Day Two

On July 4, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek4 Comments

Today went better, and I will provide details later. I was at the table for eight hours and I’m exhausted.

Day One

On July 3, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek9 Comments

That… could have gone better.

Well, okay, that sounded negative. Let me phrase it differently: today was spectacular, except for the part where I sold zero books.

Zero. None. Bupkis. Nada. Less than one. No books sold.

I did not drive here to sell no books.

I have entertaining stories. I’m going to wait to tell at least one of them until I’m no longer in Indianapolis. But a combination of a number of things appear to have killed me:

It’s the first day of a three-day con. I suspect that most of the folk who were at the con today have three-day passes. They were, therefore, sitting on their wallets.
I’m a complete unknown, and my work does not immediately scan as relevant to any particular fandom (for these purposes, science fiction is not a “fandom.”)

…actually, those are the only two things. Now: for whatever it’s worth, I was keeping a very close eye on all the other vendors around me and everybody was selling shit today. The Star Trek cosplayers two booths down made one sale that I saw. The Dr. Who guy next to me made one sale– to a group of Dr. Who fanatics. The author to my right made three, but she’s been coming here for years, hugged every person who came to her booth, because she knew all of them already, and made most of her sales to people who began their conversation with the words “Do you have anything new this year?”

So…no sales, but I’m not sweating it. I talked to a lot of people, and had a bunch of them pick my books up and take long looks at them. I’m certain tomorrow will be better. If it isn’t I will cry. Forever.

(This isn’t me giving myself a pep talk. This is objective truth. Timothy Zahn is here. He looked bored to death every time I walked past him, and he didn’t seem to be selling much either. If Timothy fuckin’ Zahn isn’t moving a lot of books, I’m not gonna do better.)

One other thing I underestimated: InConJunction is seriously a community. The vendors all know each other, and even Dr. Who guy, who was at this con for the first time, had a mess of folks coming up to him and asking him if he’d been at other recent cons– he’s been on tour for a while and has been hitting bunches of them. The lady next to me has been coming for years and appeared to be making sales to people she knew. So it’s not just that I suck.

But tomorrow could still stand to go better. 🙂

The booth

On July 3, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Photography5 Comments

Really glad I only brought one banner.

Indjamanappalis I AM IN YOU

On July 3, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn PhotographyLeave a comment

Not the greatest view of all time, but it’ll work.

REMINDER: Luther Siler at InConJunction THIS WEEKEND!

On July 3, 2015July 2, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek1 Comment

I’m at Booth C9 in Creators’ Alley at InConJunction in Indianapolis for the next three days! Print copies of Skylights and The Sanctum of the Sphere will be available in abundance– seriously, abundance, I think I overordered a bit– and I’ll be giving free bookmarks out to anyone who 1) buys a book or 2) makes eye contact until I run out of them. Same-day registration for the con is pretty reasonable– $25 for a one-day pass for Friday or Sunday, $35 for a pass for Saturday, and the programming list looks really cool.

Hours and such are here. I’ll be there for the whole thing. I know some of y’all are in Indianapolis. Mention the blog and I might have something special for you. Come see me!

Aaight

On June 28, 2015June 28, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing1 Comment

(I said this on Twitter, but I should say it on WP too: loving the rainbow banner, guys. Meanwhile, not quite done having fun with this.)

Anyway. Trying to use today to clean up a lot of little writing tasks that have been piling up lately; so far I’ve written up a fairly lengthy interview (details later) and done some promotional stuff for Skylights. I need to go into work on Monday for about an hour and then my grant is put to bed and I actually get to start my summer break, which will be spent working on Starlight and Searching for Malumba and also job-hunting. So July’s full already, especially when you factor in that I’ll be spending the entire 4th of July weekend in Indianapolis at InConJunction. Book signings! Free bookmarks! Woo!

(Are you in Indianapolis, or nearby? The con’s cheap, and it looks like a lot of fun. Come see me! Creator’s Alley, booth C9! Please? I’ll be so goddamn lonely.)

Speaking of putting grants to bed, I have two days to write my final report for the teacher grant that paid for last summer’s writing adventure. It won’t be much different from my mid-year report, since I’m not actually teaching and therefore can’t report on how the grant affected my teaching. Once that’s done, I start planning for the books. My first priority on Monday is to get at least a thousand words done on Starlight; my second priority is to get another thousand words done on a BA story for Lightspeed Magazine’s open submissions period.

And play a lot of Bloodborne.

So that’s me, today. What’s your Sunday looking like?