Welcome to Part 3 of my series on conventions, what they’re about, how to make money at them, all that jazz. Today we’re going to talk about what I call Trade Show Cons, or Exhibit Hall Cons. These are most often your comic cons or your book fairs (where you’re not a big guest, just a schmo with a table). They bring with them a whole new set of challenges, strategies, and expectations.
What is an Exhibit Hall Con? Well. these are the cons where you sit behind or beside or in front of your table all day and work to sell books. I don’t recommend sitting in front of your table. It’s hard to see the books through you. Like your dad used to say when you stood in front of the TV, you make a better door than you do a window, kid. These are often Comic cons (like the Roanoke Valley Comic Con, where I’ll be next weekend or Heroes Con, June 2018), but can also be big book fairs (like the West Virginia Book Festival, where I’ll be Friday and Saturday). Sometimes they’re even outside, like Time Travelers’ Weekend at the Carolina Renaissance Faire (where I’ll be November 11-12). I don’t feel like linking everything. If you wanna come say hi, just Google it.
So I do a fair number of these. By “a fair number” I mean that I have 17 already booked for 2018, ranging in size from maybe 2,000 attendees to 50,000+. So obviously I see some benefit in them. But what are the benefits, and what makes them better than a fandom con?
Well, it depends. This time it depends on you, the person who has to stand there and sell books all day. I’m good at this part. I’ve worked trade shows, conventions, flea markets, and that kind of thing my whole life. When I was a little kid, I learned how to do this stuff by sitting under the table at craft shows reading while my mom sold little stuff she made. So I got a start hand-selling things when I was seven or eight. It’s been my entire life doing this kind of thing. It just feels natural to me. So for me, I get a chance to shake hands, kiss babies, and sell.
I like selling. I see it as a challenge. Somebody walks up to my table and says “I’m not much of a reader.” That’s like waving a red flag and shouting “Toro!” to me. I often look at the folks I’m sharing a table with and mutter “hold my beer.” Those are my favorites, because I have to use all the muscles I trained in two decades of business sales to get somebody to drop twenty bucks on my table and walk away with a new book. It’s a game. If I get the sale, I get a point.
If you hate selling, or hate talking to strangers, you shouldn’t do these conventions. They won’t be fun to you, and people can see when you aren’t having fun. I have a great crew going to West Virginia tomorrow. Me, Gail Z. Martin, Darin Kennedy, and James P. Macdonald. If you get within our orbit, you’re almost certainly leaving with a book, because all four of us are talkers, and we all have fun selling to people. That’s a huge key to these events – have fun. Because as with everything in writing, if you aren’t having fun, it’s not worth doing.
Exhibit Hall cons are probably the single best place for short-term gains. You can sling some paper, and get some green paper in return, and you can usually cover your costs (books, parking, hotel, food, gas) and make a small to medium profit. This of course depends on how many titles you have. With your first book it’s going to be tough to move enough copies to cover a table rental. Table rentals run from $50 for a small comic con to $350 for a big one, and even more. And once you get to a certain level of inventory, you can’t do just one table. At Raleigh Supercon next summer I have a corner vendor booth. It cost a bunch. But I have a ton of titles, not just my own, but by my authors, so I need as much real estate as I can get. And by next summer, we’ll have well over 50 Falstaff titles on display, and that takes a lot of table space. That convention will cost me probably $1,500 by the time all costs are figure in, so I’m hoping to move a fuckton of books.
If you don’t yet have a fuckton of books to move, look around for the small comic conventions in your area, and book those instead. There you can get a table for $50, drive in the morning of the show to set up, buy a $10 convention center lunch, sell ten books and drive home at the end of the day with a few bucks of profit in your pocket. And ten new books out there in the world working to build new fans for you.
I estimate that probably half the books I sell at an exhibit hall con ever get read. So if I sell a hundred books over the course of a weekend (which almost never happens, that’s a BIG number), fifty of them will get read. Twenty of those are by people who are already fans, so that’s thirty new fans. People buy a lot of multiple books, and I do a lot of bundles, so let’s say I pick up twenty new fans in a weekend. That weekend trip probably cost me $500, so I spent $25 per fan.
If I could guarantee that someone would become a fan for $25 each, I would pay that in a heartbeat. I’d just go to the Fan Vending Machine and put in Benjamins like I was P Diddy at a strip club. Because a fan is worth so much more than $25 over the life of their fandom. That’s how much they might spend with you in one year, so as long as you don’t piss them off or stop writing, that $25 is going to pay dividends far exceeding your initial investment.
So your Per Fan Cost at an exhibit hall show is likely to be greater than at some other cons, but you also have the chance to reach more fans than at fandom cons or industry cons, and the people there are predisposed to spend money. A comic con isn’t like a fandom con, where people save up all year just for the trip and the experience – people come to these things to spend money. When I used to go to Heroes Con, I never went without at least $100 budgeted to buy stuff. So people are predisposed to spend money, you just have to convince them to do it with YOU.
I’ve run long again, so next week we’ll talk about Starfucker Cons, then we’ll move into Table Setup, Elevator Pitches, and Why I don’t sell hard to cosplayers (and I LOVE cosplayers). Until then, I just had a book come out, so go buy something, will ya?
“I reckon we need to come up with something to call you,” Wayland said as they chewed their breakfast of tough jerky and tougher coffee. “If you have no recollection of your name, then I suppose you pick any name you like.”
The girl smiled at him across the fire, the denim in his shirt making her eyes blaze blue. “I think I should be called…Elizabeth,” she pronounced with a nod of her head.
“Elizabeth…” Wayland said, rolling the name around on his tongue. “I can get behind that, I reckon. I might call you Liza for short, though.”
“I suppose as how I could live with that, as long as I can call you Way. Calling you Brother Wayland all the time might get tiresome,” she gave him a playful grin, and he grinned back. They settled into an easy silence for the next few bites, then Elizabeth cleared her throat.
“What’s on your mind, Liza?”
“What are we going to do?”
“Well, now we come back to you asking questions that can go in a myriad of different directions. How about you narrow the focus for me a touch, and I’ll consider my answer.”
“What are we going to do about the fact that we are apparently several days’ ride from anywhere to get more food, with one horse, two people, and I am wearing nothing more than your castoff shirt? I think that might be a fair place to start.”
“Those are indeed fine questions,” Wayland relied, popping the last chunk of jerky into his mouth. He chewed on the leathery meat for a long moment, then washed it down with a big gulp of coffee before continuing. “Well, the way I see it, we need to find some shelter, and some provisions, and then look to acquiring a horse. That is, if you wish to travel along with me.” He held up a hand as Elizabeth opened her mouth. “I’m not saying you don’t want to, but I also don’t want you thinking you have to accompany me through the desert. If you should decide you’d rather strike out on your own, I will help you acquire such food and water as I can spare, and you can retain ownership of my shirt. I suppose I can buy another one sometime.”
“I think I should stay with you, at least for now. Since I know neither where I was coming from nor where I was going, nor, in fact, who I am, I think it might be useful to have someone around who is familiar with weapons. I assume that part of your work as a Brother of the Gun does involve the use of one?”
“I have been known to make use of a shooting iron on more than one occasion.”
“Then I think I’ll stay with you for the time being, if you’ll have me.”
“Well, you snore less than Mazy, so that’s good,” Wayland said with a half-grin. “Now all we need to do is find a spring to replenish our water, someplace to trade for food, and some boots for you, and we’ll be in fine fettle.”
“Pants might also be nice,” Elizabeth said, gesturing at her bare legs.
“I can see as how that might be a benefit,” Wayland agreed. “For today, you’ll ride pillion with me on Mazy. She won’t hardly notice the little bit of added weight, and I can roll up a blanket for you to sit on. If we make good time and don’t encounter any interruptions along the way, we can make Pecos in about two days. Shouldn’t be any trouble to resupply there and get you some clothes and a good hat. Until then. Make sure you keep your sleeves down and tie these bandannas around your face so the sun doesn’t scorch you completely blind.” He handed her a pair of faded red squares of cloth, and she did as he said.
Wayland got up and rooted around in his pack, coming up with a pair of tattered jeans. “These are gonna be a might long and big around for you, but it’ll be better than going naked. I dug out a pair of socks, too, so your feet will have some cover. I don’t have anything for shoes.”
“Thank you. This is more than I expected. I’m sure you don’t plan on rescuing half-dead amnesiac women on the road.”
“It’s not an everyday occurrence, I’ll grant you that,” he said, that half-smile flashing across his face again, moving him almost partway to handsome. “Now get your britches on and let’s put this fire out. I’m going to get Mazy saddled up and we can ride.”
*****
Hours later, Wayland snapped the reins and clucked the horse to a stop. “Whoa, girl,” he said, his voice dry in the midday heat.
Liza stirred from where she drowsed against his back, then sat bolt upright. “I’m sorry,” she said, pushing back away from him. “I must have fallen asleep.”
“It’s fine, little one,” Way chuckled. “But I need you to slide down now. Mazy needs to drink, and it wouldn’t hurt us to refill our canteens.”
The girl looked around, then peered around Wayland’s shoulder. “Where is she going to find a drink? I don’t see anything.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s not there,” Wayland said. “Take my hand.” She did as he instructed. “Now sling one leg over Mazy’s rump and slide down.” She did, then immediately dropped to her knees in the sand.
Wayland dismounted and looked down at her, a kind smile reaching across his face. “Let me get this old girl unsaddled, and I’ll help you up. For now, just let your legs stretch out a bit. Ain’t nothing easy about your first long ride.” He loosened the cinch and pulled the saddle off his horse, then tossed it onto the dirt. He pulled the saddle blanket off and laid it on top of the saddle, then reached down for Liza’s hand.
She took it and stood, rubbing her thighs and grimacing with every small step. “Where are we going? I still don’t see anywhere to water the horse.”
“You won’t,” Wayland said. “You have to know it’s here.” He led the horse and the limping girl across the broken highway to a smooth patch of concrete and the last remaining wall of a ruined building. The small cinderblock building had crumbled through neglect or malice many years ago, but two four-foot high chunks of wall still rose in a rear corner, marking where the building once ended and the desert began. Now, the desert claimed the entire space, and just a few splintered blocks and a patch of cracked concrete floor marked it as a place of men. Wayland led them around to the back of the building, along the outside wall, and reached down to turn a small valve on a pipe that jutted out of the wall. The pipe coughed, sneezed a brown explosion of water, then after several seconds of spluttering muck across the ground, a steady trickle of clear water ran from the faucet.
“How in the world…?” Liza’s tone held wonder, and more than a little fear. “How did you find this?”
“I didn’t,” Way said, his voice soft. “Someone showed it to me, when I was a young man. He took me through the desert, and taught me the places where water still runs from the Time Before. There aren’t many, and they dry up faster and faster, but this one still has a few drops left for us.”
He knelt, passing his hands under the water and scrubbing them across his face. Lisa stood and watched as he filled his cupped hands once, twice, and sipped long draughts from the stream. “Now you,” he said, standing up. “Might be easier if you just fill the canteen.”
She looked at him, then, seeing no mockery in his face, knelt in front of the faucet. She rinsed her hands and face, then filled her canteen and stood. She sat on the top of the broken wall, sipping the water.
“Drink your fill,” Wayland said, pulling his hat off and placing it upside down on the ground, making a basin for the horse to drink from. He filled a canteen of his own, then stepped away so Mazy could drink from his hat. The horse stuck her head down into the stream, then backed away, spluttering and giving Way a nasty glare. “You know better, you glutton. If you wait until I turn the water off, you won’t get your nose soaked.”
Liza laughed, then looked around, as if surprised.
“What’s wrong?” Way asked.
“I don’t know…I guess it just feels like I don’t laugh very much.”
“You don’t have to lose your memory for that. Nobody laughs very much. Haven’t for a long time, from what I’ve read.” Wayland took another long swig from his jug, then reached down to turn off the water. Mazy ducked her head and started to drink from his hat, delicately keeping it from tipping over.
“She’s a very smart horse,” Liza said.
“She’s pretty extraordinary,” Way agreed. “I don’t say it often, at least not where she can hear it. I don’t want her to get the big head.” Mazy lifted her head to throw a baleful eye at the man, drawing another laugh from Liza.
“Is she…I don’t even know what I’m trying to ask.”
“Enhanced? No, she’s all horse, and all Earth-native, at least as far as I know. She’s just really smart is all. If we’re going somewhere we’ve been more than twice, I can just tell her where to go, and I can sleep in the saddle if I have to. Comes in handy if I’m hurt, too. More than one time I’ve passed out in the saddle and woke up in front of a doctor’s office or hospital. Took me a while to convince her that a vet wasn’t the best solution.” He laughed and looked down at the horse. “She’s a good girl. A good partner.”
“How long have you had her?”
“Almost ten years now. Ever since…” His voice trailed off and he took another drink. “Ever since her last rider, the Brother that mentored me, died.”
“I’m sorry. What happened?” She held up her hands as his face whipped around to her. “If you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine. I was just making conversation. I don’t have a lot to contribute, since…” She gestured toward her head as if to remind him that she had no memories.
“No, it’s fine,” he said. “It’s just not something I talk about often. But I reckon we’ve got a fair bit of riding left to do, so let’s make sure all out canteens and waterskins are filled, and I’ll give you the whole sordid story once we’re back on the road.”
My horror novel The Thing in the Woods would not exist if, one night when I was home from the University of Georgia sometime in 2006 or 2007, I hadn’t decided to swing by the East Cobb Borders. There I found a manual for the role-playing game Call of Cthulhu. Although I’m not a gamer I do appreciate the back-stories many games have and I am a big Lovecraft fan. I gave it a read and one of the possible scenarios was the suburbanization of the rural desolation where, in Lovecraft’s work, very bad things went down. The phrase “supernatural Love Canal,” a reference to the building of a planned community and in particular two schools atop an abandoned toxic-waste dump, came up.
That seemed like a good idea for a story, so I started developing one. Although my memory for the details is getting a little fuzzy I’d started writing it in May 2007, soon after I began work for The Griffin Daily News. It started out as a short story, but the tale grew in the telling. What ultimately became a novel is set in the fictional town of Edington, GA, located in the southern rim of Metro Atlanta. Although Griffin, McDonough, and Lovejoy are referenced as being separate towns located nearby, many details from those places made it into Thing. Edington has a Best Buy like McDonough, there’s a long north-south road with car dealerships on the northern end and middle-class neighborhoods located south of the main drag like in Griffin, and the Edington library resembles Griffin’s Flint River Regional Library. A Griffin official introduced me to the term “pipe farm” (an unfinished neighborhood with foundations and plumbing but no actual houses), something that was quite common during the Great Recession. Although I never saw a pipe farm in Griffin, I did see one while biking on the Forsyth County Greenway, and that imagery appeared in Thing as well.
The Thing in the Woods fell by the wayside as I focused on other projects and it sat dormant for years. However, when I was in graduate school at Georgia State University, I sat down and binge-wrote, at one point writing 4,000 words in a single day, and got that sucker done. I finished the first draft in very late 2013, with a writing-group meeting to discuss the finished product delayed by the big snowstorms that afflicted Atlanta in early 2014 and caused me to miss at least one or two classes at GSU. I was at the very tail end of working on my masters when I went to the 2015 World Horror Conference in Atlanta to pitch it to publishers, although I didn’t submit it to Digital Fiction Publishing, which ultimately published it, until sometime later.
So The Thing in the Woods began in college and finished in college, with my planned sequel The Atlanta Incursion taking place around Georgia State for good measure. One of my two undergraduate degrees is in history, as is my masters, and history plays a big deal in the story, so it’s appropriate.
Last time I talked about Industry Cons, like World Fantasy Con, World Horror Con, RWA Nationals, and other pro-centric cons. The greatest benefit of these cons is often the networking, as they are light on fan attendees and heavy on pros. They can be a great place to make or renew relationships, to meet people who can have a real impact on your career long-term, but you should never go into a conversation with someone just thinking about what they can do for you. That’s not networking, that’s being an asshole. Real networking, the kind that will actually do something for you, is relationship-building, making friends, being genuinely interested in what people are saying and doing, because people are generally pretty interesting. You will get more out of the favor you do for someone else than you ever will from asking for a favor. So just go hang out with people, meet them, and be nice. That will come back to you in spades over the long haul.
But this isn’t a blog post about networking, it’s a blog post about fandom cons. What I refer to as fandom cons are the heart and soul of science fiction and fantasy cons all over the US and the world. These are the small to mid=size cons that aren’t run by some giant media or entertainment company. They are cons with anywhere from 200 to 5,000 people in attendance, and they are generally non-profit organizations run by volunteers, or sometimes a very tiny paid staff. Usually people are paid in badges, hugs, and pizza.
These are honestly my favorite type of convention to attend, because they press a lot of buttons for me as far as things I enjoy doing. Fandom cons usually have a fair amount of programming, from panels and games to discussions and workshops. Being a pompous ass that I am, I love being on panels. When I’m feeling gracious about myself, which is most of the time, I tell myself and the world that I enjoy panels because it gives me the opportunity to pontificate and scratches the itch that I had when I used to want to be a teacher.
Don’t worry, I got over that one when I realized that my reflexive response to stupid statements by people in authority is to say “Go Fuck Yourself” loudly and often. I decided that reflex wasn’t conducive to a long teaching career, so I should either learn to shut my cake hole or look for a new career path. I chose to not shut my cake hole. Pretty much ever.
But anyway, fandom cons. They have a bunch of panels, and usually a dealer room or author’s alley, or some other opportunity for me to set up a table and sell books. So I get to sit on panels with people who are much smarter than me, make a few dick jokes, and then sell books after. Or maybe I get on a panel with people where I make valid points about the at hand and participate in a lively discussion. Or dick jokes. Either way.
Why do you want to be on panels? Shouldn’t you just rent a table in the dealer hall and sell books all day, every day? Well…remember Uncle John’s First Rule of Sales? Of course you don’t, because I almost never refer to myself as Uncle John (although I am an uncle, have been for 40 years at this point, and I have a lot of grey in my beard, so I may just begin referring to myself as such) and I’ve never codified this idea into a “rule,” at least not in writing.
Uncle John’s First Rule of Sales – People buy shit from people they like.
I know. Rocket science, right? Well, that’s why this is all free, and real sales courses cost a fuckton of money. I just realized that I swear more in blogs that I write while listening to Jason Isbell. He’s a goddamn genius, and frequently Wendig-level profane.
But the point of this is – if you’re on panels, you get to show off your sparkling personality o everyone in the room, and you get to show off what a smart writerly motherfucker you are. Don’t spend too much time talking about your book, though. That looks dickish, and like you’re just there to sell shit. You kinda are, but you are also there to answer the questions the moderator and audience bring to you. So unless your book really relates to the question, don’t mention it.
So yes, you want to get on panels. You want to get on panels, and be witty, or funny, or brilliant, or charming, or dazzling, or professional, or whatever pieces of all of those that make up your shtick. Then at the end of the panel, remind the audience that you have a table in the dealer room, or you have books in your briefcase, or you’re doing the Broad Universe reading at 7PM, or whatever. Give them a reminder to come see you, and to bring money when they do.
Fandom cons are also great places to make solid connections with people way up the food chain from you. Typically a small (500-3,000 attendees) will have 1-2 “name” guests, who get their hotel and travel paid for. These folks are usually award winners, best sellers, legends in the field, or all of the above. I’ve done very small conventions with Guests of Honor such as Rachel Caine, Joe Haldeman, Timothy Zahn, Ben Bova, Patrick Rothfuss, and many more. The size of the event and the fact that you’re there as a guest as well gives you a level of access that may be greater than most folk. And some folks just like hanging out. I sat in the bar listening to Joe Haldeman tell stories for several hours one night. I’d never met him before, and I was just an attendee at the con. I bought my badge just like every one else. George R.R. Martin is well-known as a lover of room parties, and a few years ago at ConCarolinas GRRM was in one room talking to fans at a room party, and in the room next door David Weber was chatting with fans at a different room party!
This does not happen as often at huge cons. It’s just harder to find folks. But that, as well as the ability to hang out with people in the bar or restaurant and get to know them, can create long-lasting friendships. There’s a group of 40 or so writers that endured what we often refer to as SweatFest, the year the FandomFest AC broke in Louisville, Kentucky in July. It was godawful. It was the hottest thing I think I’ve ever put up with. But I met some people that I have done business with ever since, and some of them are my dearest friends. Those kind of stories are why we do the fandom cons. They become a badge of honor, and a shorthand that people use to refer to events, and the relationships forged while sitting at a table next to someone in a deserted dealer room may not pay your hotel bill for the weekend, but you can certainly make some lifelong friends.
Just a few people that I met for the first time at Fandom cons –
Faith Hunter, Misty Massey, Emily Lavin Leverett, Sarah Joy Adams, Gail Z. Martin, David B. Coe, A.G. Carpenter, Nicole Givens Kurtz, Allan Gilbreath, Andrea Judy, Bobby Nash, Edmund Schubert, Natania Barron, Michael G. Williams, Tally Johnson, S.H. Roddey, Alexandra Christian, Kalayna Price, Rachel Caine, Laura Anne Gilman, Seanan McGuire, Brandon Sanderson, Patrick Rothfuss, Mike Stackpole, Eric Flint, Dr. Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven, Timothy Zahn, Barbara Hambly, john Scalzi, Robin Hobb, Ernie Cline, Jim C. Hines, Cat Rambo, Kimberly Richardson, and the list goes on for hours. Some of these people I’ve hung out with, some I’ve published, some have edited with me, some have edited me, some have bought my books, some have sold me books, but every one of them I first met at a little fandom con.
That’s why I go to fandom cons. Because I meet amazing people.
Here’s the next chapter of that serialized thing I’m working on. Let me know what you think.
Chapter 1
She jerked awake, sitting bolt upright with her mouth wide open. Silent at first, she drew a breath to scream, but he was there with his hand pressed tight to her lips.
“That would be very bad,” he whispered. “There are things out there in the dark that I cannot save you from, cannot save myself from, either. So in order to keep us both alive long enough for me to answer your questions, you must be very quiet. Can you do that?”
She nodded. He took his hand from her mouth and moved a few feet away, far enough to let her feel less threatened but not so far away that she had room to escape, should that be on her mind. She looked around, at the rough campsite that was nothing more than his bedroll, the spare blankets and clothing he had scrabbled together for her, a small cookfire surrounded by rocks, banked to glowing embers and dug deep enough into the sand as to be invisible from more than a few feet away, and a metal pole jammed into the ground with a ring atop it. His horse was tied to the ring and stood staring at her, as if waiting to see if she was going to be interesting, or edible, or both.
Other than the three of them and his meager belongings, there was nothing to see but the night sky. The moon had set, or perhaps had yet to rise, and stars dotted the dark like some demented toddler had thrown a bucket of glitter into the blackness, with little clumps and streaks of shininess blinking overhead. The moon was down, but one of the blinking Voltarr motherships hung huge in the sky, too small to be a moon, but obviously too large and close to be a star. It could only be one of the orbiting homes of the invaders. Turning her head past each shoulder, the girl saw no lights in the distance to indicate the presence of a town or city, or even fires to show some sign that they weren’t the only people in the world.
She looked at him, sitting cross-legged by the fire. His wide-brimmed leather hat lay on the ground beside him, and he watched her with a steady gaze. His eyes, reflected flickering crimson in the dancing light of the cinders, tracked her every move like a wolf staring down a rabbit. His face was narrow, with chiseled jaw and cheekbones covered in greying stubble, and the creases in the corners of his eyes seemed like they came more from squinting against the sun that any tendency to smile.
“Wh-whe-“ she tried to speak, but couldn’t force the words out through sun-scorched and desert-parched throat. He tossed her a battered metal canteen, and she looked at it for a moment like she’d never seen such a thing, then twisted the cap off and took a sip. Clear water flowed over her teeth, quenching her mouth and throat. She gulped, raising the bottle higher and letting the glorious liquid dribble from the corners of her mouth and down her chin. She lowered the bottle from her lips and took a breath, then raised it again.
“Careful,” his whispered voice sliced the night like a razor, and she stopped, hand halfway to her lips, and stared at him.
“You’re dehydrated,” he said. “If you drink too much at one go you’ll throw up. Then you’ll be even more dehydrated, and I’ll be out a half day’s worth of water. I don’t think that’s something either of us wants.”
She looked back at the canteen in her hands, longing writ large on her face, but she screwed the cap back on and extended it to him.
“Keep it. You need to drink, just don’t drink the whole thing at once.”
She nodded and set the round canteen upright in the sand beside her, leaning it against her leg so it didn’t fall over.
“Where am I?” She asked.
He chuckled, an unexpected sound that rolled across her in the darkness and warmed her fingers and toes. “That’s an interesting question, miss. How do you want me to answer that? Do you need your location, because you were set upon by bandits, or reavers, or sand dogs and don’t remember how far you ran? Do you think you are dead, and this is Hell? Because you surely wouldn’t be the first to think that, although I must unfortunately notify you that we are most definitely alive, and this is no more Hell than a piece of Oklexas dirt can be, which I will acknowledge might be closer to Hell than I care to admit. Are you a Traveller? Which I doubt given that I found you with no tech and practically no clothes, much less anything to indicate you are from anywhere other than Earth. Or are you purely a creature of philosophy, and my correct answer would be ‘here?’”
The girl stared at him for a moment, then took another small drink of water. “Could we start with the first one, please?”
The man laughed an almost silent laugh, then said “We are currently four days’ ride west of Amarillo on the edge of northern Oklexas. I was planning on crossing into Nueva España tomorrow morning and heading to Albuquerque from there, but you might be throwing a little wrench into that plan.”
“I’m sorry,” the girl said, and he realized for the first time that she was very young, or at least very innocent. He struck a few options off his mental list of things that may have brought the young woman out into the wilderness on her own, and this raised even more questions.
He stared at her across the fire, his one spare shirt swallowing her gaunt form. The rag she wore as a shift fell almost to dust when he picked her up and tossed her across Mazy’s back to carry her to camp, so when he found a spot he thought looked defensible enough to make camp for the night, he dressed the scratches on her back and stomach, put aloe cream all over her face and arms, and wrapped her in his spare shirt. Now he could see how small she was, how slim her figure, stirring emotions in him he thought were long dead. Not lust, no, she was too young for him that way. Just…feelings.
“Where are you going?” She asked.
“I might ask you the same thing,” he replied. “But let’s start with the less important things. What’s your name, child? I’m Brother Wayland.”
“Are you some kind of priest?”
“Some kind,” he chuckled. “I’m a Brother of the Gun.”
She looked blank. “I don’t know what that means, I’m sorry. I don’t…I don’t really seem to know anything.” Her brow knit and she closed her eyes. “I don’t know where I am, I don’t know what a Brother of the Gun is, I don’t even know my name. I don’t know anything!” Her voice climbed in pitch and volume as she spoke, so Wayland moved to her side.
He put an arm around her, and she clutched at him, trembling. Way felt her ribs through the shirt, reached inside his pocket for a handkerchief, and passed it to the girl. She took it, dabbed at her eyes, then wiped her nose and held it out to him.
“Keep it,” he said, hiding his smile in the darkness. “If you really can’t remember who you are, it might not be the last time you find yourself in need.”
“What is a Brother of the Gun?” she asked again when she had herself more composed.
Wayland fixed her in place with his steady gaze. His eyes were cold, light grey like sun-bleached steel, and spoke of long days in the saddle. “We help people. We deliver justice in places where there often is none, and we offer protection to those who would otherwise be defenseless.” The words sounded old, like something memorized long ago, but also heartfelt. Brother Wayland meant what he said.
The girl sat, pulling her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. She looked across the fire at Wayland. “So who am I?” Her voice trembled a little, but she didn’t cry. The bulging muscles along her jaw told of the effort that required, but she held her emotions more tightly than she clutched her knees against the cool desert air.
“I have no idea.”
“Why am I here?”
“This is as far as I could carry you from where I found you.”
“Carry me?”
“You were laying out there in the desert, half-covered up in sand and scorched from being out there for at least a couple days. I found you, and brought you here. I thought to put you on Mazy and take you on to Nueva España with me, but you ain’t got the strength to ride yet. So here we are.”
She looked at him, fire kissing his jawline and painting him orange and yellow. He had a strong jaw, a narrow face, and a short beard. Mostly brown, but with a few touches of grey popping through to catch the firelight different. “I…thank you,” she said.
“Don’t thank me yet, little one. It won’t take much time in the sun for you to realize I didn’t do you any favors keeping you alive, and if some of the predators in the night get ahold of you, well…then I reckon I’ll have done us both a disservice.” He scooted away from her, creating space between her bare leg and his denim-clad one.
The girl picked up her canteen and looked across the top of it at Wayland. “You said I…threw a wrench in your plan. What does that mean?”
Way looked at the girl, her wide eyes, dirt-crusted hair and sunburned face. There was no hint of irony or guile in her. She honestly didn’t have any idea what he meant by the common expression. “Well, I reckon I meant that since you can’t ride yet, or couldn’t at least, that I probably won’t get to Albuquerque in three days like I expected to. That, coupled with the fact that I only carried water for one, means that I’m going to have to some refiguring of my plans to keep us both alive long enough to get anywhere that’s anywhere. As opposed to here,” he said, gesturing to the wide expanse of empty desert. “Which is about as close to nowhere as anything I can imagine.”
“I’m sorry,” the girl said. Her voice was thready, weak, as if she could barely move enough air to cause a sound. Way couldn’t tell if she was trying to keep quiet, or was just that broken down by whatever left her lying under the sand.
“Don’t be. I couldn’t just leave you there to die. Nobody would do that.” He didn’t bother to tell the child that a fair number of somebodies had obviously done just that. The road between Amarillo and Albuquerque wasn’t heavily traveled, but Way had met at least a half dozen riders or wagons since he’d left the last outpost in Oklexas. At least some of them had to have ridden right by the child lying by the roadside, slowly being bleached to bone in the scorching sun.
“Then thank you,” she said, stronger this time. “I…I think I need to pee.”
Wayland waved his hand off to the right. “It’s pretty safe as long as you stay within sight of the fire. I have no interest in watching you relieve yourself, so you don’t have to fear me peeking.”
She stood, legs wobbly, and Wayland scrambled to his feet to help her stay upright. After a minute, she took a tenuous step forward, holding her arms out to the side for balance. Way held her elbow to steady her, and after a few more shaky steps, she shook him off. “I think I’m fine now.”
“I think you’re a long way from fine, child, but I reckon as how you can manage to go to the bathroom by yourself. Call out if you fall or need help.”
“I thought you said things out there would hear me?”
“They might, but that’s a sight better than something finding you out there helpless. And I don’t have a light, so I won’t be able to find you without some kind of help.” He watched as she walked out of the circle of firelight, wobbly at first, but gaining confidence with each step. Way went over to his pack and pulled out a few strips of jerky, tearing a hunk off one and chewing it as he stared out into the night.
Who was this child?
What was this child?
What did it mean, finding her out here like this? It all means something, it always did,
What kind of Hell was he calling down upon his head, helping her?
I know, it’s Wednesday. I know, this is when I’m supposed to do a How to Sell More Books Blog Post.
We’ll get back to that next week. This is more important. One of my best friends had a kid, and he’s got some health issues. This is your chance to get rewarded for helping somebody out.
See that cute little bastard in the photo? That’s my little buddy Wesley. He’s my friends Rich and Kat’s kid, and he need a new liver. Now, I know, a lot of us need new livers, but that’s because of our poor life decisions. Wesley hasn’t had time to make any shitty life choices yet, so he needs a hand. If you could find it in yourself to donate something to Wesley’s transplant fund, I’d really appreciate it.
I’ll even sweeten the pot.
Donate $5 – I’ll send you an ebook of Redemption Song, my Quincy Harker Short Story
Donate $10 – I’ll send you an ebook of Amazing Grace, my new novel release.
Donate $20 – I’ll send you your choice of collected Harker or Bubba ebook (Year 1, Year 2, Year 3, you get the idea).
Donate $50 – I’ll name a faerie after you in the Bubba book I’m working on right now. Plus choose an ebook reward from a lower tier.
Donate $100 – I’ll name the big monster of this Bubba book after you. Plus choose an ebook reward from a lower tier.
Donate $250 – I’ll send you, anywhere in the world, a signed hardback first edition (you can tell it’s a first edition because there’s a typo on the back cover! There were only two of these ever printed) of Harker Year One. This is a limited offer of ONE. UPDATE – This reward is already gone, because people are AWESOME! But don’t let that stop you from giving. I’ll come up with something excellent for you, I promise!
You can also just donate without asking for anything in return. Tell me about it when I see you, and I’ll give you a big-ass hug.
If you choose to donate, please email your receipt to me – john AT johnhartness.com, so I know you did a cool thing.
Thanks, and feel free to share. We’ll get back to our regularly scheduled pimping and promotion soon, but for now, I wanted to try and help a Junior Adventurer.
I’ve had an idea kicking around for a while to write a weird western, so I’m going to give it a shot. Posting chapters here kept me honest on Amazing Grace, so maybe it’ll keep me motivated on this project, too. It’s called Angel in the Dust (for now), and it’s a near-future or alternate reality western set in a world where the United States is very different, and angels walk among us. Much to our chagrin. I’ll try to post a chapter every Monday, like I did with Grace. Hopefully, this will be as good.
Prologue
The sun beat down like a hammer, cracking the hard dirt and sending jagged lines off in every direction to the horizon, where wavy lines of heat spun up off the red dirt to twist and dance along the edges of the purple sky. The man rode, head down, his bandanna shielding what parts of his neck his hat didn’t shade. He looked neither right nor left, just down and straight ahead, riding as if asleep through the blazing afternoon sun. Every so often, once every mile or two, he reached down to his hip and drew a flask to his lips. A short sip of water, just enough to wash the dust from his lips and cut the muck that filled his throat.
If she hadn’t been lying so close to what passed for a road in this blazing hellhole he never would have seen her. If his horse hadn’t tweaked a shoe when it shied away from a rattlesnake he never would have stopped there. If he hadn’t been unusually clumsy and dropped the hoof pick he never would have heard her. If his batteries weren’t dead, he would have been listening to music on his headphones, the one luxury he permitted himself, and he wouldn’t have noticed her lying there covered in sand.
But she was there, right beside the road where his horse pulled up with the beginnings of a limp, just a mile past where his batteries died, and he did drop the hoof pick on the tarmac, and it bounced onto her back, and when he picked it up, she moved.
It was more of a weak twitch than any conscious movement; she was too far gone for that. But when her body convulsed ever so slightly at his touch, just enough wind-blown sand fell off her to reveal that she was, in fact, a person.
So y’all might have heard that I was in St. Louis last weekend, hitting up both Penned Con 2017 and Archon 41. My conversations with several people at both cons raised the question – Is it worth it?
It’s a valid question, and one I ask myself often when I go to conventions. Last week I drove over 1500 miles round trip. I was away from home for six days. I spent five nights in a hotel, and ate out every meal for six days. That’s not an insignificant investment in time, effort, and money, and that’s before we go into the inventory involved with me taking over 120 paperbacks and hardbacks across five states!
So when I evaluate a convention’s worth, I look first at what kind of convention it is. There are several major types of convention that I attend, some more frequently than others, and I expect different things from all of them. Today, we’ll take a look at what cons fit into what type, and what I’m looking for at each one.
Let’s start with the ones that are frequently the most expensive, and have the lowest opportunity for immediate return on investment, but may have the greatest long term ROI – industry cons. In the writing business there are several different types of industry con, and they are usually the ones that have the highest cost to attend. When I talk about industry cons, I mean World Fantasy Con, World Horror Con, RWA Nationals, and ThrillerFest. Regional writer festivals like the NC Writers’ Network Fall Gathering also fall into this category.
Industry cons often cost everyone but the volunteers and Guests of Honor to attend. Unlike comic cons or fandom cons, even the vendors at some professional cons still have to buy their badge on top of their table fee. And if you don’t have a table, even if you’ve been a pro in the field for decades, you may still have to spring for a badge. That’s not a knock on the convention, it’s just the way they are structured. The target audience of the con is the pros, so they aren’t using your work on panels to draw in the Muggles, they are putting you on maybe one or two panels to speak to your peers.So at these cons you pay for your badge. And they ain’t cheap. Some of these cons will cost several hundred dollars to attend, and it’s less likely that you’ll have an opportunity to make that cost back by selling books, as the number of fans in attendance is far lower than the number of pros. You may find yourself laying out $300 for a badge, then $150-250 per night for a hotel, plus travel. These cons can easily set you back a grand or more, with little to no opportunity to recoup that money quickly.
So why go? Because it’s a long game, remember? I had a great meeting at Dragon Con with an editor that I’m working on a proposal for. If it goes through, it’ll take most of 2018 before I see a dime off that meeting, and I’ve been building a relationship with that editor since 2014 at Dragon. It’s the long game. He’s not going to leave the business. I’m not going to leave the business. If it takes us four to six years to make any money off being friends, so be it. If we never make any money off being friends, so be it. But the connections you make at industry cons have so many more ancillary benefits over dollars and cents and immediate sales. Maybe a drink in the Westin bar turns into a cover blurb given or received. Maybe a panel on the Urban Fantasy track results in contracts for eight novellas (See: Mason Dixon, Monster Hunter). Maybe you meet somebody that you can give advice to, or somebody that you can learn from. Industry cons are great for that kind of networking, that kind of relationship building. I didn’t sell a single book at World Horror Con, but spending the weekend hanging out with Alethea Kontis, Jake Bible, Chris Golden, Charles Rutledge, James Tuck, and other friends was well worth the expense of the con.
That’s not to say that you should jump in on every industry con that’s within driving distance. I’ve never done the RWA national conference. I write very little romance, and most of what I publish can only be called romance in the very loosest of terms. So I don’t go to those cons. I don’t go to the NC Writers’ Network Gathering except when it’s in Charlotte. It’s mainly a literary fiction, historical fiction, and poetry conference, without a ton of genre fiction writers or readers. So while I really like the organization and support their programming, I can’t justify it as an every-year con. I’ll be there in 2018 when they’re in Charlotte, though. That’s for damn sure. So you do have to balance potential return on investment with your attendance, but you don’t have to look at it as a black and white set of numbers on a balance sheet. I plan to attend World Fantasy Con next year in Baltimore because it’s drivable, and I can sell some books, raise the overall profile of Falstaff Books, and maybe sign up some more writers to our stable. It’ll take years to see if that investment will pay off.
Long. Game.
Next week we’ll talk about fandom cons, and maybe move into pop culture cons or comic cons/vendor hall cons. Later on we’ll look at what I call Starfucker cons, then we’ll talk about what you’re trying to get out of a con, how many you should do in a year, and when is it too much of a good thing?
Until then, I had a new book come out yesterday, so I’d love it if you’d go buy Amazing Grace. If you scroll back through the archives, you can hear me read the prologue. If you’ve already bought it, and enjoyed it, leave a review! They really matter.
As a little “Thank You!” to all of you who read Amazing Grace in its serial form, and offered encouragement as I wrote it, I gave you a little present –
This is the recorded Prologue to the novel, in my own voice, because I enjoy doing this piece at readings and thought y’all might like to hear what it sounds like to me.
You can buy Amazing Grace in your favorite ebook format here – books2read.com/u/4DoRWQ. Print copies are releasing 10/17/17, in softcover and hardcover.
That’s the trick, isn’t it? If we write more, we can publish more, and then we can sell more. I publish roughly 2-3 novels per year, plus a couple of short stories, plus anywhere from 9-14 novellas. This year, I will finish up with eight novellas, a couple of short stories, and two novels. Somewhere between 375,000 and 400,000 words of published fiction, plus around 100,000 words of blogging. I don’t count FB posts, but I do count the stuff I write here, because it’s written with intent and forethought, and usually some level of narrative thread. So close to half a million words, or a little more if we take into account the 60K of Black Knight #7 that I trashed, and the 25K of TECH Ops that I’m still working on.
That’s a lot of words. That’s what it takes for me to make a living. I don’t make any kind of extravagant living, but I am the wage-earner for my wife and I. That word count allows me to do that. It also allows me the time to work on Falstaff Books projects, and we will probably end the year producing 20 titles, every one of which I had some level of direct hand in producing.
So the question I get from a lot of writers is “How do you write that much?” Well, here’s how, and I have to give credit where due to Dean Wesley Smith, who wrote some very good blog posts in 2010-11 on a workmanlike approach to writing, and how much you could produce in a year if you just write 1,000 words per day. I shoot for a little more than that, but I also don’t write every single day.
But here’s my basic approach.
Divide and Conquer – I typically work on two projects at once, one main project and one side project. This lets me have a palette cleanser project that I can fiddle with when I need to let my lizard brain work out a plot problem.
Break Down the Project – My chapters are almost always 2,000 words long, so I shoot for one chapter per day on my main project. When I’m working a novella, that means that working Monday-Friday for three weeks gets me to 30,000 words. That’s the average length of my novellas, with a couple thousand words for an epilogue. Since I usually get to the last chapter and binge right through to “THE END,” I write a novella in three weeks. That’s a pretty relaxed pace. Then I use the 1K/day on my side projects to do things outside the Bubba or Harker universes, my novels, or work-for-hire stuff. I’m currently working on some work-for-hire serialized stuff for a client, and they want 5K per part. So that’s one week per serialized chunk.
Don’t Kill Myself – I mentioned that I write 3K per day, and I consider that a pretty relaxed pace. I can do 5K/day, but it’s tiring. I could train myself to write more, and faster, but I’m in this for the long haul, and I have yet to meet more than a couple of people who can do 5K/day for more than a year or two and make it consistently good. That’s pretty important to me – being able to do this for the long term. I’m seven years into my fiction writing career, and 11 years into my professional writing career, so I know what I can do consistently to make the words come out tight and requiring as little polish as possible. I want to turn in clean copy, and about 3-4K/day is my maximum sustainable pace for that. Much faster, and I spend so much time scrapping shit and rewriting that I am better off just writing slower in the first place.
Let Life Happen – I mentioned above that my output this year wasn’t quite what I wanted it to be. I had some months where I didn’t write much, and it was a struggle to get 2K per day. That happens, especially for those of us with depression, anxiety, bipolar (that’s me!) or other mental health issues. Or physical health issues, if you have those. Or family issues. Shit happens, and sometimes you have to deal with that. Hopefully if it shits all over your writing productivity, you either still have a day job, or you have enough of a backlist selling through to carry you. But you can’t freak out about that shit, or you’ll just create a whirlwind of doom and never write anything.
Hop Around a Little – I write four series currently, or more like 3.5, since the Harker books and the Shadow Council books are so intertwined. But that keeps my ADD appeased, with the occasional bone thrown to my distractions by doing something like Amazing Grace (which is out for preorder now). I would likely make more money if I just hammered out Harker novels as fast as I could. But I’m not in this just for the cash. Yes, this is how I make my living. Yes, I need this income to pay my bills. But as I keep saying, I am in this for the long haul. Amazing Grace could turn into a Hallmark movie series, for all I know. What I know about that book is that while writing it may mean that it takes me two years to finish the Harker plot Quest for Glory, I wrote a book I absolutely love and think is the best thing I’ve ever produced. That will pay me more dividends in the long run than jamming out another Harker novella or novel.
That’s what I do. That’s how I work, and how I make a living in this business. Am I killing it like some of the newer self-published Urban Fantasy authors? No. Am I still going to be here in five years? Yeah. I’ve seen a lot of people flame out in the past seven years, and I’ve found the method that lets me continue to produce at a reasonable pace and not burn myself out. You’ve got to find what works for you, but for me, writing for 3-4 hours each day gets the bills paid, as long as I’m doing all the other stuff that goes into being a full-time writer, more than half of which has nothing to do with actually writing.
Remember, if you find these posts helpful, feel free to buy one of my books as a “Thank You,” or you can join my Patreon and pledge your undying support!
Join my Email list & get a FREE Quincy Harker Short Story!
Become a Patron!
Get Awesome Gear!
Get Signed Books Sent to Your Home!
The Misfit Toys of Fiction!
Custom USB Drives
Categories
This website uses affiliate links. Clicking on links to products may result in me getting a kickback from the site that you buy stuff from. It doesn’t cost you anything extra, and I get paid a little. So thanks!
