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.

Film Theories and Subtext: ROAD HOUSE (1989) and IMMORTALS (2011)

Once upon a time in one of my writing groups I remember my as-yet-unsold novel Battle for the Wastelands getting criticized for its lack of subtext. At the time I didn't think that criticism was particularly valid, although at this point I don't remember the details and the work has undergone many revisions in the years since then. Overall it is a good idea to imply stuff in the text that's not stated explicitly in order to add depth to your work, get your readers discussing it with each other, etc.

Here are some subtext-driven film theories I've come up with, one very recently and a few years ago. Spoilers ahead, so be ye warned...

Road House-The other night, I saw Road House when my friend Nic was doing a comedy performance with the Atlanta comedy troupe Cineprov. Although nobody in the habit of editing the Wikipeda or TVTropes pages seems to have noticed, I got the implication that Doctor Elizabeth "Doc" Clay (Kelly Lynch) is actually the ex-wife of small-town bully and petty gangster Brad Wesley (Ben Gazzara).

*She references having been married before, but it didn't work out.

*Another character refers to Wesley's wife having left him and him not taking it very well.

*Wesley's new wife or mistress (it's not clear which) looks a lot like Doc. They're both tall and blonde, although the new girl comes off as a lot ditzier and raunchier than, well, a medical doctor.

*Wesley gets REALLY twitchy when he sees Doc over at the room that James Dalton (Patrick Swayze) has rented from a local farmer, especially when she and Dalton start getting busy on the roof outside. He's watching from across the lake for an awkwardly long time and rather than deriving voyeuristic glee out of the situation, he's clearly not a happy camper.

*When Wesley and his crew show up at the Double Deuce club to make trouble, the way he and Doc talk implies they have some sort of history, or at least know each other.

*When Dalton goes to Wesley's house for the final confrontation, Doc arrives just when Dalton is going to finish Wesley after having killed or otherwise incapacitated his goons. That doesn't necessarily mean she's been there before, that she has access to the property, etc. but she would probably be familiar enough with the house and how to get there quickly if she'd lived there before. Someone online theorized that she'd been taken hostage, but Wesley's whole plan was to kill Dalton's friend/mentor Wade Garrett (Sam Elliot) and then have his goon squad waiting in the driveway with guns for Dalton to show up. Not only are all the goons there waiting for Dalton (i.e. nobody is kidnapping Doc separately), but there's no need for Doc to be present at all, since Garrett would have been provocation enough. Also, in their previous conversation, Wesley threatens Dalton, not Doc herself.

Immortals-I saw this a few years ago and although nobody seems to think this besides me, I got the distinct impression that the villainous King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke) is actually the father of the film's hero Theseus (Henry Cavill).

*Theseus is the town outcast, the product of his mother getting raped by a bunch of "peasants."

*When the slimy Lysander (Joseph Morgan) brings this up in front of Hyperion, Hyperion takes offense at his mockery of peasants, claiming that he had been a peasant himself.

*One of the seers has a Bad Future vision of Hyperion and Theseus standing together as allies, which might happen if Theseus learns Hyperion is his father and Hyperion plays his cards right--claims he didn't know Theseus's mother was pregnant, that the gang-rape story isn't actually true, etc. As a young man who grew up without a father, Theseus might be particularly susceptible to Hyperion much like how Luke was tempted by Vader's We Can Rule Together routine in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.

(In the old Expanded Universe novel The Truce at Bakura that takes place immediately after ROTJ Luke momentarily fantasizes about how he could have ruled the Empire--only to realize that even if he had fallen to temptation, him, Vader, and Palpatine would have died with the Death Star.)

Of course, the fact Hyperion killed Theseus's mother in front of him would realistically put a damper on that...

Yes, fan theories are often ridiculous and silly, but I think these have some legs.