Welcome to Dragon Con, Newbie

As the days to Dragon Con tick down, more and more first timers have been flooding the various Facebook Groups with questions, seeking advice, tips, and tricks for surviving the weekend with just slightly less sanity than they started with but without going completely nutzoid over the four days.

The call went out for the best "First Timer Guides" and so I am taking up the challenge with a set of ideas, suggestions, and observations I wish I had had for my first couple of Dragon Cons.

So in no particular order here are my thoughts:

Banned Book Week: My Love Hate Relationship

This week is Banned Book Week.

This is where we stop and celebrate that we can read books that people want to ban for a variety of reasons.  We can ride a raft down the Mississippi with Huck Finn even though putting such a bright glaring light on the evils of racism and post-slavery Southern States make some people uncomfortable.  We can ride the Hogwarts Express and learn about the power of the individual who cares even though some people don't like that there are witches and magic.  We can come of age with a nervous teenager and What [Her] Mother Doesn't Know even though many mothers would rather we not know.

This is actually a bit of a big deal.

We forget, too easily, that there are parts of the world where the government, or the religious leaders, can forbid their people from having access to words that they don't want them to read.  They can deny that printed books be sold, that internet sites be accessible.  They can lock down Twitter on a whim and can make Facebook posts just vanish.

Even in our own history, not too long ago, having the "wrong" book in your house was a way to get yourself listed a Communist, be blacklisted from your profession and have your life ruined.  We did not tolerate different very well, and most Americans worried more about keeping food on the table, and gas tanks full of fuel then they did making a fuss about their Right To Read.  Thankfully we outgrew that phase.

Casting for Stories

One of the things that always struck me as very sophomoric with writing was the "Cast List" for a piece of fan fiction or story.  If a writer wants the reader to conjure up a specific mental image for a character, then it's their job to provide that image in the prose itself.  And to be honest even that task is not easy.

In writing FantastiCon, I had an exchange in the first chapter that provided a very indepth description of a walk on character.  Allison was at the desk of her apartment complex with a random, unnamed other woman.  I then went through everything the random girl was wearing and contrasted it with Allison.  Then Allison walks off and we never see random girl again.

This drove my wife nuts.  She got a full paragraph treatment to a character she never sees again, one that doesn't even get a name.  So why did I do it?

Self Promotion: How many ways can you get yourself out there?

This week I was able to finally put the final touches on Issue 1 of Mind the Thorns.  It's the first three chapters, packaged as a mini-novella, and available as an eBook and in print edition.  This week, over on Mind the Thorns, I'll be posting chapter 6, which will also bring Issue 2 to a close.  Between time to edit it again, format for publication and have the copy editor work over it, I should, in theory, have it ready by the 30th.  It's still a little slower than I would like but it can work.


The real question, though, is if any of this will work to add to the overall exposure of the website, the story and my other writing.  


Just getting into brick and mortar stores is a challenge, too, because there just are not that many traditional book stores in my area any more.  There's still a Borders, about 45 minutes away.  There are a few comic shops that I'm hoping to get into but they're not really known for novels.  Really the best way to get your hands on a dead tree edition of a book is Amazon.com.

KDP Free Promotion: What Worked and What Did Not

Today, FantastiCon is back to full price on Kindle, having spent the weekend of Comic Con as a free download.  I'm glad to have done the promotion but I did learn a few things that I wish I had known going in, and I question if I will do it again in the future.

Now, on the upside and before I get into the not-so-positive thoughts, I do have some points of high honor.  I was retweeted by Molly Quinn who is a wonderful actress and all around good person.  Ms. Quinn also has a significant number of followers and I'm quite sure that the tweet went relatively viral in a short period which helped a great deal with the promotion.  As of Monday morning, FantastiCon was in the top 50's for "purchases" as a Free Title in both the Humor and Romantic Suspense categories.  So on that metric, win.  But that came at a cost.

Free on Kindle

Just a quick heads up:  Fantasti*Con, my first novel, is free this weekend on Kindles.

Check it out on Amazon!

Fantasti*Con is the Midwest's largest convention of science fiction, fantasy and pop culture, and the highlight of Allison Cavanaugh's summer. Only this year she finds a dark cloud over her weekend of geeky fun: a stalker. What begins as enigmatic notes quickly escalates to threats upon her. Only how do you find a madman at a convention, and how do you still manage to not scare away that new guy in the next apartment while doing it?

The weekend should be about fan-girling out at celebrities, wearing fun costumes, getting the inside scoop on the latest games and introducing her best friend Tori to the world of geek culture. Instead they, along with a hyperactive undergraduate student Joanna, are trying to find out who wants to hurt Allison before it's too late.

Set against the back drop of a major convention, Fanasti*Con is a romantic thriller with scenes and vignettes familiar to any attendee. From the costumes to the celebs, this could be any con-goer's weekend of horror.

It's on the To Read List

Okay, so I know I haven't put out a proper post today. I owe you guys one.

But then this came in the mail today:

It's a little hard to read, I know. Let me clarify:

Thank you so much for the nice letter and the book.

I look forward to reading it as soon as I can.

I am swamped right now, but it is on the "To Read" list.

:)

Molly

I dub this moment Squee-worthy.

You Lack Focus

That's what my beloved wife told me, in specific reference to a quandery I've had regarding how to self-promote Fantasti*Con.

As I've often said, self-publishing is dirt easy. You write a book, you upload the PDF, you spend a day or two tweeking the format and you're self published. It's the self promoting that's a pain in the rear.

And one of my biggest challenges has been this: What category do I put the book in?

An Honorary Gentleman

With the ePublication of FantastiCon, I was invited to write a post about the process at a blog I follow:  Mindless Diversions, a sub blog of The League of Ordinary Gentlemen.

The story of a novel

Today I joined the ranks thousands of writers and made my first full length novel available for purchase on Amazon.com.  How did I go from a simple school teacher to a self-published writer?  The story has some interesting twists and a few lessons for the novice, though I hardly consider myself an expert on writing or self publishing.

It started with National Novel Writing Month back in 2007.  I set out to write a stalker drama playing on elements of online relationships and how little we know about the people we say we know via online channels.  That year I failed to meet my goal of 50,000 words by the end of the month.  In 2008 I tried again but with a twist:  I set the entire story at a massive fantasy and science fiction convention.  My wife and I are several year veterans of Atlanta’s Dragon Con and have become friends with many who make their hobby doing the convention circuit.  On Dec 1st, 2008 I had a manuscript in hand.

You can read the rest here on the website... 

And thus it begins...

So, the official first post of the blog.....

For a writer, or rather an aspiring writer, I find myself in the horrid position of not knowing what to say.

Actually let me begin like this:

Back when I first wrote FantastiCon, I used to say "I wrote a book".  My wife, whom I love dearly, would politely correct me.  I had a manuscript.  I had the text of a book, but I could not say I had written a book until someone could go on Amazon.com and buy that book, or walk into a book store and ask them to order a copy of that book.  For her, a true bibliophile, I was among millions of people who sat down, told a story and then let that story sit in some folder or some hard drive and never make it out to the general populous.

But, that's changed.

You can go on Amazon and see, yes, there's a book there for sale and it has, of all things, my name on it.  Right there on the cover image.  Rather impressive, I think.  And thanks to some fledgling word of mouth campaigning, I can even claim to have made money on this book.  Not a lot, but there is a non-zero number on the Amazon reports page under Royalties.  I am a professional writer.  Well a paid writer at any rate.

It's an odd turning point, really, to have hit a point where someone feels that there might be enough to your story that they're willing to trade money for a chance to read it.

And I'm onto my next project.  There's still a great deal to work out with the world building and one advantage of this blog is that I can use it to flesh out ideas, post teasers, and even, on occasion, invite you, dear reader, to provide some feedback.  Is it really believable to have a race of robot women?  Is it beyond even the realm of science fiction to have ships that only can fire broad-sides?  I hope the answers are, respectively, yes, and then no, as both are aspects of this next project.

As to other updates, I sent the files back to CreateSpace last night and hope to order the next proof copy of the book for delivery early next week.  If it passes muster, then in roughly a week a print edition of FantastiCon will be available.

I can't wait....