Stefan Ellery

Another Day Of Promotion

I spent the day at Classics on Kent with Sara Walker selling and promoting our books.  What is Classics on Kent? It is a car show that has been around for about 12 years.

The downtown is closed off and classic cars are brought in by individuals to show off their automobiles to the public. It is a very busy event and they had over 800 participants.

It’s a car show, why bring books? It was Sara`s idea and a good one to. I was lucky that she shared a table with me. A car show brings out many people and in the case of Lindsay you will find many cottagers. At first we weren't doing so well, it was still early in the morning. No one came to look at our books, but as the heat rose more people approached  our table and we started selling books. 

Primarily the Anthology Kawartha Lakes Stories sold the best. Of course it would, its local has a local name, with local authors and stories that take place in the region. People tend to buy local even if it is a book in a car show.

We also manged to sell our individual books. I enjoyed it when one person came to the table looked at A burden of choice and said “Stefan Ellery I have heard of that author”. She heard of me? How?  I’m not famous, haven’t sold a large number of books and I am self published. She wasn’t able to tell me where she had heard of me. That really doesn’t matter. What matter is that somewhere at sometime I did something right to get myself noticed.

The scifi fantasy convention wrapped up 5pm today, the crowd of people I had passed dwindled down near the end. I went back later in the evening to the convention space to see empty halls and closed rooms, tables were cleared from public spaces.  I couldn’t help but feel the loss of the event and feel a little lonely without the large grouping of people.

I’ll be heading home in the morning and the event will still be in my mind through my two hour bus trip, it won’t be enough to sort through all the information and knowledge given to me through the panels, or consider how ever author I met showed how they cared for each other and aspiring authors.

Unlike last year, I was less introverted and manged to talk to other attendees, panelists and the Guest of Honors. I even attended an Edge book launch for The Occasional Diamond Thief by J. A. McLachlan and Blood Matters by Aviva Bel’Harold. Both Jane and Aviva were excellent hosts and took the time to talk to each of their guests, I enjoyed the experience and even won a Marsh mellow and a Starbucks card. I used up the card today and I know my son will be all over the gun, I’m sure I’ll get in trouble by my wife once the marshmallows start flying.

I came away with autographs from many authors including Charles De Lint’s who I was hoping to meet again after more then twenty years when I received my first authors autograph. Douglas smith was also at the con this year and I was able to tell him how much I enjoyed reading The Wolf at the End of The World. I also picked up his book Playing the Short Game. I’ll use the advise to in the book to help me sell my short stories.

I had brunch with Julie Czerneda who happened to remember my name from when I received her autograph. Rather than the group of us asking her questions, Julie started the conversation by asking us questions. We had a fun moment when Julie noticed that we all had a free copy of Anne Bishop’s novel Written in Red. We stood the books up and then Julie took a picture of us with the books. Before we were done she called Anne over to the table and took another picture with Anne included.

I also managed to meet my friend Karen Dales who I rarely get to see in person I think I haven’t met her twice in the same year. She also had her new book Thantos in the dealers room.

Tomorrow, I will be heading out to the Ad Astra Scifi  and Fantasy convention I’ll be getting up early and thanking my wife for driving me their. It’s so much better than taking four different buses from cottage country to get there. If I didn't have a fear of driving long distances things would be so much easier, I’ll talk about my fear in another post.

This will be my second time going to the convention and I am sure I will enjoy it again. I am looking forward to the Writing Diversity workshop by Leah Bobet and all the panel discussions. Charles De Lint one of my favorite authors will be there, I had met him once when I was eighteen, now I am middle aged. I don’t think i will be star struck, at least I hope not. I don’t think that will be a problem, after all I never acted that way when I gave Kenny Rogers a bill for renting a TV. 

I haven't been writing as much as I should. This can be seen easily with the lack of my blog posts. Its not just the blog, but also with my stories.  It isn't writers block because my mind is always swimming with thoughts and ideas of new stories to write.

Sometimes I want to blame it on my shift starting in the middle of the day and ending in the evening. The excuses keep building in my head. I'm to tired, I want to do something mindless, I don't know where to start. That's all they are just excuses to feed my procrastination. Why should I use the excuse of being tired from stopping me to do something I enjoy,something that also helped through a bad time.

Doing something mindless leads me either to sitting in front of a screen watching animes or playing Guild Wars, except even a game makes you work and spend a lot of effort trying to reach a virtual goal and the anime I watch is all subtitle so I do a lot of reading. It certainly not mindless, but the amount of time I have put into these two forms of entertainment would be better used for my writing.