Marc's comments (member since Aug 08, 2008)

Marc's comments from the Goodreads Sci-Fi/Fantasy Authors group.

If he's interested in talking to you he'll hang around while you give your spiel to the others.

Different cons have different foci. Some are literary, and the people there go for the books. Others are more focused on media or gaming, and those are not necessarily good places to be. I've been selling my books at cons for the past several years, at many different cons. Originally I was a guest author at I-Con on LI, but they became more media oriented and the author track got trimmed down. Now I go as a dealer, and last year I sold over 100 books, 40 of which were either written by me or had one of my stories in them. The others were books from my publisher not written by me. A wide variety is a good thing. I've met a lot of authors who just carry their own books and they usually don't do well. I expanded my collection and eventually created a business as a bookseller to cover a wide variety of book readers. I even sell westerns and autobiographies at cons.
My display is almost 80 titles laid out on red cloths, but the biggest draw I have is myself (and my daughter), calling the people in, and talking to them at length about the books. If I can get them to stop and actually pay attention to me and the books I can often talk them into getting something. If not, have a card or bookmark in hand with some information for them to take away with them. And always be standing up! Always be looking at them, to see who gives your books anything more than a glance and be prepared to give them your pitch instantly.

What sort of help?

I was in Collingswood NJ last week selling books at their Book Festival. Today I find my reviews are being followed by a man from southern NJ. Everything builds on everything else.

Don't talk about yourself, talk about your book. I don't like asking people to become a fan either, and in fact I never have, but my books are absolutely fabulous, all Echelon books are, and they deserve an audience. You the reader deserve a good book, one that's worth the read. It's a match made in Heaven.

That sort of thing.

Tod wrote: "I liked your posts Marc. I'll keep checking them out.

Thanks"

Thank You, Tod. I'm just one of several authors on the Echelon Shorts board, though, so I don't know how often I'll be posting there. I have my own blog at http://marcvunkannon.blogspot.com, as well as my myspace blog and my twitter account, none of which link so I don't always have the same content everywhere! I hope you'll check out my website as well.

I would like to let everyone know that my latest short story is now available from Echelon Shorts. I also posted a blog about it today, and I hope you'll check out the blog and hopefully the story as well.

http://echelonpressshorts.wordpress.com

I have a second blog up there from last month, too, but that's on the bottom of the pile.

The best luck we writers need or can have is for others to get our work, read it, love it, and enthuse about it to others who haven't heard of us before.

I follow the Girl Genius comic, but that's the only one.

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com

Diana wrote: "Actually I love sites like this one because I learn about books that I wouldn't find by walking in a bookstore and looking at the front table. a NYT bestseller isn't necessarily worth the coin. "

Unfortunately, publishers pay for the placement, the books don't make it to the table by the entrance by merit.

A book is copyrighted when you finish it, not when you publish it. You're an author when you finish it, not when you've published it.

D.B. wrote: "Marc, I know. Blurring can be good. There are defined genres, sub-genres, and new ones rising! Maybe I will write a story that contains ALL genres, LOL!"

My latest novel is a futuristic (Lunar colonies) paranormal (werewolves) mystery with romantic elements. I'm trying.

D.B. wrote: "All these comments are great, thanks. I feel the line is often blurred. I just wrote a piece that I thought was urban fantasy, but have come to learn that it is science fiction, or science fictio..."

I blur it on purpose, and I think most character-oriented fiction will blur these lines, since characters do or should transcend the limits of genre.

There are several stories that focus on towns and/or people who are completely average in every respect. I was just reading Good Omens The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch and the town of Lower Tadfield comes to mind. Since averages are mathematical constructs, i.e., fictions, a person who matched them exactly would be, well, fictional.

Actually it's the lack of elements that makes books seem unrealistic. Proper characters are 3-D, they transcend the bounds of genre. Not that real characters will necessarily change the genre of the story on you. I was writing about werewolves before, and I'm still writing about werewolves now. It's still a paranormal, but now it's love and adventure instead of mystery and horror. The important thing is that it all hangs together. Some of those elements may need their own book to be properly used.

I own the series, the movie, all Buffy seasons, all Angel seasons, Dr. Horrible, and I get the comics.

What do you write?

As long as humans don't change the crap they go through won't change either, just the circumstances. Look at Joss Whedon's Firefly, or some of Heinlein's work, where settlement of frontier planets involves a reversion to frontier behavior and techniques.

Historical futurism is common enough, with those writers who see cycles in human behavior. Asimov's Foundation trilogy is pretty much a recap of the Middle Ages.

Ellen - my characters write the story for me all the time. I treat it as the sign of a good book when the characters do that. My own last novel morphed on me as yours did. I started it as a mystery and it became a paranormal with romantic elements. That's what's so much fun about writing, you never know where it'll go.

Kevis wrote: "So long as your story is well written and wonderfully told, readers will come."
No they won't. The most wonderfully-written book in the world will get no readers if it's kept at the bottom of a well. Written, told, edited, printed, jacketed, stocked, advertised, promoted, and hand-sold, then yes, maybe you'll get some readers. Good books get what they deserve no more than good anythings else.

I've spent some enjoyable, though ultimately wasted, time discussing a similar thing in a horror group - what is the definition of horror?
There is an interesting book on the subject of horror by Noel Carroll called The Philosophy of Horror. I used this book as the basis of my term paper when I was taking an aesthetics course. His position was that horror is composed of a) fear, and b) disgust. The tricky part to me was the disgust element. I don't want to waste the time of this thread on that subject (the origins of disgust sre tricky), but I will say that thanks to his book and my work with it, I concluded that the only real monsters are based on humans, which is a point I've used in my books, by the way.