Summer and Fall 2021 Convention Schedule (So Far)

Given how lucrative conventions are for me--one convention's profits equate to several months' Amazon royalties--and COVID seems to be waning, I'm getting events lined up for this summer and fall. This is still in-progress, so I might come back and edit this post as necessary. Hopefully there won't be any COVID spikes or political nonsense that could interfere...

Confirmed Events

June 5, 2021: The Middle Georgia Comic Convention in Macon, GA. I want to expand outside of the Atlanta market without hotel expenses cutting into my profits, so a one-day event an hour and a half or so outside of Atlanta is just perfect. I made sure to contact some of the local media in advance--the newspaper did a preview story (and the editor came by to purchase two books), while the local TV station announced it was coming and then interviewed one of my Horror Writers Association Atlanta Chapter colleagues. I made a decent profit and got 17 new e-mails for my newsletter, which will be helpful in the long run.

July 10, 2021: Comics and Collectibles Show in Braselton, GA. I think a lot of the people involved in Toylanta 2021 were involved in this one and Braselton is convenient to both heavily-populated Gwinnett County and Athens, the home of the University of Georgia. And cheap table cost too. :)

August 6-8, 2021: Atlanta Comic-Con-This is the big kahuna--I made all the money I mentioned above when I split the table cost with C.S. Johnson and I've got a partner for this one as well, fellow Atlanta Horror Writers Association member Venessa Giunta. And last time I only had two books, The Thing in the Woods and The Best of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Vol. 2, the latter of which I straight-up sold out on. This time around I'll have seven books available, including the Thing sequel The Atlanta Incursion (great for two-for-one deals) and the completely new (to ACC) steampunk Wastelands series. I'm also going to set Thing and Battle for the Wastelands e-books to $0.99 and hand out a lot of cards with QR codes linking to them, a strategy that has ginned up e-book sales before.

Also, Cineprov, an Atlanta film comedy troupe whose membership overlaps significantly with Myopia Movies, may be performing there as well. Come for the humor, stay for the products. :)

August 14, 2021: FarleyCon-I found out about this event at Toylanta in mid-March. Although I'm leery of out-of-state events due to hotel costs eating my profits, this event takes place in a suburb outside of Chattanooga, pretty close to the Georgia line. Table costs were pretty low, although owing to the distance mileage is going to be an expense.

August 15, 2021: Atlanta Comic Convention-This is a relatively short event relatively close to Emory University. I've been there a couple times before, but this time I've got a lot more stuff than last time.

October 2, 2021: NextChapterCon-This event is dedicated to independent authors and books solely. I attended two previous events and served as a panelist on multiple panels, so it's good to carry on the tradition. Furthermore, this year's event will be in Dalton rather than Ringgold, meaning hopefully a larger audience given how it's a larger community to start with and Dalton State College is located there..

In-Process

October 8-10, 2021: Monsterama-This is another relatively new convention. It's a bit of a hike from my day job and so last time I dawdled so much that I ended up not being able to get a table when I finally decided to apply. However, Toylanta showed that going straight from work to a convention that officially starts Friday night in the northern suburbs is completely doable.

THE ATLANTA INCURSION Cover Art Phase #1 and Phase #2

Although my first novel The Thing in the Woods stands on its own, most of my ideas for standalone stories tend to sprout sequels. Thing is no different. I've been working on its sequel, The Atlanta Incursion, for several years now and I intend to independently publish it in the next few weeks. The complicating factors are that I'm independently republishing Thing due to changes at the publisher and waiting for the cover art to be done so I can have a full cover designed. Only after that can the print and e-book be created.

In the meantime, here's the first phase of the cover by Matthew Cowdery:

And here's the second:

I sent him some clarifications about what the Grays' eyes, guns, stargate, and other technologies should look like and he's working on them now. If you want an idea of what the finished cover will look like, here's some previous work he's done for me:

Battle for the Wastelands

"Son of Grendel" (forthcoming)

Second full novel (tentative title "Serpent Sword")

Digital Fiction Publishing's Great December 2018 Publishing Binge

As most of you all know, I have a Lovecraftian horror novel out called The Thing in the Woods through a small press called Digital Fiction Publishing, which has also published (or re-published) many of my short stories. Late last year I sent them the sequel, The Atlanta Incursion. Although I haven't gotten an official yes or no on it, the boss did like the stock art I sent him to use for the cover, so I'm optimistic. There's not really a regular release schedule, but last December the company went on a binge. Six books, more if you count the fact that a whole series got released (or re-released).

(In the interest of full disclosure, the company operates on a revenue-sharing pool, so I benefit whenever somebody purchases one of these. That said, I haven't read any of them yet, so I'm not slanting things one way or the other.)

The Invisible City by Brian K. Lowe: This is the first in a series of three books--the whole series was ultimately released by DFP and you can get the whole box set here. Basically in a future where humanity has been conquered by aliens, a man ends up getting transported one million years into the future. As one might expect, trouble ensues. Several of the reviews compare it to the John Carter books by Edgar Rice Burroughs, although I haven't had the chance to read it.

Home by Carson Buckingham: A woman inherits a farmhouse and upon taking possession of it, begins to mutate. And things seem to get weirder from there. I haven't read it, but based on the reviews there's a good bit of Irish mythology in there (perhaps in the vein of Raymond Feist's Faerie Tale, which is a pretty good book) and one of the reviewers even puts it on the same level as Stephen King.

Disappearance by Trevor Zaple: The Rapture (or something very similar) happens, but instead of a Christian end-times scenario coming to pass, instead we end up with the remaining powerful people o the pre-apocalypse world fighting over the remains. Shades of Avengers Endgame perhaps? It looks a bit more like Dean Koontz's The Taking, if the aftermath was the main focus rather than the apocalypse itself.

Invasion at Bald Eagle by Kris Ashton: Hippies! A sex cult! An alien invasion! This book has it all, and it sounds like a comedy. Once I clear out my KU library (more on that below), I think I'll definitely check this one out.

The Evil in the Tower by Debra Robinson: Ghost stories, possessions, and a lengthy feud between two families. Haunted-house stories aren't my cup of tea usually, but it does have a good-looking cover. I'm getting a bit of a Crimson Peak vibe off the whole thing.

Samurai by Timothy Manley: I've read the beginning of this one. It looks begins like an alien-invasion novel from the perspective of a Native American-level civilization encountering a spacefaring society, but based on the cover art and broader description it seems like a space opera. I'm reminded of the novel Scythian Dawn, which features extraterrestrials deliberately preventing the development of urban civilization on Earth...until some steppe hordes manage to steal one of their ships. :)

I've got a Kindle Unlimited account so I can read these novels without buying them outright, but KU only lets you borrow ten books at a time and I've got 10 already. One of the ten is Powerlines, another monster-in-the-woods story that's also from DFP. I'll definitely check some of these out when I have more time, especially Invasion at Bald Eagle.

Book Review: Blood Street (2018)

My Lovecraftian horror novel The Thing in the Woods was published by Digital Fiction Publishing, a small press headquartered in Canada. Although DFP ultimately closed its doors, it released a number of other books, one of which was Carl Alves' Blood Street.

I checked the novel out via Kindle Unlimited and burned through it pretty quickly. How did I like it? Well, here's the review. 

The Plot

A member of a Philadelphia crime family is killed (not just killed, but straight-up butchered) and his mob boss starts hunting for the killer in order to make them pay. There's one small problem--the killer isn't human. The killer is in fact the reckless and arrogant vampire Alexei, part of a clique of bloodsuckers who've taken up residence in Philadelphia. Soon the FBI gets involved, as do other vampires who don't want Alexei's idiocy to jeopardize their secret existence.

Shenanigans ensue (as author Mary SanGiovanni's cosmic horror podcast would put it) as blood runs in the streets and alliances are formed and broken. Who will live and who will die?

The Good

*I like the overall concept. I'm only aware of one vampire story involving the Mob--the film Innocent Blood, which I've never seen. This story, however, is much more complex, with Mafia, federal, and vampire factions all pursuing their own agendas and working with and against in each other in different combinations of alliance and betrayal.

*The book is a quick and entertaining read. I definitely enjoyed it. And there's room for more stories set in this universe if Mr. Alves chooses to go that route.

The Bad

*Since Alves holds to a tight third-person POV, other characters are well-described in terms of their appearance but the POV characters themselves are much less so. I'm not sure what a lot of them look like.

*The ruler of the vampire brood and the Mafia boss both don't seem particularly decisive in dealing with dangerous or idiotic subordinates. A lot of trouble could be avoided if they were a bit more ruthless with their underlings.

*A character makes a fairly drastic decision toward the end of the book, but it's not well-foreshadowed. And there's another character involved in said decision--their role in this decision doesn't really gel well with his characterization earlier.

*Per the above, the ending felt a little bit rushed.

The Verdict

A fun Kindle Unlimited read. Very absorbing. 9.0 out of 10. I would definitely recommend it.

After-Action Report: Days of the Dead Atlanta, 2019

The weekend of January 25 to January 27, I attended the Days of the Dead Atlanta horror convention at the Sheraton Atlanta Hotel in Atlanta, GA, splitting a table with fellow dark fiction author T.S. Dann. I sold 24 copies of The Thing in the Woods and six copies of The Best of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Vol. 2. After running all of my expenses (costs of the table, per-unit book costs, snacks, a Lyft ride) and gross revenue, I made around $180 profit. In terms of single-event profitability, this one places second to the Atlanta Comic-Con in July 2017 and ahead of the Atlanta Sci-Fi and Fantasy Expo I attended in March 2017. This one is a definite go-back, especially once my upcoming horror-comedy Little People, Big Guns is released by Deadite Press in November 2019.

(Considering how there aren't a lot of conventions in December and I've got a lot of RL obligations that month, if Days of the Dead Atlanta 2020 is in January that might be the first event where I sell LBPG.)

In addition to earning money, I also got 31 e-mails for my mailing list, which will come in handy when my military sci-fi novel Blood on the Border, the slightly more science-fiction oriented Thing sequel The Atlanta Incursion, and LPBG come out.

(Only LPBG has a definite release date--Blood will be published independently hopefully sometime over the summer and I haven't heard back from the publisher yet on TAI. However, I've got high hopes for them all.)

Based on attending this convention and previous events, here's my advice for aspiring authors:

*Always split the table at a convention if you can. One reason that I made so much profit (as opposed to just gross revenue, although that too was pretty high) at Atlanta Comic-Con was because I split the table with C.S. Johnson. The table cost at Days of the Dead was high, but fortunately Dann was able to shoulder half of it. If he hadn't been able to attend, I would have barely recovered my expenses--and that doesn't take it into account that some people who came over to check his stuff out ultimately bought some of my stuff instead or as well.

*Take the time to network. I met Jeff Strand and his wife artist Lynne Hansen as well as John Wayne Comunale there. The Strands informed me there's a Horror Writers Association chapter that just formed in Atlanta that, in addition to networking opportunities at meetings, intends to set up a table members can sell from at the Decatur Book Festival. Considering how I sold a fair number of copies at the DBF at the Atlanta Writers' Club booth, another table someone else is paying for that I can put shifts in sounds awesome.

*Have more than one product to sell if possible. 20% of my profit for the event came from the Heroic Fantasy Quarterly anthology, which wasn't yet published when I had my first book signings and convention appearances. As I publish more and more books, I anticipate my revenues will rise. Someone who isn't interested in the Lovecraft-type horror of Thing might like the Dungeons and Dragons and/or Conan the Barbarian type stories in the Heroic Fantasy Quarterly anthology or the ridiculousness and Crosses The Line Twice of LPBG.

*Always bring your lunch. Leaving the table to get food will not only cost you potential sales (since you're not at the table to sell to passers-by), but you'll spend money on the food. Getting a sandwich from the hotel Starbucks at the Atlanta Comic Convention in December 2017 cost me $6.50, equivalent to the profit of selling one copy of The Best of Fantasy Quarterly Vol. 2. I'm not recommending being a total cheapskate, especially if there's something new and good to eat at the convention, but remember everything has a cost.

*Always have lots of bookmarks and other swag to hand out. I handed out hundreds of VistaPrint large-size cards (that can be used as bookmarks) that Digital Fiction Publishing designed for me. This cards have a QR Code linking to a page with links to the various places my fiction is available online. People who weren't able to purchase my books at the convention will be able to do so using the QR code on the card--and be able to purchase other short stories, novellas, etc. that simply don't exist in print form. Even if they don't know how to use QR codes or simply don't bother with them, the card has the title, author, publisher, etc. and can remind them to look it up. Handing out the cards could generate additional sales for me for days, possibly weeks, afterward.