It's been a busy streak of weeks. As you can see from my event list on the side over there --> , I'm in the midst of 11 weekends in a row. June 7&8, I'm very much looking forward to you. That said, I'm also having fun meeting readers and making book sales. It's fun to write books and all, but it's also nice to pay bills and that means getting my books out there for people to find.
Events have been going fairly well, my favorite for the year so far was Viking Fest in Whitestown Indiana. I had a fun booth neighbor and other than some light rain on Friday, the rest of the weekend was gorgeous. Books were sold, beer was imbibed, acts were enjoyed, and I got to introduce my newest little chicken into the world of meeting people and traveling in the car. Peep did well.
My least favorite event of the year was this past weekend at the Southern Indiana Renaissance Faire. This was a new to me event and pretty much all the things went wrong. I've been doing events for ten years and hands down, this is was the biggest mess I've ever had to deal with. Yep, it even beats the year we had hail at Viking Fest making it so cold that I didn't realize I'd broken my finger loading out until later during the car ride home when my hand thawed out, and the Sturgis event where the organizer thought it would be a great idea to place the author tent at the far end of the field with nothing else around to make it a 'destination' for patrons to venture over to. Hint: they did not venture over.
Rather than rant about all the bad things, I'll skip to the star of the show.
It rained intermittently for four days. When I got there to set up, it looked like this:
By the Sunday, the area in front of my booth looked like this:
We could not drive in to load out and so all the vendors had to carry or cart their items through 6 inch puddles and shoe sucking mud all the way to the parking lot to get out of there.
Having done shows for ten years, I'm prepared for a lot of things, but this was a challenge I'd be happy to never repeat.
Onward to this month's Insecure Writer's Support Group question: What are your greatest fears as a writer?
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1. A reader discovering a plot hole or inconsistency that I missed. This is what my brain tells me is going to be revealed every time someone starts a conversation with #3 on this list.
2. Inadvertently reusing a name from another one of my novels. With 18 books currently published and several more in the works, this one becomes more challenging every year. Is this actually a huge deal? Probably not, but in my head it is.
3. Anytime someone comes up and says: "I read your book." Readers have no idea what kind of anxiety this lead in instills in a writer. And? Did you hate it? Loved it? Give me a little something with those words so I can either relax or brace myself. 99% of the time, it's good things, but that line still makes me wince.
