Capclave 2019 - Always a Fan Never a Panelist at my local con

So, it’s that time of year. The local science fiction and fantasy convention is in town and I come for the weekend merely as a fan. As an author I also seek an opportunity to be on panels, but my local con, so I’ve been told, has few spots for all the authors who wish to participate. The majority of spots goes to regulars.

There are cons where authors can be only invited every few years, where the programming leadership deals with such issues differently. And, truth be told, that can frustrate authors too. We like to build our fan base.

Each year I come to Capclave, I’ve an opportunity to, well, geek out, talking to the friends and fans I’ve made, and, most importantly, network. You see, even if I’m not on panels, this is a great opportunity. For example, the Programming Chair for Balticon was staffing the Balticon promotional table the opening day of the con. At Balticon over the years I’ve had a table in the Dealer’s Room, and moderated and served on panels. Beginning of cons can be slow, so the Balticon Programming Chair and chatted and I shared that I wrote a number of articles about my experiences and what I learned at the last Balticon, and that I’ve shared the articles I blogged and currently have on my new website in a eNewsletter for a fantasy group on Writing.com. “Please email me a link to those articles, we can post one a week with our Balticon online materials.”

They are a lot of members of BSFS (the Baltimore Society Fiction and Fantasy Society) and that’s an invitation to promote myself self that I’m not going to miss. The Balticon Programming Chair also took the opportunity to ask me a question during our chat. You see, I’ve a book that literally just came out on Kindle and I mentioned to promote it I offered the first book in the series on Freebooksy and gave away 1,800 copies. She asked me about panel ideas on the business side of writing and I told her I was one of a number of area authors who was an alum of the Kevin J. Anderson’s and Eric Flint among others, Superstars Writing Seminar, where I learned to understand such things as understanding contracts and the world of agents. Balticon has had sessions about agents and rights, but the business side of being an author is something a lot of people who want to sell their stories need to know.

So, I shared it might be great to have some business of writing sessions and with the plethora of ads I get for services and books on how to break away from Amazon’s Algorithms, I thought there was a great opportunity for sessions on how to make the seemingly ever changing rules work more for promoting books.

That conversation was more important to me than sitting in a panel. I continue to build my “street cred” and hopefully I’ll be able to get on a business of writing sci fi panel, or even moderate one, at Balticon. While at the same time, such a panel can also offer me the opportunity to learn what other authors are doing, so I can learn what works and what doesn’t promoting and, of course, selling more books.

I ended up speaking with a lot of people in the session’s corridor, who I’ve come to know over the last 9 years at Capclave and that’s just as important as networking. Writing can be a quite solitary experience, we also need to recharge. So, no, I’m still only a fan at my local con, but I am always an author whose spirit needs a bit “of care and feeding.”

Hmm, I’ve just looked at the program and there’s a session called “Mysterious Mars.” Definitely going to that one after dinner. I’ve questions to ask there for my future immigration to Mars stories… both author and geek at Capclave, definitely.

By the way, my book Triple Dare just came out exclusively on Kindle and as part of my promoting the release, the paperback edition of the first book in the series, Dare 2 Believe, has just come out in a second printing. The second printing of that book for Kindle as well as book two of the series, Double Dare, both came out over the summer. The Double Dare paperback second printing will be coming out in a couple of months.

As ever, Dare to Believe,

D.H.