Monday, July 25, 2011

The weekend Fandom

Fandomfest was this weekend. For those of you who missed it, it was HOT. I do not mean that in the good way either. For some reason the part of the hotel that the Lit track was in was unbearably HOT. I am not talking about in the 80s or something it had to be somewhere in the mid 90's on Friday night. At least it did start to cool towards the end of the weekend but not by much.

Stephen Zimmer put on a heck of a lit track even with getting saddled with extra duties at the last minute. There were not a lot of sales. We had hoped for more but alas they did not come to us.

I did, despite the heat and the lack of sales, have a lot of fun. My wife was able to join me and it was the first con she was able to attend. She had a blast. We shared a table with two wonderful ladies from the Southern Indiana Writers, T Lee Harris and Marian Allen.

I got a chance to meet Travis McBee, one of our own authors from Hydra Publications. His book, Bridgeworld, was our newest release and we hosted a book launch for it on Saturday afternoon. I had never done anything like that before nor had I attended a book launch. So having no idea on what to do we had cookies and water. Luckily the panel rooms were for the most part air conditioned so the panels were well attended.

I made it a point to attend all of the book launches this past weekend. I did this for a number of reasons. The first of which was to figure out what in the world to do for mine, but the Main reason was to help support the people who are becoming or are my friends. Yeah I know that sounds cheesy but it is true. If there is one thing that i am it is a STRONG supporter of my friends and also of authors in general. I opened the bookstore for a simple reason. I love to read. I will support any author to help them keep writing. They deserve it.

The first of these book launches was for the authors of Blackwyrm. They didn't just launch one title, no that wasn't good enough for Dave. The good people over at Blackwyrm launched twelve titles. It was phenomenal. I actually have reviews on the back of two of the new books. The second book in Brad Parnels Gwerinatha series Chaos' Corner and Body and Sold, the second in the Paum trilogy,  by William Levy both carry my personal seal of approval.

The next launch I attended was for Loconeal publishing. They had three titles launched including the new book by Ren Garcia. The other two were a new one by Gary Wedlund and their Annual Anthology, Loco-thology. It was a good event and we had a lot of fun at it. They are also getting ready to re-release the Shandahar series. Keep eyes here for more information about that.

Denise Verrico was up next and she graciously let Bertena Varney sit in as a launchie. Both of these ladies are wonderful.

The last launch was for Michael West. His new book Cinema of Shadows was launched by Seventh Star Press. He put on an entire production for this turning the room into a theater complete with red carpet. It was a great time and if you havent checked out the trailer for his book you should. It sets the bar high for the rest of us.

All in all it was a good weekend spent with friends and making some new ones.

 

The view from here

Starting today you are going to get to see the world from my point of view. Be warned, this is a scary place inside my head. I tend to look at things differently.

I am going to be honest and upfront with you. This is a blog about my store and publishing house. Yes I will of course be in favor of anything happening with said store and press. It's a given. With that being said I will be talking about other things of note such as other stores, small presses and of course books and authors.

I do not mind criticism at all so if you have something to say please say it. Post a comment below the post or email me. I am not necessarily the best person to keep up with with emails and such, I will try but if I don't get back to you in a day or two don't take it personally. I am just bad about staying in contact. Hopefully I will get better at it. We can hope right?

I might, if you ask nicely, talk about my own writing. That is what miserable excuse of writing I do when I get a chance to do it. It's nothing much now but I hope to see if I can develop it further.

Again, you have been warned and for those of you who are brave enough and are sticking around. Welcome.