Something Amazing Just Happened
Wait for it.
So I'm at the local farmers market here in Chattanooga where I moved a little over 2 years ago. I haven't been much all summer because it is more market than farmers and I don't need to buy the same touristy craft stuff every week in a row, it stays packed, parking is hard, etc. There are very few farmer vendors with anything of value.
But I have family visiting from out of town so we go so they can see it. It is a huge market, the largest in the state or the southeast or something like that I think.
My daughter is getting face painted and the line takes forever I wander over to a nearby booth selling artisanal soaps. I like soaps, I'm interested in soap making and would like to try making my own. I also have a rustic home and I like using these fancy rustic soaps in the guest bathrooms. So we're talking and I instantly like this guy, I do, maybe a lot because he reminds me of Patrick Rothfuss, like a lot, he is balder but has less grey in the beard, so I'm not sure who is older. It could easily be Patrick's brother though. So I ask him after paying if he knows who Patrick Rothfuss, and he says he does because he worked with him a little bit when he worked for a game company. I also know Patrick and he is very into board games, always goes to Gencon, and he has launched a few games on Kickstarter so this makes sense. I tell him he looks like Patrick and we get into a pretty heavy fantasy author nerd conversation. Books he likes, books I like, recommendations, and the like.
We talk for a good long while, about Scott Lynch, and Joe Abercrombie, Peter V Brett, Brandon Sanderson, David Duncan, some guy I don't remember that he really likes, George R.R. Martin.
So I ask him, how he went from game design to soaps. He says he wasn't getting along with his boss, his boss thought he could do his job better than him, kept changing his mind on things, was just hard to work for, etc. So he came back to Chattanooga where he is from. So I asked him what company it was. He says Simutronics.
Boom, my face just exploded and I was speechless for a few seconds. Buying soap in Chattanooga, and through a normal conversation I find out I'm talking to Solomon (for that is who it was). This game community is fucking tiny, what are the odds?
So as you can imagine then we really had something to talk about.
