Authors are People too I have appeared in public, offline as "Emily Veinglory" exactly twice, the second time being today. In general I am an author only online and still feel a little baffled about signing books and so forth. If you read the blog much you probably know that I am not big on offline promo. I managed to remember to take some books to sell but totally failed to take and business cards or swag even though I do have some. Oh, well.

It is strange to try and negotiate an author identity that is both authentic and yet reasonably effective in a 'product promotion' way--that is to say, not pissing off too many potential customers. But, hell, the same is true online. Just recently we see Holly Lisle getting party-political and then having a bit of a go at a reader who objected. Mrs Giggles has given up blogging. It has to be fun to be worth while, I think, and the drama churn can get a bit tiring.

But anyway. I got to give my usual 'tough love' advice about small presses at the Authorfest 2008 in Schaumburg IL today. It was near the end of the day and quite a few people had already left or weren't paying a lot of attention, so I kept if fairly brief. People seemed to either agree with my assessment or not be interested/involved enough to disagree. If you where there feel free to drop me some feedback.

It was good to meet a few of you there and I appreciated the support of my posse from the Schaumburg Writers Meetup. There may be a picture or two to show later.  ¶ posted at 8:41 PM by Emily Veinglory