Report on Necronomicon 2023

We got home from Necronomicon about 7 PM on Sunday. We left everything in the car to be unloaded in the morning, because we were tired. (We aren’t spring chickens any more!) But I’m counting the convention a success!

We left about 8:15 AM on Friday to pick up Mark, who was going with us. His house is about an hour from our home, and the convention hotel was a little more than an hour from his house. Being old and intimidated by our smart phones, we tend to print the route we need to take by using mapquest or google maps on our desk computers. It worked well for this trip except at the end, where the instructions said things like, turn right and go 387 feet, make a u-turn and go 219 feet, turn right and go 121 feet. How are we supposed to measure feet when we’re in a car? Anyway, I told my hubby to make a u-turn at the first intersection, only to realize that intersection led to the parking lot of the hotel we wanted! By the time I realized that, he had made the u-turn and was at the lights where we had originally turned right. Eventually, we turned around and got to the hotel.

It was a little after 11 AM, and my table was supposed to be set up by noon, so we decided to get a luggage cart to take my 5 boxes of books to my table. But we actually unloaded everything onto the luggage cart and I went inside to see if we could check in for our hotel room. Yes, we could! So John and Mark took the boxes to my table, where John started unpacking the books; Mark took the luggage to our hotel room; and I got us all registered for the con. Then I went back to the table, handed out badges and program books, and finished setting up the table. Now I could settle in for the rest of the day, talking to the other authors in the Author Alley and trying to be friendly to potential customers that walked by.

John and Mark sometimes sat with me at the table, studying the schedule, reading the program book and talking about whatever was on their mind. At times one or both would wander away to check out a panel or activity, the art show, the dealer’s room. I made a fast walk around the dealer’s room, but never got to the art show. I tried to talk to the other authors, but on Friday, the tables to the left of me and directly across from me were empty. And after a couple of hours, the table across from me and to the left was suddenly empty too. There had been an author there, with his book, but now he was gone, and nobody saw him pack up and go.

The con had an activity called ‘Cthulu Crafts’ all 3 days of the con, which John went to see what it involved, looking for something that Klingons might be able to use. He talked to the host and mentioned that Klingons had an activity they did called ‘Paint and Take’. Later on Saturday, the young man in charge of scheduling stopped John in the hall and asked if might be interested in doing a ‘Paint and Take’ at the next con. So John and Mark started talking about finding other Klingons to come with them next year and what they might be able to do besides a Paint & Take. I wonder what customers would say if I manned my table as a Klingon for a day at next year’s con.

John and I had 2 panels to do. The first was on Saturday at 11:15 AM, and it was on ‘What Inspired Me to Write’. I had come up with 7 questions to help keep the conversation going. With 6 panelists, we filled up the hour and didn’t get too repetitive, so I was feeling pretty good. We also had an author there who was one of the con’s Guests of Honor, and he sometimes put in his 2 cents worth, which was also an ego boost for me.

Our 2^nd panel was Sunday at 11 AM, and this one was about “How I Write.” Again, 4 other authors joined us, and only 1 was a repeat from the day before. I had 9 questions to ask, and the answers were diverse, pointing out that there is no one ‘correct’ way to right, er, I mean write.

Two people approached me during the convention. One was an editor who was looking for free-lance work. It is very hard to edit your own books, so I may be looking her up. The other woman was a free lance graphic artist. I may soon have work for her, too.

At 8 PM on Saturday, there was a panel on self-publishing that I wanted to go to, so John and I took down the table about 6:30 so I could get supper, since I hadn’t gotten any lunch. The restaurant was quick at getting our food to us, and I had some time to spare before the panel, so I went up to the con suite, and had some chips, a glass of cola, and some pop corn before I went to the panel.

Now, self-publishing is a big subject to cover in 1 hour. And when the hour was over, Brenda (only 1 panelist showed up) decided to take us to Salon G, which was supposed to be empty for the next hour. But when we got there, another group had been given the room to use, so a few of us die-hards who wanted to know more gathered around an empty table in Author Alley and talked for another 1 ½ hours. By then I was the only one left listening. Brenda gave me her personal email address, in case I had more questions, and promised to introduce me to Kevin on Sunday, who could give me more information on email lists.

Sure enough, as soon as I got my table set up on Sunday, Brenda was there with 2 men to talk to me; Kevin about email lists, and Robert of Westerfield Studios. So I had a talk with Kevin about email lists and bookfunnel. And then I had a nice talk with Robert about multi-media and how he could help me get the word out about our books. He mentioned some things that I knew existed but didn’t have a clue how to do.

And everybody told me to start getting our books made into audible books!

I considered it a very productive convention for me, having made those contacts and had those conversations.

And the cherry on top of the whole convention was that I sold 4 books! That’s the biggest sales I’ve had at any convention. My sales actually covered the cost of the table for once!

Two of the books were John’s ‘The Stone Builders’, which you can download for free at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/565000. In it, Humans and Wassarans have co-colonized a planet, and now they discovered it was colonized once before by a race who built everything out of stone. But the Stone Builders had abandoned their colony in a hurry. Why? And was the threat still here?

The third book was John’s ‘The Waste Gun’, where a scientist has found a way to get rid of radioactive waste permanently. But an eco-terrorist sees it as poisoning the Earth and is determined to stop him. This one isn’t available as an e-book right now, as I flubbed up the formatting of the manuscript before I got it published as an e-book, but I’ll let you know when it is published.

The final book was an anthology of short stories about vampires called ‘These Vampires Don’t Sparkle’. This one wasn’t published by me, but I have a story in it, on page 155. I don’t know if it was ever published as an e-book, but the hard copy was put out 9 years ago by Sky Warrior Book Publishing. There is a 2^nd volume called ‘These Vampires Still Don’t Sparkle’. I just checked with Amazon, which said volume 1 was out of print, and they only have 1 used paperback of volume 2 for sale. So my chances of getting any more of either one of them are pretty slim.

I look forward to going back to Necronomicon in 2024.