfling and Spaceman. We're signing off.