Two Weekends, Two Cons

So, I had two local conventions on my calendar this month, back to back.

The first came on November 16, the Air Capitol Comic Con. It snowed that morning, but fortunately I had to pick up Kelly Peterson in northeast Wichita. That kept me on city streets, which were easier to navigate.

Attendance was good, in spite of the cold and snow. I saw some people I hadn't seen in quite some time, as well as some familiar faces. I sold 23 books, including my first three ebook sales at an event. (I'll have more on this system next month.) There was also a writing panel that I took part in, along with another local SF/F author and two comics writers. Our moderator wasn't able to make it, so I volunteered to moderate for him. I think the panel went well.

I let Kelly have space on my table to do commission drawings on site and sell them to earn some money. He was busy pretty much the whole day. In fact, I'm pretty sure he was at my table more than I was. I'm glad he was able to make money. It was good to have him around.

The Emerald City Steampunk Expo came around the following weekend, starting on Friday, November 21. Like last year, I had a table in the dealer room.

I saw plenty of familiar faces, including those I'd just seen on the 16th. I also met some new people. The sales numbers were fascinating. I didn't have that many overall sales, but most of those sales were for multiples of books. In other words, there weren't all that many single-book sales. Because of that, I managed to get 43 books sold. That's the most books I've ever sold at a con!

I didn't away from my table as much as I'd have liked, but I did get to look around the con hotel, the Broadview, a little. Most of you may not know, but I wrote a book about the Arkansas Valley Interurban 15 years ago. Some of the backers of the AVI had the Broadview built. The AVI passenger depot in Wichita stood between the hotel and the river, and for a time the AVI used the Broadview as a freight station.

The year in events isn't over for me just yet. In about a week and a half I'll travel up to Topeka for the author fair on December 6. There's also more writing stats and books coming out, so stay tuned to the blog!

Site Update

I've made an update to my SF/F Books page.

I have so many books out that it seemed to me that the page was getting a bit unwieldy to use. My various series were mixed with non-series books. The books were in order of release, which would make it hard if you came here looking for the first book in a certain series.

So, I've added pages to the site for each of those series. The link to each of those pages is at the top of the SF/F Books page. The first book in each series is at the top of each page, with next one below it, and so on. If there are any compilation volumes, that will also be noted at the top of the page, with links to them a little farther down each page.

I hope this is helpful in finding your favorite book or series. I've written quite a few Defender books, so I worry that the series might need more than one page!

Let me know if there's anything else you think I could do to make my blog more user-friendly.

Writing Stats for October 2014

Here's the tenth "writing stats" post of the year, letting you know how my writing output is progressing.

I had some off days this month, but when I was on, I was fairly productive. I wrote 148 pages this month. That's 10 more pages than last month, but still quite a bit lower than I should have accomplished, all things considered. However, October is (I believe) my second-most productive month this year.

Next month I have two Wichita cons to do. One won't get much in the way of writing, but the other one will. I'll also be testing something; more details on that later. Last, for those of you taking part in NaNoWriMo, good luck!