Last weekend I was given the privilege of being a guest author at a writing convention. It was fun. I met a lot of people and caught up with several friends in the writing community. I spent some time on a few panels and watched some others. One thing that struck me was a common theme that I’ve noticed at a lot of conventions lately, and that’s that many people don’t quite know how to act on a panel.  It was a minority of panelists that missed the memo or never received it. I’d say 1 in 6. Unfortunately, when most panels have 5-6 members, that means that most panels had at least 1 member who wasn’t versed in proper panel etiquette. So allow me to explain a few things to remember in case you find yourself at a convention as a guest speaker/panelist.

 

1:  Be Approachable – Many people attend conventions to spend time with fandom and meet some of its movers and shakers. If you’re a panelist or speaker that means you fall into the category of Mover or Shaker. Congratulations. People will want to meet you, and chances are high that you want people to know you, like you, and hopefully buy your book.  Connecting with fans at conventions is easy. They’re literally all around you. So mingle. Be approachable.

I often describe working a convention as a 48 Hour Job Interview. You’re here to impress. If you’re like me and have a “resting bitch face” remember to keep it in check.  I can’t help it if my neutral face looks like I’m considering murder. I’m not (usually). And I don’t want that moment when someone works up the nerve to say hello to me to be dashed because I look angry. So I smile. I smile a lot. By the weekend’s end my face hurts. 

So smile.  Keep yourself in approachable places where fans and potential fans might see you and talk to you. Try to be aware of where you are so that it’s easy as possible for people to meet you and hopefully like you enough to buy your book.

 

2:  Arrive On Time – When it comes time for your panel or presentation, you need to be on time. Remember, you’re working this convention and Panel-Time is Go-Time. Show up before the panel starts. Get set up, maybe chat with people in the audience. People are depending on you: the Convention, the Guests, the Other Panelists. Don’t make them wait. Don’t show up three minutes in with lame excuses and interrupting someone else’s introduction because they eventually had to start without you.

Once again, this convention weekend is a job interview. You wouldn’t show up late to a job interview, would you?

 

3: End On Time – This might be jumping ahead, but while we’re on the subject of your panel/presentation’s time-slot, you need to end it on time.  I know that the schedule block shows you there for an hour, but it’s wrong.  You have 50 minutes. At 45 minutes you need to be wrapping it up, maybe take that “One Last Question.” At 50 minutes you need to thank everyone for coming and dismiss. At 55 minutes you need to be out of the room for the next panelists using the room to have time to set up and for your co-panelists and audience to run off to the restrooms and then maybe to another panel/presentation.

It’s extremely rude to hog the room for a wide variety of reasons. But one of the most important is that if your panel runs late, you risk the serious potential of throwing the carefully oiled machine of con-scheduling completely off track. If you force the panel or presentation behind you to start 5 minutes late because they couldn’t setup in time or because they had to awkwardly ask you to move a conversation outside, then they now run the high risk of running late, as well.  Not just for your room, but your other panelists and the guests will be arriving late to their next panels. A domino-effect can happen and no one wants that. So, watch the clock and end ten minutes before the next panel begins. This isn’t a request.

 

4:  Share the Stage – If you’re giving a 1-person presentation, then awesome. Have fun. But if you’re on a multi-person panel, then remember that every single person up there is not only another convention guest, but also a Mover and Shaker like you. Be aware if you’re talking too much. Let everyone speak. Try not to speak more than everyone.  Many people in the audience came to see your co-panelists. They’re not here to see you, but this is your chance to make a good impression and win them over. So don’t be remembered as the jerk who hogged the stage and didn’t let anyone else speak.  Interact with your co-panelists, have a dialogue, endear yourself to your co-panelists and the audience.

For the love of God, don’t steamroll your co-panelists. Trust me, no one is impressed and it doesn’t look as cool as you think it does. Be polite. The people on stage are your partners and co-workers. Be a good partner. 

If you’re a bad partner, trust me, all the other Movers and Shakers are going to hear about it, and that might hurt your chances of a convention invite in the future.

 

5: Your Time On The Panel Is Not The Time to Self-Promote – This might come as a shock to you, but unless the panel is clearly described as being about you and about your book, then it’s not. Most panels are over a wider topic in the genre, the fandom, or the industry. You were brought in as a panelist or speaker on this subject because of your knowledge and expertise. And while yes, you may think that this is the perfect time to plug your book every 3 seconds, it’s actually not. This is where you need to address your vast expertise on the topic and not yourself. 

For example: I was recently on a panel about Fantastic Setting. While I have written a fantastic setting or two, I never once mentioned my own work. I spoke about Edgar Rice Burroughs, Clive Barker, William Gibson, Anne Rice, Mark Twain, and Scott Lynch. I explained what made them good and what we can learn from them. After it was done, I met fans who liked what I had to say, complimented my knowledge and analysis of the subject, and I even sold a couple books. Had I instead used my time on stage to lay out my own books, people would have zoned out and stopped listening because that’s not why they were there.

I understand the desire to link the topic to your own book because obviously the audience is interested in this topic and therefore might like your book, but please resist. You were selected for the panel because of your expertise that allowed you to write this book. This is where you need to let that expertise shine. If you impress your audience with your vast knowledge on the topic, then they are more likely to buy your book than if you just tell them you wrote a book.  Panels last about 50 minutes. You get about 30 seconds during your panelist intro to say “I wrote a book”, and then the rest of the panel is about your expertise. After the panel or between panels you can self-promo to your heart’s content. That’s why you’re here. Your knowledge that you and add to the panel itself is why the convention invited you and that is NOT the time to talk about you and your book. This is paying your dues to the convention for inviting you. It’s NOT a sale-pitch.

“But what if someone asks a direct question about my book?” you ask.

Good question. In the event someone asks about your book or how you handled a topic in your book, you have been given audience permission to discuss it. This is not free-reign. This is a 30-second window. Answer the question and then move it off of yourself. Maybe even bounce the question on a co-panelist to see how they addressed the issue in their own work. 

EXCEPTION: Like with writing, every rule has an exception. If you speak about a mistake you made in your book and how you learned from it, then feel free to mention it if it relates to the topic and as long as you are sure that you’re not twisting it into a “clever sales-pitch” of “Buy my Book”. Trust me, the audience and your co-panelists can tell the difference.

 

So now you know. As long as you can stick to these five simple rules, you’ll have a lot of fun at the convention and might find yourself invited to even more. 

Last weekend I was honored with serving as a Guest Speaker at the DFW Writers’ Conference. It was my second year to do so and it went spectacularly well. In addition to participating on several panels, I taught a class on writing fight scenes (more on that in a second), and gave one-on-one critiques/consultations with authors.

It actually surprised me that I had two authors (well, three because one was a writing duo) actually pay a good deal of their hard-earned money to have me offer my opinion of their work. The week before the conference I was emailed ten pages from each of their novels to review. Now, I’ve been in workshops for many years. I’ve given hundreds of such reviews, but those were workshops with numerous members and offering a wide-range of opinions, not one-on-one paid consultations. Horrified that I’d disappoint them, I pored over those pages, marking every single item that I thought would be helpful. And yes, I found many things that I could help them on, and feel that I did as good a job as I could, but the entire time I was thinking, “Why me? There’s a million better authors out there. Real authors.”  

Real Authors.

In the end, the consultations went better than I could have hoped.  Both gave me sincere thanks for all of the critical and helpful advice. I don’t doubt their sincerity one bit. I wish all the best for them.  But even then, while they were clutching their pages, slathered with my red ink and notes, and thanking me for all my help, there was still a little voice in the back of my head screaming “Fraud!“

Fraud.

I sold my first story in 2006. My debut novel released three years ago and my sixth book will be coming out later this year. Two of my audio books were Audie Award finalists, I’ve sold thousands of books, I have actual fans that reach out to me, yet that little nagging bastard of a voice still wont shut up.

In 2016, when I was asked to speak at that DFWcon, several of the local presenters got together to work on our presentations. Tex Thompson (who is one of the coolest people, and quite possibly an actual living angel) organized it, and during our first meeting she asked if we had any concerns. I sat silent, afraid to say what it was. Then Dantzel Cherry raised her hand and said, “I’m just going to address the elephant in the room: Impostor Syndrome.”

That was the first time I’d heard the term Impostor Syndrome, but I knew exactly what it was. I knew who it was. It’s the name of that asshole voice screaming in the back of my head any time anyone called me an author. Not only did I know that voice, but I’d thought I was the only person who even heard it. Everyone else was a real author or a real editor. I was a fraud, a fluke, some idiot that had just gotten lucky and fooled my way into their company. Tex (who I can’t stress enough is fucking awesome) assured us that we all deserved to be there. She must have seen the doubt in my eyes because she looked straight at me and gave me an assuring nod.

It helped. It helped having a name for that voice. Soon I discovered how many of us have that voice – way more than I’d have imagined.

While at this years’s conference I was talking to a few of the authors and one mentioned self-doubt. They were referring it in relation to self-doubt being an obstacle that must be overcome in order to finish and sell your story (which is very true). I warned that self-doubt never goes away after they’re published. It just morphs into Impostor Syndrome. One author laughed and said they couldn’t wait until then because those of us with Impostor Syndrome have at least been published. I couldn’t argue. Hopefully they’ll become one of those authors that sells their novel and never once questions if they’re frauds.

Sunday afternoon came time for my writing fight scenes class. It was in the last schedule bracket for the conference. I’d assumed that few people would show. It had been a long weekend and a lot of people would be heading out and going home. Why would they stay for some 15th rate author like me?

I admit a moment of terror when I walked in ten minutes early to setup my laptop and this very large room was already full of people with more filing in every second. I’ve done this presentation before. I have it down and I think it’s pretty good (or at least entertaining. I even give a bad Keanu Reeves impersonation during it). But I’d never given it for this many people, and many of those faces in the crowd were real authors, active members of the writing community, people who I’d somehow slimed my way into their company and was referred to as their peer. After a brief technical difficulty in getting my ancient laptop to work on the projector, I began what would be the final presentation and many people’s final memory of the conference.

It went amazingly well.

Better than I could have imagined. Not only did no one stand up in the middle of my class and scream, “You don’t know shit!” but it ended with a lot of applause, and people rushing up to thank me. It was incredible.

After 20 minutes of shaking hands, I strolled out of the room for Tex to tell me all the praises she’d heard about my class. It felt good. It felt incredible.

Once I got home, and still riding the high from the response I’d received, I posted my experience on my Facebook wall.

See that reply?  That’s a sincere congratulations. That’s someone complimenting me.

Do you see my response? That’s me downplaying it. I even added a smiley. But that’s not what I wanted to say. What I wanted to say was the echo of that little gremlin of a voice. “Don’t call me famous.”

Even while strutting on Cloud 9, happy as I can be at a job well done, I can’t even for a second pretend that I’m something that I’m not. I’m an author – an obscure one at best. That’s simple fact. I’m hoping to fix that.

But one thing with Impostor Syndrome, even if the stars align and I find myself in a position where I’m no longer obscure, will I accept that? Will that gremlin ever go away?

I don’t know. But like that wise author said when I warned them of the gremlin’s existence, I can’t wait to find out.

So in case you’re wondering why I’d post a blog lamenting about my own demons after what was by all accounts a triumph, the reason is simple. This is for all those authors who still wonder if they’re good enough. This is for all of you who downplay everything you do and lie in bed wondering when someone will figure out that you don’t belong.

You’re not alone.

Just keep telling that voice to shut up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the past year I’ve had multiple unfortunate experiences of reading a good book only to have it end in a Cliffhanger.  For me, it yanks the enjoyment of a wonderful story out from under my feet and leaves me feeling rather cheated. I hate Cliffhangers.

I’ve read reviews and chatted on Reddit and learned that while I’m hardly the only one, I discovered that there’s a whole lotta confusion as to what “Cliffhanger” means. I’ve even been accused of using one at the end of Mountain of Daggers. Some people confuse a Cliffhanger with a Setup.

A Setup is when a story is complete, the narrative is wrapped, and while the problems might not be over for the heroes, the reader or audience can leave there and still feel a sense of closure.  A great example would be 2002’s Resident Evil.

In it, our heroes have escaped the Hive, closing the plot narrative, but then Alice awakens to a city overrun with zombies.  The closing shot is our hero, severely under-dressed, holding a shotgun, and ready to face-down what comes next.

While the movie might end with the audience screaming, “Oh my God! I want more!” it does not end with them requiring to know the very next thing that happens to Alice in the 30 seconds following the fade to black. We leave the theater knowing that while her initial adventure is done, there are more to come.

For me, that’s the essential definition of a Cliffhanger. “Do We Need To See What Happens In The Next 30 Seconds?“. If the answer is Yes, then you have a Cliffhanger.

Cliffhangers came from the old serial shorts that played in theaters. Every episode would end with the hero in some hopeless bind, such as sinking in quicksand, falling from an airplane, and most obviously, hanging from a cliff.  The gag was used to leave viewers in suspense and make them feel obligated to come to the next movie to see how the hero makes it out.

The 1960’s Batman also used Cliffhangers to end the first half of each two-episode adventure. Leaving the audience with the line, “Tune in Tomorrow!  Same Bat-Time! Same Bat-Channel!”

Aside from being a cheap ploy, the key for an effective Cliffhanger is that they are not endings.  They’re chapter breaks.  Ending a chapter with a Cliffhanger is perfectly fine.  I don’t need to wait long to get to the rest, and I’m not required to buy another ticket or book to find out.  Authors that coax me into buying a standard-sized book, only to pull a surprise Cliffhanger at the end, leaving the plot unresolved and forcing me to buy the next book, make me feel cheated. 

“But what about a series?” you ask.

Well I’m glad you asked, because I have an answer for that, too.

First, the fantasy obsession of taking a massive epic tale and breaking it into multiple parts at seemingly random points is attributed to Lord of the Rings.  However, Lord of the Rings was never intended to be a trilogy.  Tolkien’s publisher was daunted by the costs and commercial appeal of a single enormous book so they chopped it up.  Even then, readers were not forced to wait years between installments.  The entire series was published between July 1954 with Fellowship of the Ring, and October 1955 with Return of the King.  There was no waiting presidential terms between installments.  Authors that hold a story ransom and extort readers by forcing them to keep buying books are not following Tolkien’s tradition.

Second, it’s my opinion that a series with Cliffhanger endings is perfectly fine, providing it follows two simple rules:

1. That the first book be effectively a stand-alone.  That way, readers have a moment once the dust has settled to decide if they want to keep going.  Some might say, “I’m good with this,” and simply walk away, happy that they had resolution. Or they might say, “Holy shit that was awesome! What happens next? Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!” Either way, they get to decide.
2. That each installment has a beginning, middle, and end.  While some stories might take multiple volumes to tell, there are still sub-stories within the larger plot. As long as the heroes have an obstacle and resolve the obstacle within the covers of the book, even if the much larger problem is unresolved, then that is perfectly fine.

A good example of this is the Dark Tower Series.  Readers can enjoy the first book, The Gunslinger, and be perfectly happy. Yes it ends with a setup, but the story is complete.  The Gunslinger chased the Man in Black across the desert and then caught him.  You can end there.  However, readers that continue the series will enjoy several self-contained adventures along the way, even experiencing the massive cliffhanger ending at the end of The Waste Lands.  That book is the only one that ends on a cliffhanger because the heroes are in an active moment of peril in the last sentence.  However, even then, the story still has a beginning, middle, and end (They enter the waste lands, they leave the waste lands.)

Even though I say that there is a specific time that a Cliffhanger between series installments is acceptable, a Setup is much, much nicer.  Harry Potter is a perfect example of a series that follows these rules, choosing a setup, versus a cliffhanger. A reader can enjoy Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone and leave there being perfectly happy. The readers that do keep going with the series are treated to small, self-contained stories that occur while the larger narrative is unfolding. Another favorite of mine in the Mistborn Series, which follows the same rules.

People that claim books like The Well of Ascension, The Republic of Thieves, or Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince end on cliffhangers are completely wrong.  Yes, readers are invested in the story and are desperate to see what happens next, but in none of those stories is our hero in a hopeless situation that might kill them in the next 30 seconds. This need to know is the product of great writing and storytelling, while a Cliffhanger is merely a cheap trick used to make up for a lack of great writing.