they do sell it in liquor stores but not a lot of the commercial ones are very good, chaucers for example to me tastes like as$, b nektar meadery has a limited run heading your direction, they have an amazing reputation for great product but i haven't tasted it yet myself.
Starting with a one gallon batches is a good place to begin.
A traditional mead can be amazing and have a lot of depth, flavor and character if you find a decent honey, not the cheap grocery store clover or as we have here "golden honey" which isn't specific of it's variety and really doesn't have much flavor.
Your blurb on the left says you're from mass? Finding some cranberry honey shouldn't be too difficult, i've been told by a bunch of people how amazing it is there. Make yourself a batch of traditional with it to get the processes of mixing the must, yeast rehydration, aeration, and staggered nutrients down, simple yet important techniques to produce a great mead. You can even kick it up a little by adding some vanilla beans into secondary. A simple clean mead is a great place to start because it gives you the basis of what mead is, how it acts and how it tastes, then from there you can let the mad scientist skills out and the journey is endless.
Most yeasts that have a little higher temperature tolerance (above 69*f) without producing a ton of fusels, are going to also have higher alcohol tolerance, but since you are looking for something on the dryer side that will work ok, lalvin k1v-1116 would be a decent strain to start with. For sparkling dry, after using a yeast like that you may even have to prime with a little additional honey at the end as they tend to devour all sugars available. Now with all that said there is the downside of using a yeast like that. During primary they also blow alot of flavor/aroma characters of what they are fermenting out through the airlock, not all, not like cooking your honey will do (avoid heat please) but you will lose some.
As far as a jaom, it's not a must make, it's not a required first mead, it's not a base mead, it's an i got lucky and worked out a cheap i don't gotta do much work recipe mead. The combination of ingredients and method really only works with that recipe. Eventually you will hear everyone talk about it and be curious and want to throw together a 1 gallon batch, nothing wrong with that, go to walmart, grab the cheapest version of everything you can, pour it in a gallon jug, shake the **** out of it, dump bread yeast in it dry then set it someplace dark and forget it exists for a few months. It will produce a syrupy sweet mead, which balances the bitterness of the orange pith, one without the other and no one would want to drink the stuff. Something that it does have going for it is the color, it is a pretty mead. But you will be able to say you made it, i think it was probably the 8th or 9th mead i tried just because, plus people asking questions, it's tough to give good information until you've made something yourself. I personally am not a fan of real sweet meads, i like semi sweet to dry, so i used the jaom as a mixer, 3 parts ginger ale with 1 part jaom was actually real good. I may put together another batch simply for that reason, maybe use it in other types of cocktails even.
About bottling...when fermentation is complete and it is 100% crystal clear, like can hold a newspaper up to the other side of the carboy and read through it clear, thats when you can bottle, not when you have to though, you can bulk age it instead of bottle condition if you choose, and you will get approx 4 750ml bottles from a gallon.
Mead likes oxygen in the begining, not just the initial addition like with most beers but for the first third of fermentation, daily or even a couple times a day a good shake/stir/swirl lets the disolved co2 out and lets a little more o2 in, makes the yeast happy.
For winter, a metheglin (mead made with herbs/spices) something with warm spices, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, clove is good, i've been thinking a roasted pumpkin recipe would be good. If you search you can find recipes about fall meads with pumpkin puree and such in it i just am thinking dicing, seasoning and roasting the pumpkin could give it richer, deeper flavor. Or making a spiced cyser (using apple juice instead of water) like a spiced apple cider mead would also be tasty for the colder north east months. Also a combo mead partial bochet (mead that you boil the honey to a desired level of caramelization, the only time adding heat to honey is actually a good thing), seasoning and roasting some sweet potatoes or yams and caramelizing half of the honey until it is mid to dark color to get the marshmallow flavors from it to make a candied yam type mix.
As i said, once you get the basics down of how to make a traditional mead...the possibilities are endless