Impressions of Conduit in no particular order
From a business standpoint, having me attend Conduit made no sense. I added additional expenses without adding any additional revenue. From a personal standpoint, Conduit was a wonderful success. I got all the things I was hoping for. I talked to many people about my picture book project and they were all excited and interested. Several of them asked to be emailed when the book is available. I learned some more about the publishing industry. And I got to have delightful conversations with many wonderful people.
Julie Wright and I had a marvelous conversation about her projects and my projects. She has some very cool projects in the making and I’m excited to see them do well. I can’t say much more though because I don’t want to steal her thunder. Julie has published three books in the LDS fiction market and is now trying to break into the national market. I know it is just a matter of time before she makes it because her writing is delightful. She’s also a delightful person to talk to. We claimed a bench and chattered like pre-teen girls for more than an hour until Howard came to find where I was.
Julie and I then rounded up a dinner crew which included Howard, Lee Modesit, James Dashner, Eric Stone, and Jim Van Pelt. We all walked over to a nearby food court to eat and discussed the business side of writing. James is contemplating quitting his day job next year and had many questions about health insurance and money management. We also got to hear a lot about the LDS Storymaker’s conference in which both Julie and James were very involved.
Earlier in the day the convention was made delightful by the fact that Janci made it there. It was fun to stand and talk to her and share observations about the convention and some of the costumes. I wish she could have stayed longer, but her ride wanted to leave. Another fun thing is that I got to make a useful comment in a panel about getting manuscripts published. It was a tip that I got from Janci. If you use the “See Inside” feature on the Amazon.com website there is often a link for “Text Stats” which tells you the word count and all sorts of other useful data about the book you’re looking at. This is an incredibly useful tool for figuring out how long your novel should be for the market you intend to pitch it to.
Almost the first thing we did at the convention was talk for a few minutes with David Weber and his wife. He is a very nice man and his wife is delightful to talk to. I got to see pictures of their beautiful children. I would have liked more time to sit down and talk business things with them, but the only other time I saw him was at his official signing when he had a line of people 30 deep waiting for him to sign books. It was a very impressive line. I hope that some day Howard can have lines like that.
Howard is back at Conduit today. I’m here at home with the kids. I don’t mind. I had my day of fun. Now I need to cuddle all the little people who missed me yesterday. It is nice to be missed.