The Secret

This year's World Science Fiction Convention was in Spokane, WA. The layout of the convention center made absolutely no sense. You entered on ground level, only to take an escalator to the 2nd level, where you could find registration, the dealer's room and the art show. From there, you could do one of 5 things:

·       Take an escalator down to one set of rooms,

·       go down a few steps to a down escalator to another set of rooms,

·       walk down a long corridor, turn left, follow a hallway to an (inadequate) bank of elevators to get to the hotel lobby, which you walked across to another set of rooms (I never personally made this trip, although I did try, once.),

·       don't turn left but continue down that long corridor to a down escalator to another set of rooms, or

·       walk past that set of rooms to take an elevator up a floor to yet another set of rooms.

Rumor has it that there were even rooms in another building that one had to go outside to get to.

Even with a map in the pocket program book, convention center staff were stationed at corners so people could ask, "How do I get to X?" We got our exercise!

There were wild fires in Washington, one of them north of Spokane. The city wasn't threatened, but on Friday, the smoke was as thick as heavy fog. Even inside, you could smell it. Played heck with people's sinuses.

But the thing I will probably remember most was The Secret. I heard it in a panel given by authors, and one of them quite nonchalantly stated, "I hate to give away secrets, but we authors don't come to conventions to see our fans; we come to network with other authors and people in the business."

I was shocked!

Now that I have thought about it, I wonder, Then why do they attend the smaller conventions? I mean the smaller, regional conventions where they may be the only 'known' author attending. No editors, no agents, only small press publishers. What would local authors and small press people offer?

I suppose networking is networking, and you never know, the person who is completely unknown this year could the Big Item next year. But still, the fan is in that mix somewhere, right?

How can you sell books if nobody wants to read it? If fans aren't important, why are newbie and wanna-be authors advised to produce the most excellent work they can, because "Your first book is what sells (or doesn't sell) your next book."

Okay, maybe this 'Secret' doesn't say it all. Maybe it was just my personal wake-up to use conventions, not just to have fun, but to network with like-minded people. That's not an easy thing for me to do. But I can talk to people, one or two at a time. Time to give it a try.

2014 World Con Report

This year’s World Science Fiction Convention was held in London, England. We don’t normally go it is overseas, but we decided if we were going to do any traveling, it was time to get started. I won’t go into details about our trip to get there, except that a storm in Atlanta (Georgia) made our trip an endurance battle.

The convention was held in a huge convention center located in the dock area on the Thames River. There were several hotels in the immediate area, but they were expensive, and by the time I had figured out our plan early this spring, I couldn’t find one in the area that had a room available for our entire stay. We wanted to do some site-seeing, too, so I found a cheaper hotel closer to London Central... and only 4 or 5 blocks from a major underground station.

London doesn’t have street signs like America. The names of some streets are on the side of the corner building, if you are lucky. Some streets are no wider than an American alley. It made reading my map difficult, especially after our marathon of non-sleeping to get there. When we finally paused and asked for directions at a cafe, we had turned a block too early.

I had been told that European hotel rooms are smaller than American, but when we finally got to ours, we were stunned. The room was the size of the bed with about a foot of ‘walking space’ on 3 sides and an attached bathroom that’s smaller than ours at home (which is definitely ‘dinky’). There were no chairs, no table, no drawers or shelves to put your clothes. Very claustrophobic! The first thing I did was fall on the bed and sleep for 15 hours.

We figured out the underground system and crammed 4 days of site seeing into 3. We didn’t have time to do the Jack the Ripper Walking Tour, but eventually I realized our hotel was IN his ‘hunting area’. (How exciting!) We weren’t afraid to ask questions, so it wasn’t difficult to add a ‘Docks Light Rail’ route to our pattern to get to and from the convention center, but it did mean we were riding the underground during the morning rush hour. Crammed like sardines.

The convention itself was good. There were a couple of space organizations giving lots of science panels, which always seemed to be over-crowded. Many times, people got turned away because all the chairs were full, and sometimes that wasn’t a science panel, either. There were times when I had to go to my 3rd choice of a panel, because both of the first 2 choices were full.

The convention had registered over 10,000 people, but on any given day, there were about 5 or 6,000 people in attendance.

Food and drink was probably over-priced, since it was all brought in by businesses within the convention center, but we were dealing in Pounds, so it was hard to say. I can’t say any of it was good.

Registration had a looooooong line every morning, but seemed efficient when my turn came. The freebie table, however, was way too small. This one table had fliers, books, business cards, book marks, pens and who knows what else, all jumbled together because there wasn’t room to lay things out nicely. As soon as somebody tried to organize an area so their items could half-way be seen, somebody else came along and slapped down a stack of... something right in the middle of it.

To sum up London: metropolitan, crowded, fast paced, efficient mass transportation, confusing; but if you can get a local to slow down, they will answer questions. As an introvert, I was stressed because it was so cramped, which I couldn’t escape, but I lived through our 10 9 days there.

LonCon3, the 2014 World Science Fiction Convention, was also crowded, but fun. Some things could have been better, like more freebie tables, or more room for photographers of the costumes in the costume contest, or a better method of presenting art workshops. (In the art show area was too noisy, especially without a microphone, and only those in the front of the crowd got to see what the artist was doing.) But they did have tables and chairs in the hallways, as well as water coolers.

Make a note; there are no water fountains in London. You are expected to buy your drinking water.

Encouragement

Years and years (and years) ago, when I was a young girl, fascinated with the notion of writing my own stories, I received encouragement from a cousin a couple years older. He told me such things as I would need to rewrite my draft, possibly more than once. I didn't want to hear it, but he was right. I found his stories funny, silly and delightful, and I basked in the knowledge that he was willing to spare a few minutes to encourage me in my endeavors.

We recently started communicating via the internet, and he revealed he had started writing again. (Again? I did give it up after a particularly horribly comment made by my first husband, and that was the blackest two years of my life.) I don't know how long he went without writing, but I was happy to hear he was re-discovering it.

And I guess we've come full circle. Now I find myself encouraging him. Have you thought about doing this with your story? Would it make more sense if your character did this? Your rough draft doesn't have to be perfect; rewriting is part of the process, remember?

Encouragement and suggestions from other writers are why authors join writer's groups and go to critique sessions. Another example is last year's critique sessions at Worldcon in Austin. I had been shopping around a fantasy, and kept getting rejected, so what I wanted to know was, is there something wrong with this opening that I'm not seeing? The comments I received gave me some direction for my next rewrite of that opening. I was thrilled.

If a writer's group or critiquer gives you the impression your writing is crap, don't go to that group or person again. My husband and I quit one writer's group because one person in the group kept pointing out our 'mistakes' without saying anything kind or nice about our efforts. That's not encouragement, and it's not helpful.

So, way to go, cousin! I really like what you've written, even though I'm not sure I like any of your characters. Your description in that story is great, it really sets the tone. Oh, and by the way... Welcome back to writing.

Looking Ahead

Okay, last week I looked back at 2013, so this week I'll try to figure out what I'm going to do in 2014 to get me closer to my goal.

The first thing that comes to mind is I've got to overhaul / reinvent the website. (www.MoonPhazePub.wix.com/MoonPhaze) I can't afford to hire anybody, so it's up to me. I've been gathering notes on what makes a good website, and I have people I can consult for their opinion, so maybe it won't be too bad. Still, it's not my favorite activity, so it will be slow-going.

Hubby and I will be attending the World Science Fiction convention in London, and the European Science Fiction convention in Dublin the following weekend. That has been occupying a lot of my time, trying to figure out the travel arrangements and all that. That long a trip will suck up a lot of our resources, so as far as personal appearances, the 'usual' local conventions may be the only ones I can plan to get to. Still, that doesn't mean I can't schedule some appearances at book stores, libraries or corn fields in the region that I can drive to in a day, so I will be trying to organize some of those.

MoonPhaze Publishing has wanted to print its first hard-copy book. We'll be looking at means of doing it that will not require thousands of dollars up front, like going with POD. Of course, if we happen to find a few thousand dollars to go to a regular printer, we'll switch gears again. In any case, having a paper-back book on hand could make those appearances mentioned in the previous paragraph more enjoyable, both for me and for anybody who attends them.

I've signed up for some classes in leatherwork! In at least two of my universes, I have a segment of the population who work with leather, and this will help me 'identify' with them. Besides, I like to learn new things.

As far as writing, I've got 4 contests/anthologies to submit to during the first 2 months of 2014. It's time for my second novel (romance) to start looking for a home. My third novel needs some rewriting & polishing, the roughs of 2 other novels need to be finished, and I've started a sf novel rough. If I keep finding more contests and anthologies, I should be plenty busy!

Maybe I should get an early start on some of that, don't you think?

Working a World Con

This year, my husband and I were in charge of Opening Ceremonies at Lone Star Con 3, the World Con held in San Antonio. Last year, we were in charge of both Opening and Closing Ceremonies at Chicon 7, the World Con held in Chicago. We have attended many World Cons over the years, but these were our first efforts at being staff members of a World Con.

I don't know if these experiences will help me in my efforts to establish myself as a writer, but they might. Instead of going to publisher parties and winding up being a wallflower, I showed myself to be an active participant, a capable and flexible planner, and a person who was easy to work with.

But wait, I was a behind-the-scenes type of staff person, so who would have seen all those good things about me? Good question, one I've been thinking about the last few days.

We were late getting access to the stage, so any convention attendees who arrived at the ceremony location early in search of a good seat, saw me moving set furniture and props, consulting with sound techs and the convention Toastmaster. When others could not decide on a good location for a late-arriving set decoration, I made the decision. If any of these good people noticed me in particular and caught my name, ... well, I only know of one person who attended this convention who does not do a lot of reading.

We met and interacted with other staff members. We received compliments from some of them for being cool, collected and flexible, but maintaining control. Some had expected us to have a melt down over the loss of our major piece of set decoration, a set of cardboard swinging doors. Happily, it was found and brought to us an hour before we were to begin, and 3 people immediately set to work putting it together for us. It would have been a shame if that item had never showed up, but we figured the attendees were coming to see the guests, not our choice of decorations.

Finally, we had some interaction with the guests, as we introduced them to the Toastmaster, explained what we expected from them, and alerted them that they would be next on the stage. Despite our efforts ahead of time to work with the Toastmaster on the list of guests, last minute details meant our list of people for him to introduce almost doubled in the last half hour before the ceremony started. He was a trooper, speaking briefly with all of them and taking notes. We were hard pressed to keep track of where he was putting them on the list, but we must have done something right, because we never had the wrong person waiting in the wings. These guests included (but were not limited to) famous authors and a well-known editor. Hopefully, they noticed our efforts in a favorable light.

In any case, we took our enjoyment of world cons and paid it back/paid it forward by being staff members.

World Con

What better subject for me to blog about while I'm at this year's SF Worldcon than the convention itself?

The World SF Convention has existed for nearly 75 years. It's a traveling convention, meaning it is held in a different city every year. For instance, last year's was in Chicago, this year's is in San Antonio TX, and next year's will be in London England.

This year's attendees have the opportunity to vote on the site for 2 years from now, 2015. We had 3 choices; Orlando FL, Spokane WA and Helsinki. Well, technically, we also had the choices of 'No preference' and 'None of the Above'. These locations already have some people who have scoped out the best place in town to hold the convention, have presented an acceptable plan to the Worldcon parent organization, and have been trying to impress people with what their location has to offer.

This year, the attendees also have the opportunity to vote on next year's North American SF Convention. When the World Convention is in another part of the world, like next year's convention in London, a great number of North Americans can't afford to travel that far, so a similar convention is held within North America.

If you have never attended any science fiction convention, I don't really suggest you start with a worldcon. Try a couple conventions in your area of the country first, so you have a better idea what to expect. (Google 'sf convention' + 'your state' to find some within easy reach.) If you've been to one of those huge comic cons, you might not be quite so lost, but I find the worldcon has more things to do.

With an attendance of 6,000 or more, a worldcon has the usual dealer's room, panels, art show, panels, con suite, panels, autograph sessions and panels. Did I mention there's panels? Looking through the pocket program (a booklet of 260 pages), there are easily 2 dozen Things To Do in any given hour of the day, slowing to 1 dozen in the evening.

Worldcons differ from local sf conventions in another way. Local sf conventions are usually 3 days long, from Friday through Sunday. A worldcon starts on Thursday and goes through Monday. So a smart attendee tries to pace themself. Or else, trains for the marathon ahead of time.

Even with thousands of attendees, by the time you've come to 2 or 3 worldcons, you'll start recognizing some faces, and others will start to recognize you, too. There really are groups of friends who do not see each other except at conventions. Thank goodness for internet for sharing thoughts at other times!

Woops, there's a panel coming up I want to be at. See ya next week!

On Vacation

I do apologize for not having a blog to post today. Yes, I'm on vacation, but I usually manage to get a post written and posted, even on vacation. Unfortunately, not this time.

On Friday, we were on the road, and drove as far as Muscokee OK before we stopped for the night. After a quick supper, we settled our brain-dead, road-weary bodies into the motel bed and gave in for the night.

Saturday, we finished the driving, finally arriving on the south side of Houston TX. Having reached our destination, we settled in for a quiet evening. Unfortunately, hubby decided to check his email, and his inbox was so full (after 2 days) that by the time he got done, there was no time left for me to do anything on the computer.

Today, we went to the Space Center Houston. Once we looked around and saw what was there, it seemed we could do it all in one day, therefore saving us the money of going again tomorrow. And we did get done, but it was a long day, and we were both limping by the time we returned to our motel room. I was too tired by then to try and write a blog.

So, my apologies, and I will try very hard to actually have a blog next Sunday. Yes, I will still be on vacation. Yes, I will be at WorldCon in San Antonio. Yes, I am on staff at WorldCon in San Antonio. However, by Friday, my staff stuff will be done, so if I haven't gotten one written by then, I will be able to take half an hour to type one up. I hope. Worldcons always seem to have something going on.

When Balls Drop

With four of my stories available electronically through Smashwords, I decided it was definitely time to spend more of my time marketing. The problem was, I wasn’t sure how to market, plus anything that put me out in front of people, blowing my own horn, was going to be outside my comfort zone. That was why I had joined Toastmasters for 2 years, to get more comfortable speaking in front of others.

If I had to do it, I had to do it. There was no getting around that. I began looking at the conventions I planned to attend this year, and inquired if I might do a reading and possibly be included on a panel or two. I did get to do a reading at a small convention about an hour down the road in the spring, and that turned out well.

This year, we were attending several conventions that were either quite a distance from our home, or new to us, or both. They already seemed to have a full array of panelists and readers, so I attended purely as a fan, handing out flyers to anyone who seemed interested.

Then an organization I belong to that provides mutual support among its author members, wrangled a spot at the World Science Fiction Convention for its members to do a ‘multi-reading’. Instead of one author doing one reading, this organization takes one time slot – in this case, 75 minutes – and schedules several of its members to do short readings.

What an opportunity! I was on staff for the world convention, so I was definitely going to be there! I was one of the first to contact the organizer to state my interest in participating. After a couple days, she emailed back to say I needed to fill out the questionnaire. I was new at this, I didn’t know if the questionnaire was needed for the author’s organization or the convention, so I asked her where I would find the questionnaire I needed to complete.

Here’s where this particular ball got dropped. I forgot I was waiting for an answer. She forgot also. By the time one of us remembered, she had the entire time slot filled. I missed out on this wonderful opportunity.

Oh, well. These things happen. I suspect the trick is, when you drop a ball of opportunity, that you look for more of them, and start picking them up. So, here I am, looking for places to speak, to read, to … market.