Oh shit. I logged in to write about how good this panel just was, and I see in my e-mail that Thomas Fuller has died. Damn damn damn damn! He had a heart attack recently and now he has died. I'll write about the Orycon stuff later.

I was not what you'd call a close friend of Thomas. I never hung out with him in civilian life, but I did see him and enjoy talking to him every Dragon*con. He was a guest on my live remotes many times, always a fun guy. His work with Atlanta Radio Theater Company was consistently good and frequently great. His radio play "Chronos Beach", which I heard (and saw) performed at D*Con many years ago, remains hands down my favorite radio drama, period. Not Groucho or Dimension X but "Chronos Beach". Here is how Thomas changed my life. In 1995, the year that Dragon*Con was also NASFIC, Thomas and I were sitting in the guest hospitality room having breakfast the last day. We were discussing our various efforts to go "bigger time" with our various efforts if not "big time." He said these words to me, as close to verbatim as I can get them:

You need to take advantage of the fact that your whole show is you and a tape recorder. You can do anything you want and it costs nothing. If we (ARTC) do something, it has to make enough money to feed 20 people, all of who have families to support. You can do it for next to nothing.

These words and this concept - that I should take advantage of my low cost of production - is what got me into having a nationally syndicated radio show. I did exactly that, used the fact I could do a show for $50 a week to go national. The fact I have the body of work I do owes a great deal to some stern fatherly words of advice from Thomas Fuller. I wish I knew him better, I wish I could still talk with him about old time radio now that I'm more into it. I did at least get to tell him that his words were the inspiration I needed and to thank him for it. God rest your soul, big guy. I'll miss you.