Panel Survival, Freelancing, and Self-Publishing? What Is This?
While it’s not Turkey Day, I am thankful for having survived my Worldbuilding panel at Fandom Con. I had a shockingly excellent turnout, and no one got up and left in the middle. Thank goodness!
I actually got through my material in 10 minutes and ended up taking questions for the remaining 50. I felt a little bad at first, because I honestly thought my panel would fill the hour, but everyone had a lot of great questions! For my first panel ever I thought it was a little funny that people looked upon me like I was an authority on the topic and were extremely respectful. Not only was it a confidence boost on the outside, but in my head I was ‘Oh how little do they know! Hyuk! :B’
I guess that happens when you announce to the world you’re a writer. People you don’t even know treat you like you’re above mortal men. I’m just as big of a dork as anyone. One guy came up to me after my panel and said he went for his girlfriend that couldn’t be there and told me I said some really useful things for him to tell her. That pretty much made my day!
I’m going to revise my notes, amass more material to talk about, and perhaps present again next year.
New things are on the horizon. For starters, the wheels are set in motion for me to be gainfully employed.Gasp! It’s a freelance writing position, and now it’s a lot of hoops to jump through. Once everything gets squared away it’s off to work I go writing in my jammies.
I thought I’d have some epic thoughtful post about it. Like a cry of victory of some nature. But now it’s a matter of filling out papers, getting approval, and a lot of hurry up and wait. I will say ‘The Day I Got Paid For It’ in the terms of journalism is actually far more important than ‘The Day I Got Paid For It’ for fiction. A regular paycheck is a welcome sight, living from royalty check to royalty check isn’t.
Speaking of fiction, I’m considering my options as of late about what to do with The Darkmore Saga. I’m giving more thought to self-publishing, but there’s a couple of things making me think otherwise. One is I don’t want to accidentally sell myself short. What if I give up querying too soon? What if I didn’t look as hard as I could? What if I didn’t try all avenues? The second is I want to be able to make a living at doing this. While the potential for profit in self-publishing is infinite. That’s just it. It’s potential. Plus with the reveal that certain success stories actually paid thousands upon thousands for reviews of their stories just to generate more sales…, It seems like cheating. And I don’t want to cheat, but do I have no choice in the matter? Do I have to play the game to get into the game? Just how far do you go in making concessions for your sincerity and dignity?
Things working in the favor of self-publishing The Darkmore Saga is a rather long series. It’s also an odd series. Not a standard romance, flawed characters, as well as vampires and shifters that aren’t really vampires and shifters. The market is rife with vampire and shifter stories. One agency actually said in their guidelines: NO VAMPIRES. That’s assuring.
As it stands, I’m armed with an all new query letter and an all new outlook. But in the back of my head, while I keep knocking on doors, I’ll have that thought in my head if I’m throwing sand into the sea.
It’s all about playing the game. How do you plan to play? At what price? What would you do to win?
That is the question.
Originally published at Nomad Chronicle. You can comment here or there.