I’m tired, but slightly amped up.  Amped is a word, spellchecker!  Anyway, I thought I would mention how things went since tomorrow is a 2 hour sit around and then a 6-7 hour ride home.  I plan on making the picture post tomorrow night before passing out, but after some much needed toddler tickling.

Friday saw my wife and I showing up to say hello to old friends.  My wife was greeted by our friend Ryan who had her munchkin in hand.  That meant my wife found something to help her get over toddler withdrawal.  I admit to playing with the little guy too when I got left watching him.  Thankfully, my ability to make funny noises got me through that situation.

Odd part about Friday was that all of these old friends were unaware that I published a book.  Those that knew and shared our circles didn’t spread the word.  I handed out a few cards, shook a few hands, and made a few promises to share my secrets when they wanted to self-publish.  Then we saw the vendor room (we were in the second one, get to that later) and went off to find dinner.  This is where my wife and I felt old because our usual haunts that we remember so fondly are gone.  The one we really wanted to eat at was actually turned into a parking lot.

Sleep.  Wake-up.  Check sales.  Eat breakfast.  Drive back.  Saturday!

We set up shop in the second vendor room where Ryan had her crafts and cupcakes (I finally got some cupcakes!), another friend had her crafts, I had my books, and an author from Canada, Scott Barker.  He wrote Shadows Over Sheradan, which I bought a paperback of and put to the top of my reading list.  He published through Xlibris.  He took one of my CD’s and gave me 5 dollars for it.  We did a lot of small talk and his books are based on an old D&D game too, so we had a lot of fun.  He had trailers too.  I managed to cobble together a slideshow with various cover art versions.  Some point during the day, Scott read the Sneak Peek of today and it wet his appetite for the book.  Same thing happened with me when I saw some of the illustrations of his book.

I guess that brings me to a downside.  I only gave away 9 CD’s and a handful of stickers, bookmarks, and business cards.  The traffic into the vendor room was rather slow and nobody really knew what to make out of me with my CD’s.  I steered some to the free eBook sale on Kindle, which was a plus.  I think the other vendor room had more traffic because that had some of the bigger vendors, but that’s only what I heard from some of the people I talked to.

Still, I got to see some old friends and let them know what’s going on.  I look at that as networking.  Also, I made a new friend from Scott and we swapped notes, promised reviews, and wished each other good luck.  Tomorrow will probably be more of a good-bye than a sales day.  I’m swinging by another friend’s place on the way home to drop off 10 CD’s for him to hand out at a convention he’s going to in a few weeks.   Overall, not the greatest first outing, but I learned a lot.

All that in mind, does anybody want a pack of Beginning of a Hero CD’s to hand out at something, leave somewhere, skeet shoot, coasters?  I’ll have 81 left by the time I go home unless I hand off a few more tomorrow.