I’ve talked before about how Amazing Grace is loosely based on the small town where I grew up, and that the idea came to me while I was walking in the cemetery at the church I went to as a child. So I thought people might enjoy it if I took y’all on a walk through that same cemetery.
And here it is –
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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.
Thanks for helping bring this project to life!
JGH
Well, it’s done. Amazing Grace is complete at 29 chapters, plus a prologue and an epilogue. The whole thing is off to my editor now, actually has been for a month or two, honestly. I’ve enjoyed having all of you along with me for this ride. It’s been a fun change of pace for me to serialize something, and to work in a longer format than the novellas I do every month. I also found myself loving Lila Grace and the Dead Old Ladies Detectives.
Don’t worry, there will be more.
Yeah, there will be more Lila Grace, more Dead Old Lady Detectives, and more of this fictionalized Lockhart, SC. Lockhart is a real place, and John D. Long Lake is where Susan Smith drowned her children. There was a guy who lived there named Johnny Thomas, but he wasn’t a sheriff, he was a barber, and my dad’s cousin. The Lockhart in Amazing Grace is a blend of the real Lockhart, plus York and Sharon, all tossed into a blender and mixed until chunky. The cemetery where Lila Grace walks is the cemetery where my mother is buried, and she is one of the Dead Old Lady Detectives, along with her best friends Faye Russell (nee Comer) and Helen (Tot) Good. Miss Faye is still alive, but Miss Tot left us earlier this year, right about the time I started this book. I couldn’t think of a better way to memorialize her than to put her in this book with Mama and Miss Faye, because the three of them did form the Western York County grapevine for a long time.
So there’s a lot of truth in this book, despite the fact that none of the ghosts I talk to have ever talked back. And I’m good with that. So I hope you’ve enjoyed Amazing Grace, and sometime in 2018 I’ll start giving you chapters of Will the Circle Be Unbroken, the next Lila Grace Carter Mystery. The book will be on sale in ebook and print next month, most likely, unless I decide to submit it for publication elsewhere, in which case it will take longer. But I’ll keep you posted.
In the meantime, next week we’ll start something COMPLETELY different. Like, more different than you can even imagine. Starting next week, we’ll have a near-future cyborg adventure called TECH Ops kicking off. I hope you enjoy it as much as you’ve enjoyed Amazing Grace.
Thanks!
This is the latest chapter of an ongoing serialized novel that I’m working on and posting up here in rough draft form. To read other chapters, CLICK HERE.
Epilogue
There were only three of us at the graveside for Jeff’s funeral. Me, Willis, and Reverend Turner. The rest of the deputies disavowed any connection with the murderer, and I couldn’t really blame them. The town tried its best to forget they ever knew the man, too, because to claim him would be to claim their part in making him what he was, to claim their tiny piece of guilt. His family was long dead, the only person in the world who depend on him was a sweet little Corgi named Butch, who I had on a leash next to me at the funeral.
Reverend Turner spoke kind words about the man, ignoring his end and focusing on the parts of his life he spent in service. He kept it short, though, not needing to embellish for his audience of two. When he was done, I knelt beside the casket for a moment and prayed for him. I knew full well he wasn’t in a better place, I’d seen him go, but maybe my prayers could lessen his sentence a little bit. The things he did were terrible, and he deserved to pay for them, but he was, in the end, a pitiful, scared little man, and that deserved a little leniency.
Reverend Turned stepped over to me and extended his hand. “Lila Grace, I feel I may have wronged you,” he said, looking me straight in the eye.
I stood up, brushed the dirt off my knees, and shook his hand. “All is forgiven, Reverend. I appreciate you speaking here today.”
“If I don’t minister to the lost, what kind of shepherd would I be?” He asked with a gentle smile. “I don’t understand what you do, but I believe now that there is no malice in you, and no touch of evil in your gifts.”
“Thank you, Reverend. I might not ever turn Baptist, but I reckon we can at least sit next to each other at the church softball games,” I said, smiling back at him.
He shook hands with Willis and turned to walk into the church. Willis raised an eyebrow at me. “That was unexpected.”
“Not really. We had a talk a little while ago. I think he learned a thing or two.”
“Maybe you can teach an old dog new tricks,” Willis said with a grin.
“Maybe,” I said, grinning back “As long as one of those tricks is putting the toilet seat down, we’ll be fine.”
We laughed as we walked back to the patrol car. I stopped at the door and looked back at the grave, where three filmy images of old woman wavered in the wind. The Dead Old Ladies Detective Agency had helped solve their first case, and even if it didn’t end happily for everyone, it did end, and we did put Jenny Miller to her heavenly rest. I had to count that as a win, I decided.
Then I slid into the passenger seat of the sheriff’s car and let my boyfriend drive me home, the first time that had happened in my fifty-seven years. I guess that was another win, this one for the Living Old Lady.
THE END
