When a Hero Comes Along

John and Hank Green came along to Dublin recently. On Wednesday, they had a show in the RDS Concert Hall, which is essentially a large library that seats a thousand people. Every one of these people was excited, almost deliriously so, because for the first time two of my favourite people arrived in Dublin to put on a show the likes of which I could only ever see on YouTube, or dream about.

Usually the latter.

Starting at seven, they were on to cover the following:

- An explanation behind the writing of The Fault in Our Stars, perhaps my favourite book of all time
- A reading from the book
- Questions from audience members
- The mispronunciation of the name 'Ciara' (like 'Kieran', but without the 'n')
- A song about Quarks
- A horse-head mask
- Songs about Harry Potter
- A song about chord progressions
- More questions from audience members
- A slap in the face
- Lots of cheering
- Crowd-volume control
- A misunderstanding of the word 'heckling'
- Five hundred miles
- A song about the book
- A signing

The latter, after all the excitement of music and laughter and reading and emotional stories about children's hospitals and Esther Earl, took the longest to get around to.

Myself and two friends waited an hour and a half to get on stage to meet John and Hank. We got our tickets signed, because only one of us knew this would happen and we should bring books. John thanked me for wearing his face, and I told him about scaring myself by forgetting it would stare at me in the bathroom mirror.

Good times.

Of course, the excitement doesn't end there. John was on Ireland AM the next morning (thank you, Mammy Carroll, for telling me about that!) and both brothers were interviewed on Two Tube. Frickin' awesome. Hank's latest video tells about their time in Dublin, though I have a feeling that John will end up showing some footage from their day-before-the-show wandering, too (because he got some footage of his book in The Gutter Bookshop which I was delighted to recognise when Hank showed them in Temple Bar). Also, we got to say good morning to Hank.

I can't wait to see that. I cheered first, I think. Then it all set off.

John described the crowd of one thousand Nerdfighters as sounding first like 100,000 people on Twitter, and then like 10,000 people on Ireland AM, and I have to say: I'm damn proud of that. Irish crowds are louder and more enthusiastic than most people expect, and it has nothing to do with alcohol (as is often the case when Irish people are loud and enthusiastic.) On Wednesday, there were mainly teenagers present, everyone sober, and we still raised the volume to a ridiculously high level, with much due excitement.

It is our duty as rarely-visited Nerdfighters to make ourselves remembered, and to make the night as awesome as possible. Mission accomplished, Nerdfighters of Ireland.

So, awesome night. I got home fairly late, but didn't care. It was all worth it. We had brownies and white chocolate while waiting to get inside, and were greeted with the type of awesomeness we could only before imagine, over and over again. It was an evening of awesome, when a hero came along.

T-Minus 1 Day

Back in April, I sent an email to three friends of mine - Messr Shanley, Mille Oz and Mille McQuaid. I had gotten an idea, and I wanted their feedback on it before I really got down to doing anything about it. Since then, I've released the press release, planned the book and begun a series of competitions.

And, you know, I've gotten a lot of exciting news since I started all of this that I'm not sure I can share publicly just yet.

However, from those early, out-of-the-blue ideas, I suddenly find myself with a day to go before I start writing Balor Reborn. A day. Tomorrow. Then I'm to be writing the book, on camera, and that kind of freaks me out. It's too late to back out, too. I don't plan to, mind you, it's just that I can't.

This is a good kind of fear, though. If I wasn't feeling this, I don't think I'd feel the excitement of the project when it comes to actually writing. I'd be sitting down, doing all the same things I normally do. Instead, I anticipate I'll be nervous waking up on Thursday morning. My stomach will be in bits, but I'll try have a cereal. I'd have to.

Then, I'll be sitting down at the laptop, ready to go, and getting the live show set up. I'll have my bathroom-break sign at the ready (seriously), a cup of tea by my side, lunch packed, and then I'll be live for the day.

I'm hoping I can write to a pace that would allow me to work from ten until six for a maximum of three days to get the first draft done. With the book cover and trailer to come after that, that's another day gone. Then I'll be editing, doing the most extensive work in my life for a prolonged period of time to ensure it's down to a tee!

The final day, I want to have a launch party while I make the book available for purchase. I'll have the trailer online, the cover available to see, possibly even a free sample for people to read. I'll go through my answers for the competitions I'm running...

And that's way ahead of schedule. That's the fun and exciting day I have to look forward to, that won't happen that way if I don't do the work. And that terrifies me. This whole thing terrifies me. I reckon I'll be boring on camera. I may end up listening to music through a headset and singing along badly to it. If that happens, I apologise. But I'm sure it'll be more entertaining than me sitting there going insane, right?