Making the Most of a Comic Convention

Posted on April 11th, 2012

A few weeks ago, Jeremy and I attended Planet Comicon in Kansas City. It was our maiden voyage as Outland Entertainment, and we have a pretty full convention schedule this year. Both of us were on the lookout for ways to improve our con experience and increase our chances of recouping some of the costs of attending.

Cons aren’t just about selling wares. They are also about networking – something that I have always sucked at because I am shy. They help you reach potential fans and give you opportunities to learn from professionals in the business. For me, it was also useful to meet other artists and writers living in our region. We sometimes feel pretty isolated living out here in Topeka.

But given the investment we made to get table space, order prints, buy business cards, and furnish our area with banners, it can’t hurt to try to make a little money as well. Here are some thoughts about how to do that.

Character Art
Apparently there has been a raging debate on this subject, but whether or not you agree that it’s okay for artists to sell images of copyrighted characters, there’s no doubt that those sell like hotcakes at conventions. Jeremy really doesn’t do this, except for commissions. He did a nice Red Sonja while we were there.

Display
We have two tall banners, which helped. Banners or any background display help draw people in because they set you apart from what’s going on behind you. Our lich king was very popular with children, and a few times the kids were strong enough to muscle their parents over to our table.

If you can, it’s better to actually hang up some pieces of your art or prints behind you. We had our prints in a box for people to flip through. This meant that only one person could look at a time. We’re going display some prints behind us at our next con.

Pinups
We sat by Kevin Keil, who is a talented artist, not to mention a very friendly person. He had lots of pinups of naked girls, and these were incredibly popular. This isn’t Jeremy’s typical subject matter, although he has done a few illustrations of topless women. Noting Keil’s success, I placed these prominently on the table, but for whatever reason, the elk-riding warrior woman with the sharp teeth wasn’t getting many buyers. Go figure. Jeremy’s thinking about doing a series of less bloodthirsty nudes to sell at our next convention.

Hubba Hubba

Books
The biggest selling item at our table was an ashcan-style book that contains the first few months of Ithaca, our upcoming webcomic. They are cheap to make and cheap to sell, and people want to read a story.

Mailing List
We offered a mailing list sign-up so that people who bought our book could get an alert when the comic goes online. Even if you don’t have a book, the mailing list is a good idea. People who didn’t want to buy something usually still wanted to sign up and read the comic for free or get updates about what Outland is working on.

Self-presentation
I have mixed feelings about this, but more than a few people advised wearing more revealing clothes and dressing up better. I will probably ditch the XL men’s shirt and remember to comb my hair next time.

On the topic of presentation, there were quite a few booth babes floating around. Honestly, I think you’d have to pretty much do the con in a pair of pasties and a top hat in order to compete with them. I saw more bare bums than a toilet seat due to our proximity to a booth that hired pantsless women to pass out comic book samples. I suppose if you can afford to hire a booth babe, you really don’t need any tips for how to make money at a comicon.

I am sure we will come up with more ways to improve our game at these cons. It’s also worth noting that they get drastically easier and more lucrative once you’ve made a name for yourself. Our issue right now is that although we are very busy with both personal and work-for-hire projects, we are toiling away in obscurity. Our webcomics are in production. I just submitted my finished novel to an editor. Jeremy’s work is appearing far and wide, but much of it is not in places where many people can access it. We just need more exposure, more publications, and more products!

For now, though, we’re small-time. And that is perfectly fine. We’ll just have to keep working hard to make money and meet people at these cons.

Here’s a link to the 2012 Outland Entertainment Convention Schedule.

Categories: Comics, News, Outland

Otherland – Writing the Future

Posted on March 19th, 2012

I just began the Otherland series by Tad Williams. So far, I am very impressed with it. It’s a meandering narrative that rotates through a half a dozen characters. As a writer, I prefer brevity and minimalism, but sometimes I crave a bloated, trippy slab of genre fiction. I am enjoying the well-developed characters and the amazing array of settings. The writing is great, too. I find myself rereading particularly inventive and vivid passages.

It’s a four book series, and each book is over 700 pages. As busy as I’ve been with freelance work, I won’t be writing a comprehensive review of this series anytime soon. For now, I just want to take a little time to discuss how Tad Williams writes about advanced technology.

The first book (City of Golden Shadow) was published in 1996. It takes place at near the end of the 21st century. As I read, I marvel at Williams’ finesse because he was able to invent absolutely realistic technological advancements. Several elements in the first book make me suspect that he is a little psychic.

Instead of mobile phones, people use all-purpose devices called “pads” that cover visual phone calls, net use, data storage, and more. These are operated via touch screen and come alive with a swipe of the finger. Sound familiar? How did Tad Williams predict this trend? In 1996, we all thought that this was a pretty hot little piece of technology:

Comes with it's own insulated carrying case!

In subsequent years, the sign of a truly cutting edge phone was how small it was. There were tablets and pads then, but they were clumsy, dopey things that required a pen tool and a special set of characters. Now, with the prevalence of tablets and iPads, it’s easy to see using devices like those pictured in Otherland. In the 90′s? That took some imagination.

Don't let it fall into your ear.

Tad Williams was also ahead of his time in predicting the spectrum crunch. But in 1996, the attitude toward the internet is that it was a force of democracy: Free flow of information, free sharing, free speech. Unfortunately, our reality is shaping up to be “pay more for crummier service.” Availability and quality of service is no longer a given or a priority, and the free lunch appears to have come to an end. Companies do not want to invest in the infrastructure to support new technologies. Jeremy and I blow our data usage allowance every single month since we stream videos and upload giant hi-res files on a frequent basis. In the world of Otherland, the protagonist (who lives in a working class neighborhood in Durban, South Africa) constantly struggles to find a way to get online. Net access is highly stratified. Although everyone has access, data use is costly and the best of the net is only accessible to rich people. Net usage is entirely pay-as-you-go. With all of the Net Neutrality stuff and the premiums being placed on bandwidth, it’s easy to see this stratification happening sooner rather than later.

Otherland also features a very realistic monetezation of internet transactions. Every interaction online is directly linked to a bank account. Every action, no matter how subtle (say turning down the sound on an advertisement) costs. Ca-ching ca-ching ca-ching. It’s easy to see this actually happening given current trends. If I live long enough to visit a VR world, dollars to donuts it’s going to feature the same incessant customer-gouging.

Perhaps most remarkable is Tad Williams’ prediction about World of Warcraft. WoW didn’t come out until 2004, but Tad Williams absolutely nails the MMORPG genre and experience. I’ve done time in WoW (my undead tank warrior is parked somewhere in the ether), so many features of his imagined game rang true to me. For example, he is right about the process of traveling in the virtual world. He correctly assumes that game creators will make players move at the same slow speed as they do in real life until they have earned enough online currency to purchase a better mode of transportation. Even the acquisition of armor is similar to how it actually worked in WoW.

Sorry, but you have to walk until you get 5000 gold.

On a related note, Williams does a great job of profiling online gamers. One particularly fearsome warrior (Thargor, the scourge of Middle Country) is actually a chronically sick teenaged boy who lives with his parents in a gated suburban community. Almost all teenagers in the book spend a great deal of time online, either playing VR versions of point-and-shoot games or simply exploring. Their parents and caretakers constantly nag them to reduce net use.

Moving on, Williams predicts the advent of specialized ads. With Google’s new privacy policy (or rather anti-privacy policy), we’re going to start getting more and more ads designed to target us. In the book, the protagonist visits an online store. She notes that the clerk, a virtual salesperson, takes the form of whoever she is selling to. Since the protagonist is a young black female, the clerk appears as a young black female. Right now, we’re in the rudimentary stages of having ads interact with us personally. But it’s easy to see how this will evolve.

The only thing really missing from Otherland is social networking and the voluntary erosion of personal privacy. Tad Williams predicted that there would be very little left unknown about the people who go online. All of their identifying information becomes public. But it’s not something that people purposefully decide to do; it’s more a cost of doing business.

Not surprisingly, everybody in Otherland uses a wall screen television/computer monitor. But these had been in rotation in the sci-fi genre for years. I think about what my family and I sat in front of back in 1996, when I was 15-16 years old. By today’s standards, that sucker was huge – at least two feet deep and heavy. Back then, we all wished for a sleek wall screen simply because moving the television was a pain in the ass.

More remarkable is the prediction of the data cloud. In 1996, I used cassette tapes (most cars were still equipped with those, and cd’s were kind of pricey). Plus, there was something special about making a mix tape, but I digress. I rarely did homework, but when I did, I didn’t save the file. I just printed it out and handed it in. When I got to college and had to use a public computer lab – around 2000 – I finally came around to the idea of storing data. I used floppy disks to save files. A stubborn Luddite, I always seemed to have problems actually getting the disks to read and print out my goddamned paper in time for class.

This is a functional cure for nostalgia.

This is nothing, though. My father wrote his dissertation on a typewriter. My stepmother’s was stored on a stack of those great big floppy disks! My parents have always been way more tech savvy than me, in part because they are so relieved that white out and these things are obsolete:

I can hold up to 4 pages of your 400 page document!

In the 90′s, it would have been incomprehensible to me that all media files would be out in the ether, storied in a virtual home that could be accessed online. Tad Williams apparently had the foresight to imagine this, and it’s all becoming true. Part of me likes it. No CD’s and tapes rattling around on the floor of my car like beans in a maraca. No more scratching and skipping. No more moving 100+ boxes of heavy, cumbersome paperbacks. Pure portability and ease of access. But I am also wary of any possessions that can so easily disappear or be erased.

In conclusion, I think it’s pretty amazing that a writer in the 90′s could be right about so many technological developments. These books may end up becoming dated, but right now, it’s easy to visualize our current technology evolving into something like what’s pictured in Otherland.

How did he do it? How do you write speculative fiction without dating your work? Williams clearly gave it a lot of consideration. He wisely kept descriptions of actual devices to a minimum, which leaves room for future readers to fill in the blanks with whatever technology is popular at the time. He also had a very good idea of the implications of all the advancements in the mid-90′s – and a knack for predicting their logical progression.

Categories: Life, Reading, Writing

Quickie: The Postmortal

Posted on February 8th, 2012

Baby likes black humor.

From Goodreads:

John Farrell is about to get “The Cure.”
Old age can never kill him now.
The only problem is, everything else still can . . .

Imagine a near future where a cure for aging is discovered and-after much political and moral debate-made available to people worldwide. Immortality, however, comes with its own unique problems-including evil green people, government euthanasia programs, a disturbing new religious cult, and other horrors. Witty, eerie, and full of humanity, The Postmortal is an unforgettable thriller that envisions a pre-apocalyptic world so real that it is completely terrifying.

The Postmortal is funny, timely, and imaginative. It’s a collage of media, including blog entries, news stories, link roundups, and official documents. I enjoyed it enough to stay up past 3am finishing it.

The book explores what would happen if there was a cure for the aging process. When the cure is first introduced, humanity undergoes a prolonged adolescence. At first, people just party and party and party. A couple of decades later, repetitive hookups and relentless barhopping begin to stale. Questions about marriage, parenthood, and the meaning of life begin to surface, although many are still resistant to growing up. Each section of the book advances a couple of decades, and each one shows a progressively more depressing, crowded world.

The Postmortal thoughtfully explores the ramifications of life without death. Here are some of the questions the author attempts to answer:

Can marriage exist without the promise of an end?
How would parenthood change? Parents no longer look (or act) older than their children. Some people have multigenerational families, or just multiple families.
How do people view their careers? Without the possibility of retirement, everyone remains in the workforce forever.
What happens to pop culture? Celebrities remain hot for eternity and never get replaced. The same crappy musician is in the Top 40 for centuries.
How do governments like China’s, who put caps on family size, cope with the burgeoning population? (Not very nicely.)
How long is the line at the bank when the population reaches 10 billion? How about the Emergency Room?
What kind of religion do people turn to when they no longer have an afterlife to consider?
When aging isn’t an option, what kind of death can these “post-mortal” people expect? (Ugly and mean.)
What happens to the environment? (You can guess.)
Is there a point when people feel that their lives are complete? (This is the protagonists’ primary concern, and it leads him down some dark avenues.)

Overall, I really enjoyed the author’s black humor and imagination.

Categories: Reading

Canned

Posted on January 25th, 2012

This is the story of how I got laid off.

It was such a typical day. I ran through the door of my office building, poured myself a cup of coffee, and talked with some coworkers for a few minutes before turning on my computer. I checked my e-mail, opened the document I was writing, and settled into work. A week before, I had met my boss. He worked from an office in Argentina, so that was the first time I met him in person. We discussed all the projects I would be taking on in the near future and made a few predictions about the latest merger. (These predictions did not include me being canned.)

I got a call requesting that I come up to the conference room. Not unusual. I jogged upstairs, swung the door open, and was surprised. The room was empty except for the person who summoned me – one of my favorite coworkers. The phone in the center of the table was on. I had no idea what was happening. I took a seat, and the phone call commenced.

Let me tell you about our stategy for continued excellence.

The HR lady on the other end of the line wished me good day. My boss joined the call. As soon as he uttered the phrase “continued excellence,” I got the idea. It was like being kicked in the face. My coworker, bless her, left to find me a box of Kleenex. The rest of the call lasted two or three minutes. My boss finished. The HR lady let me know when I would have to clear out my office and when my last severance check would be mailed. By this time, I was lying on the conference table weeping. What would I do for money? How could I support my family? How could I ever get health insurance again in an economy like this? I was free falling.

And then the HR lady said that there was help for me. Thank god, because I sure felt like a wreck.

She proceeded to read off an 800 number. I could call it and speak to a trained counselor who would help me with my “difficult transition.” I stopped weeping and gave the phone a dirty look. Seriously?

I was allowed to leave for the rest of the day, so I did. I drove home in a fugue state. My ears made a sound like wind. I called my husband. He was like, Well, you hated that job! Chin up! Be happy! Now you can do what you really wanted to do and screw technical writing.

I agreed with him, but I still felt hurt in a fundamental way. It’s one thing to fantasize about leaving a job that you don’t feel fits you very well. It’s something else entirely to have the choice taken from you with an impersonal rejection.

That was in November. The first weeks were rough. I worked hard, diving into a big writing project and doing my best to keep up a routine as if I were still employed. Every few days, I’d be gripped with fear that my family would starve, get sick while uninsured, or sink deep into debt. Then I would peruse job openings. Most of them filled me with dread.

I knew what I wanted to do. I have known it all along. I knew that anything else would make me very unhappy. I had never felt right in my old job, and that’s probably why I got canned. My heart wasn’t in it. I was always counting down the minutes to five o’ clock and praying for Fridays. Each time I worked on a new version of a manual, I experienced a deep sense of futility. I knew that I would be rewriting the same document in a few months, the next time a new feature was added. I knew that every day I spent doing something I didn’t care about was a day that I wasted.

Around the end of December, my fear started to subside. I opened up to the possibility that my husband and I would be able to support ourselves and our daughter with profits from our company. Jeremy had been running Outland while I was working at Motorola. He did a fine job, too, so we had plenty of work coming in.

Being laid off deals a grave amount of hurt and disruption to one’s life. So many people have had to endure this humiliation and deal with the resulting financial damage since this recession began. I don’t think it’s usually a blessing, but in my case, it was.

I work hard every day on jobs of my own and jobs that people hire me to do. If anything, I work much harder than I did when I knew that a fat paycheck would sail into my bank account every two weeks. For the first time, I am doing exactly what I want to be doing. I no longer entertain depressing thoughts about the futility of life or meting out days in coffee spoons. Doing a job that fits you right can bring an incredible amount of peace. I only wish I had figured this out sooner.

This used to be me.

Categories: Life, Outland, Writing