Yesterday when I picked up the mail, it included an envelope hand-addressed to By Light Unseen Media. Usually, those are related to IPNE business, but this was from Louisiana. When I opened it, I was amazed to find that it was an order for a signed copy of Mortal Touch. I haven’t sold many copies from my website, and most of those were PayPal orders. So that went off today by Priority Mail. In the same batch of mail, I found the check from Broad Universe for the copy that the BU table sold at ConBust. Wow, that was fast! So I had checks to deposit today.
Before ConBust, I was contacted by a new store in Fitchburg, The Rabbit Hole, inviting me to do an author event at their store. They’d found me on BookTour.com, where I’d listed that I’d be appearing at One Love Cafe and ConBust. We’ve been e-mailing back and forth, and the person there who handles events, Lynn Dembek, said she was at the store on Tuesdays. So, I decided I’d stop by in person, see the store and talk about doing an event, rather than just keep on e-mailing. I went over this afternoon and now I have a date–Thursday, June 4th. The City of Fitchburg has something called “First Thursday” where they block off Main Street and businesses hold special events, sidewalk sales and so on. I’m going to do a talk about vampire fiction and how it evolved, tentatively titled, “Before Twilight,” and I may be doing Tarot readings afterwards.
You see, my take on it is that book signings and even readings don’t really amount to much unless an author is a big name. People might come to a reading and listen, but they probably won’t buy books, and they won’t come to a plain book signing unless the author is a celebrity whose autograph would be in demand with or without a book attached. So, I’m planning events which are entertaining in their own right, and aren’t all about me. I told Lynn that one thing I’ll do is pull all the vampire books in the store and talk about where they fall in the context of vampire lit. My idea is that the event should benefit the store as much as me–especially an independent bookstore that’s just starting out.
The Rabbit Hole took two copies of Mortal Touch on consignment and some of my promo materials, too. I always have a box of books in the car with me, because I keep running into these opportunities.
The Rabbit Hole also does Open Mike nights, which apparently have been pretty popular. I might drop into one or two of those and read some flash fiction or something–and give it a real theatrical turn. You should see their spiral staircase up to the second floor, btw–it is to die for!
Sales have picked up this month. In the first seven days of April, I’ve sold four Kindle editions, a paperback edition on Amazon, one direct sale paperback edition, and now two copies to The Rabbit Hole. I just realized that the last two posts on my author blog posted automatically to my Amazon blog and were sent to everyone who bought Mortal Touch from Amazon. I set up the Amazon blog to do that but I’d hadn’t thought to check before now. Wow, talk about incentive to keep on posting to my author blog!
This all raises my spirits a bit after the self-esteem sucker-punches I got from ConBust and crap in a forum I’m on (where, I swear, I am never going to post another word. Gods). It didn’t hurt, also, that last night at Parish Committee meeting I offered to donate my fee back to the church and do a Beltane-themed service on May 3rd gratis, and people seemed quite pleased. We’d run into a crunch finding a speaker for that Sunday. I’m going to try and think of something a bit different to do. The musician for that day plays the harp!
I fixed the exercycle–so far, anyway! We’ll see how long it lasts!–and have been cycling the past two days, although not nearly as long as I was doing. Even so, it’s knocked me almost as flat as I was the first two weeks of my dietary change. I just have no energy at all, and I’m tired, groggy, and sleepy all the time. On the other hand, my muscles are getting stronger from my serious intensification on the Bowflex. I really noticed that today when I brought in a forty-pound bag of cat litter. I was heaving those up onto one shoulder, and today I just picked it up the same way I’d pick up one of the cats and it didn’t seem heavy at all. I just wish the Bowflex workouts weren’t such hard work! Oof! And the ankle straps I use are leaving bruises on my ankles now just from the pressure! (Maybe I should get new ones, yeah, yeah…) As of today I’ve lost 14 pounds.
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