It's Never Too Late

I realize that it's been over a month since Cancon, but I never got to write about my first book signing experience. It was held at the Inn on the Lake in Canandaigua, NY on Oct. 18th 2009. This event was the first EVER comic book convention held in Canandaigua (in case you couldn't tell that from the picture.) I'd never been to any comic conventions before so I didn't have a lot of expectations when going into this.

First of all, I was surprised at the turn out. So many people were there and the stream of people lasted from 11 to 4. The show ended at 5, but the last hour was basically a win-your-raffle-drawing-and-get-out hour. People looked like they had a lot of fun and got a lot of cool stuff.

Since I had no real expectations, I wasn't concerned about selling-out of The Vernore Gene or having too many. I did sell a few which was reassuring, but no where near the extent to which my neighboring table did. I got the word out which is the first step and that means a lot to me. Once I got home, I checked my website status and found that I had a sharp increase in hits. I attribute that to now many business cards were distributed.

I spoke to a lot of patrons about what The Vernore Gene was all about and everyone seemed generally interested. Part of my problem may have been that my neighbor's table was marketed toward small children and mine was for teens and up. Some parents asked if it would be good for a 7 year-old. I still advocate that every child's maturity is different, but I would not want a parent upset with me over something that their child reads. I attest that The Vernore Gene is still better than some kids TV shows.

Overall, I would love to do another book signing. I still stumble over my pitch to my potential readers and I think I'd have a better sell rate if I could offer The Vernore Gene in paperback. Which I will do once Book 2 is closer. So, Thank you, Mike for asking me to do this. I would definitely do it again!

A New Way to Site My Work

My old website has been... well, to be polite about it, A JERK! I decided that I can get the word out about my books just as easily with a blog (seeing how this is the new trend.) Since I'm broke, I can't just easily throw money around on a webhost or sitebuilder so I figure I might as well talk about what's going on in this head of mine. If you're curious about the old stuff or want to see what I don't have set up here on this Blog then, by all means, please feel free to check out the link under the title of this first entry.

Now, on to my first book, The Vernore Gene. It's been getting some good reviews on Goodreads.com (one of my favorite sites) and with time I'll have more and who knows, perhaps a well known author will want to read it and I'll be thrilled! As for the pitfalls of self-publishing this book, I am still very unhappy about the price I've had to deal with. Again, another reason for going to my "old" website and buying from there which is cheaper than Amazon.com or Lulu.com. A plus is that the Ebook is a great price.

For those of you who have read it or follow my fansite on Facebook (third reason for checking out my "old" website), you will know that I am working on the sequel but I've finished another unrelated book called, The Lyon's Key. Working on that is harder than expected. Talk about a part-time which doesn't pay with more than fun-times and good intentions.

And lastly, I've written a children's book which I'm calling Friendship Cheese and my illustrator/husband is drawing the pictures. I don't want to give away too much, but it's cute and in my opinion teaches kids a valuable lesson about making friends.

Thanks for looking at my new attempt at information trafficking and hopefully a better investment of my time than my "old" website.