I had a pretty good time during this photo shoot. The Star Tribune was doing a story on my fantasy fiction and a day after a three-hour interview with the Arts and Entertainment writer at the downtown Dunn Bros, I got a phone call from one of the paper’s photographers.
After an exchange of pleasantries, he asked me if my characters, you know, do anything interesting. I said, I don’t know, I would hope so… anyhow there’s angels and demons and some whacking each other with flaming swords, that sort of thing.
“Flaming swords? Awesome!” Then a brief pause. “I don’t know how to say this, but, um, what do you look like?”
I told him that if he was worried that I was a chubby guy with glasses and a goatee, that wasn’t a problem. He was delighted and told me to come on down to the paper, bring a sword if I had one, and we’d set some stuff on fire. Now, if you want to freak out the front desk reception, I can assure you that walking into the lobby of a major metropolitan newspaper with a shaved head, wearing a black suit, black overcoat, black gloves, black shades and carrying a four-foot sword will do the trick.
Fortunately, the photographer arrived before the security guards called the police and we headed to the studio, which was filled with all sorts of flammable material. He’d acquired a few swords from a place affiliated with the SCA, and after some debate we selected a completely impractical monster. After covering it with flamepaste, he was about to light it when I asked what I was supposed to do if something caught on fire, if we had a fire extinguisher or anything.
“Oh, one of those guys who plans ahead, I see.” There wasn’t an extinguisher, but we did find a giant barrel of sand in the room so we figured that would do. I can’t say that I didn’t think it would be a tremendous accomplishment to burn down the Star and Sickle’s HQ, but I manfully resisted the temptation and we did the pictures… if I look like I’m concentrating on something, it’s because I was occupied with dodging the flamepaste that’s dripping off the sword the whole time.
Unfortunately, the writer moved to a New York newspaper before completing the story so it never ran. The photographer was so pleased with the pictures that he sent me a few of them, of which this is one. As for me, I’m just happy he didn’t want to strap me into a pair of Victoria’s Secret wings wearing nothing but a white thong.