So a funny thing happened at Comic-Con International (also known as SDCC, San Diego Comic-Con, Comic-Con, or Help I Am Being Digested By 150,000 Nerds).

I was on this really super-great panel with awesome, super-smart people, and even though I was clearly the numbest skull on the stage, I don’t think I said anything career damaging. So, me, proud of that. After the panel, as is customary, we panelists herded ourselves up to Authors Alley in the Sails Pavilion for an autographing, run by the great bookstore folks at Mysterious Galaxy. Things were pretty quiet, so I got up to purchase a copy of Animal Badge, a new comic written by Naren Shankar and fellow panelist Javier Grillo-Marxuach, when I noticed someone waiting in front of the signing table for me to sign something.

So, I ran.

You know those roped windy switchback lines you’ve waited in for so many things? It was one of those. Nobody in it, so I was able to pick up some speed. Going around corners. On a bare concrete floor. Yes, I lost my footing. Yes, I went down. Yes, I felt something inside go snap.

But I got up! I hobbled to my chair at the signing table! I signed a couple of my books! I wondered how I was going to walk to the taco restaurant where I was going to have great tacos for dinner with friends and colleagues. Then I realized I should instead be wondering how I was going to walk to my car to go home which was probably more sensible than going out for tacos, given how much my ankle hurt. Then I was wondering how I was going to get to my car so my wife could drive me to the hospital, because, hell, you know, maybe I broke something? Then I was wondering why my pillow was so damned hard and why people were asking me if I was okay.

Yes, I passed out! I fell out of my chair! Onto the very same concrete floor that took me out the first time! I HATE THAT FLOOR!

My fellow panelists took good care of me, helped me get off the floor and back into a chair, gave me fluids and helped me avoid passing out again (Sherri L. Smith in particular was totally awesome), and folks summoned a whole string of convention center security people and first aid dudes and then EMTs. I got to ride out of Comic-Con on a gurney down VIP freight elevators and then in an ambulance out VIP loading docks.

I saw no celebrities.

Several hours later in ER, the verdict was a fractured fibula. Which made me a little glad, because it’s better to say you passed out from a fractured fibula than, like, bruised pride.

So, it’s going to be six weeks in a hard cast recovering from surgery, and that’s my Comic-Con story. And I’d like to reiterate that I continued to autograph copies of my books even with a fractured fibula. That’s pretty metal, I feel.