A Lighter Schedule

Air Capital Comic Con, 2016

Last weekend I did my second convention this month. If you've been following my blog for a while, you'll know I had a page where I listed my upcoming events. That page has now been removed.

There are two reasons for this. The first is that the events I've been appearing at tend to have Facebook Event pages. I can share those on my Facebook Author Page, which makes promotion of said events easier. (By the way, if you haven't liked my FB Author Page, please do so. To keep up with it, consider adding it to an interest list, say, with other author pages.) Posting links on my Author Page and on my personal page is easier that updating the blog.

The other reason is that I won't be going to that many cons going forward. I'd already decided not to do out-of-town cons at the end of last year. The reason was that I wasn't selling enough books to pay my expenses. It's not quite as hard to reach that goal at a local con, but it can happen if the table is expensive enough.

Just as important is the effort (and expense) that goes into doing local cons. Much of that is keeping stock of my print books. Books have to be ordered, which takes time and money. I have to devote space here to storing them between events; not ideal for someone living minimally as I'm trying to do. I have to think about what titles to keep around and how many to have, which takes some thought and the effort of keeping track of stock.

Not that I'll be staying home forever. I am hoping to have an event or two in 2017. I might do one local con every year. But I do plan to refocus my efforts. Not doing cons ought to free up money to do online promotional efforts. I have my eye on a couple of possibilities, and I'd like to explore others. That, I think, should be a better way to reach potential readers than doing lots of in-person events.

So that's where matters stand. Again, check my FB Author Page to see where I'll be. Otherwise, I will see you when I see you!

Writing Stats for October 2016

Here's the next update on how much I've written this year.

Well, I really was interested in that new story I talked about a month ago. I wrote the whole thing in October. It turned out to be a short novel of about 48,000 words. That means that I wrote 148 pages over that month. That's about 30 pages under what I could have written if I'd made my goals every day. But I'm not unhappy about that number.

I don't know how well I'll do in November. I do have a follow-up to the new short novel ready to go. However, I have two local conventions back-to-back over the first and second weekends of the month. I know that will cost me some writing days.

Here's hoping for another month of good progress!