Tucson Comic Con is rapidly approaching (27 days), and I have gained too much weight to wear any of my cosplays. Bummer, right? Well, I found a compromise the other day, and yesterday I made something new.
I only spent about nine dollars on the zipper, thread, and button–much less than if I’d decided to make even one new cosplay! There are a couple of mistakes in the apron, but they’re small mistakes and nothing I can’t live with. Plus, with making it myself, I was able to alter the pattern and make a ton of pockets for markers for signing my book. š
I used a pattern I found on Pinterest, and I’m happy with the results. Crafty Staci I think was the name of the woman who came up with the design. Great tutorial, great design.
So far that’s the only real prep I’ve done for TCC. I need to bust butt getting books ordered and setting up my PayPal reader with my phone and figuring out how much change to bring for cash. Every time I think I have all the plans solidified in my head, new things pop up. I’ll get there, though. And this experience will prepare me for future cons and appearances.
So here’s what’s what: I was at an SCA baronial meeting last night (bored out of my skull), and my hair was down, and I noticed aĀ lot of split, broken, and dead ends. Too many. So I did something about it.
This isn’t the first time I’ve gone and chopped off half my hair (or more), but it’s been a couple of years. I gotta say, it feels nice. Lighter. Not bugging the shit out of me. And the maintenance will be easier, too.
Of course, heading into what will eventually be cold weather (I’m in Arizona so as of late the weather has been still scorching in the daytime), that means I’ll need to make use of the Star Wars scarf I made myself a while back. Darn. (<–Insert sarcasm.) The hair was like a built-in scarf when it was long, but no more.
Next up in the do-it-yourself department: a vendor apron for Tucson Comic Con. I just happen to have some nifty exploding TARDIS fabric that’s been dying for a chance to be used, and this will be a great way to use it. That, and it’s an excuse to make something. Always a good thing. š
So I thought I was doing pretty well with contacting authors, podcasts, and book bloggers aboutĀ Abnormal. I mean, I’ve been following along with the Marketing 101 assignments that my publisher has been putting out in the Facebook group, I’ve been researching places to contact, I’ve been documenting my contacts…so why is it that, when I input the contacts I’ve done into an Excel sheet, I’ve only contacted about twenty people/businesses??
I guess reality is not the same as perception sometimes. I’ve got a list of five more book bloggers to contact today, but I’m a little discouraged at how dismal my personal efforts have been. I wantĀ Abnormal to succeed, so why am I slacking?
Well, part of it is just life. I get busy (or I get too sleepy in the mornings), and I forget. Or I say I’ll do it after work. Or something. Regardless of the reason for the slackiness, I need to step it up. Get cracking.
My efforts look so much more impressive when they’re scrawled in a composition book or date planner. I guess I write much bigger than I realized. Lol
I just have to tell myself that I can do this. I’ve got a form email saved for sending to places, I’ve got a list started of places to contact, and I am looking every so often for more places. I’m less overwhelmed than I was previously when it comes to finding places to send requests for reviews/interviews to, but I still don’t feel like I’m doing enough.
On the plus side, I got my author copies in this past weekend, and they look great. I mean, I’ve seen the paperbacks when I did my signing at the local bookstore, but it’s cool to have a copy to carry around, and the hardcover looks great, too.Ā
Ain’t they a beaut?Ā
I guess I should get off the blog and get to the blogs. Er, book review blogs.
I went to a gaming convention the last two days–a small one–but I spent most of the time, er, not gaming.Ā
I had intended on playing games, but I only played one the whole day and a half I was there. It was a fun game, but I got peopled out pretty quickly. Thankfully, my friends were gracious enough to give me a copy of their hotel room key so I’d have a place to escape from the crowds. It was nice. I took a solid two-hour nap today. That was really nice.Ā
Tucson Comic Con won’t give me that luxury. I’ll be there, and I’ll be stuck. I think it’ll be okay though. I’ll be behind a table surrounded by my books. I’ll have a barrier between me and them.
I got a lot of progress done on the embroidery for my husband’s Viking hood this weekend though, and I’ll get more done tomorrow. I won’t get done, but I’ll maybe get from a quarter of the way done to maybe a third or even halfway done.
Book 3 hasn’t gotten any more written yet. I am still waiting for the alpha readers to finish their feedback on Book 2, so I don’t want to get too far and have to rewrite the whole thing like I had to do with Book 2.
Hopefully soon things won’t be so stagnant. I feel like I’ve been neglecting this blog because I haven’t had anything to say. Work is work…oh! Except I got a new certification… now I’m a certified medical laser safety officer. I’ve done an audit and everything. So yeah. There’s that, and then work is work.
Things will pick up once I get back to work on Book 2 and once Tucson Comic Con gets closer.
I had my second official author appearance today, this time at a small-town library. The venue was small, and the crowd was smaller, but it was a good time. I stood up and talked about myself and my book and didn’t freak out. The social anxiety monster didn’t rear its ugly head, which is pretty cool.
Tucson Comic Con will be a big test of that. There will be crowds, there will be people looking at the table and passing by, there will be people asking about the book, IĀ will have to talk to people. Yes. It’s a thing. But I’m getting over it. Slowly. Kind of.
Tomorrow, after work, I’m headed off to a small gaming convention in Tucson. I won’t have a table there (the cost of a table was too much given the venue), but it should be a fun time. I’ll consider it pre-TCC practice of sorts. Maybe. Or maybe I’ll sit in the corner by myself and try to be invisible. We’ll see.
The Kingdom Arts and Sciences competition is this weekend as well, but I won’t be competing. I got so caught up in projects and book stuff and more book stuff and work and SCA events and…yeah. No time. Well, I suppose I could have thrown something together on the fly, but I don’t want to enter Kingdom with some half-assed project. I want to throw my full, sizable ass behind whatever I end up entering. Next year. Sure, I had the research paper that I did that I could have tinkered with to perfect it, but again there was that pesky time thing.
Speaking of time, I just remembered the laundry that’s sitting on the bed, waiting to be put away. And the laundry in the washer that’s probably done by now. And the packing I have to do. Crap.
I’m back to embroidering (did I ever really stop? Lol), and it’s starting to get to these arthritic hands of mine.
Whether I use a hoop or just hold the fabric myself, it seems my fingers get incredibly cramped and painful. I can only stitch for a little bit at a time, which is making projects take longer. Thankfully, I am limiting the number of projects I take on.
I have a Viking hood for my husband to embroider, of which I have gotten probably a quarter done. That’s my Current Project. My Next Project will be a mundane cross stitch for a paying customer. Then, Project Number Three in line will be a large embroidery that isn’t due until Estrella War in February. I hope to get some personal embroidery done in between Next Project and Project Number Three, but we’ll see how my hands tolerate it. I get so excited that people want things embroidered by me that I don’t take the time to say “Sorry, but I wanted to embroider X for myself first.” I need to do that. Take time for personal projects as well as commissions.
The Next Personal Project? I think some embroidery for a Viking Hedeby bag I plan on making. I have the handles, I have the fabric I need, and the rope for the strap will be easy enough to get, but I need to embroider the fabric before I put the bag together so I’m not stitching through the lining. Then after that? Maybe some subversive cross stitching or other such embroidery for hanging up around the house. Maybe something geeky. We’ll see…in March, most likely, because of time constraints.
I’ll eventually get to making garb and cosplay stuff for myself again. After I finish my Current Project and the subsequent pending projects. And after I finish Book 2 and submit it. And after….who knows what will come up next.
Sweet baby Jesus, whatever’s in the air lately is kicking my ass.
Okay, so maybe it’s not that bad. I can still breathe–kind of–and I don’t have a scratchy throat. The sniffling and sneezing is annoying as hell, though.
My allergies are weird. Some years, I go without any allergy problems. Others, I have really bad symptoms when the pollen count is low. Still others, I have symptoms for a couple of weeks then nothing. I can’t predict when or how the allergies will strike, so it’s pretty much a crapshoot. Do I take allergy medicine today or not? I might be feeling okay now, but it might get worse as the day goes on.
As far as theĀ Abnormal front goes, I feel pretty accomplished. Yesterday I made several attempts at contacting podcasts, libraries, and bookstores to see about getting Abnormal on the air or on the shelves. No responses yet, but that’s okay. Some days the fish just don’t bite. Just making the contacts is a big step for me, especially with my weird fear of being a bother. Yeah, it’s not the fear of rejection that bothers me. If someone responds with a “no,” well then they’re just not interested. But if I possibly am a bother to them? Man, that gets to me.
Today I hope to contact at least three or four more podcasts, a couple of book blogs, and more libraries. I’ve kind of exhausted the local and regional bookstores–that’s southern Arizona for you. The desert is as empty of bookstores as it is of all but the hardiest of plant and animal species.
Also today, if time allows at work, I need to get my new certification done. It’s an online test, “open book” as it were (because since it’s online, I have Google as my resource if I get stuck). I was hoping to get guidance for what to study from the current person in that position, but he hasn’t had the time to shoot me an email, I guess. That’s okay, though. I can figure it out, I’m sure. It’s just a matter of squeezing it in where I can.
Well, after a self-imposed “week off” from serious book promoting, I’m back in deep. I’ve downloaded a few podcast apps to help me narrow down my searches for podcasts to contact to talk aboutĀ Abnormal. (My Google-fu when it comes to podcasts is dismally unhelpful.) I’ve started contacting podcasts that might be willing to listen to me blather on aboutĀ Abnormal. I’ve got a list. Lists are always good, right?
Still trying to get over my frustration with finding influencers to market to. I think the podcast-finding apps will help a bit, but I’ll still have to do the “legwork” of searching each podcast, contacting them, and waiting, waiting, waiting. A few have responded with negatories, but at least it’s a response.
Book 2 is in the hands of a couple of alpha readers, hopefully to be returned in the next couple of weeks with notes on where to finesse it before I send it back to RhetAskew in November. I’ll be really glad to get that off to the publisher, because it’s the next step in getting another book published (and it’ll be another big personal accomplishment as well).Ā
As late as five or six years ago, I thought I’d never have enough “story” in my head to write a whole novel.Ā Whispers of Death started with a series of microfiction that I wrote many, many years ago. I thought hey, I can make this into something.Ā It went through many alterations and morphed into something completely different, but those microfictions were the brainchild ofĀ Whispers. At first I was overambitious and aimed for a trilogy, but in the end I decided to make it a one-shot. Nearly three years ago, that one-shot was self published on Amazon.
Within months of finishingĀ Whispers of Death, I started onĀ Abnormal. It was a strange start to a novel: I came up with the title first, then built from there. Yeah, this new series–and itĀ will be a series–started with a single word bouncing around in my noggin.
So weird. I had a fully-formed concept forĀ Whispers but no title, no character names, nada. Now I have a fuller-formed concept based on a word. Just one. Little. Word.
The moral of this rambling blog post? Don’t give up. It might take you a few years. You might have to revisit your old writing for inspiration. Hell, you might just need the right word or words to pop into your head to get you started. But don’t quit. Whatever you do, don’t quit.
You can do it. I have faith in you. If I can, you can. Just try.
For the first time in weeks, I don’t have a pressing project to do…and now, I don’t know what to do with my morning “me time.”
IĀ could work on the third book in theĀ Abnormal series…but I’m kinda stuck. Still haven’t heard back from alpha readers, so the second book is kind of on hold. I have embroidery that I could be doing, but I don’t have the design printed on stabilizer yet. I suppose I could get to work on that…
Whatever I decide to do, I need to get it started today, because I’m going on a camping trip this weekend–mundane camping for once, so no actual SCA event to go to. It should be fun, but I still like to have something to occupy myself when I’m up at nothing in the morning and can’t get back to sleep. (Which is pretty much every day.)
Hopefully I don’t get devoured by mosquitoes again. That was no bueno.
I’ve been making up graphics of quotes fromĀ Abnormal to promote the book on Instagram, and I’m debating on trying to make something out of them. Maybe post cards? I don’t know. This is an example of what I’ve been doing:
Now, most of these are square-shaped (because Instagram likes that the best), so I’d have to do some finagling in Photoshop to get them a decent postcard size, but it might be something to consider. I’ve also made a couple of bookmark-size images of quotes that I think book lovers might like, but I’ve found that it’s kind of expensive to get those printed, so I have to debate on that.
These, I think, would make cute bookmarks. I’ll have to find the site I found earlier for printing (some printing sites don’t have bookmark sizes available) to remind myself of how much these would cost. I think I can get a decent amount printed, but I want to be sure it’s worth my time and money before I invest.
I suppose I could research that kind of thing this weekend…
What I should really be doing now is getting in Photoshop and laying out the designs for my next embroideries. I have my husband’s Viking hood to finish, but first I need to make a small patch for the SCA household we’re trying to join for the Arts and Sciences household champion banner (the household we’re trying to join won the banner this year, and each year someone from the winning household makes a patch to go on the banner). I guess that will be my weekend project. That way, I kill two birds with one stone: getting the project done, and stopping the “patriarch” of the household from nagging me to get it done. The embroidery I did for Their Royal Majesties allowed me to bide my time on that one, but that stuff’s done so it’s on to the next thing on the list.
After my husband’s hood and the patch, I have one more embroidery commission in line that, thankfully, is not due until next February. That one isn’t too complicated (I don’t think), but it’s going to be large, so I’ll have to make sure I have plenty of time. I’m not necessarily worried about the time, but new commissions have a way of creeping in when I’m not expecting them.
Well, I guess I’ve decided what to do… No writing planned for this weekend, but I’ll bring some embroidery stuff to keep me occupied.
For now, that is. I still have one small project and two large projects ahead of me, though, so my reprieve is short lived.Ā
The book signing went well. I can’t remember if I mentioned that, but the bookstore sold over half of the twenty four copies I brought for them. Not too shabby for an hour and a half at a tiny store in a tiny town.
It was pretty cool signing my book for people. I signed a few copies of Whispers of Death when friends brought me theirs, but this was my first time making an appearance at a bookstore to sign a book. I enjoyed it, and I need to get busy planning how many books I need to order for bringing to Tucson Comic Con.
Sadly, I probably won’t be able to cosplay for TCC. I’ve gained too much weight. I don’t think I’ll fit any of my costumes, and there’s no way I can lose enough by then.
