Minicon 58 in Review

I just finished up three days at Minicon 58 in the Twin Cities. Set up my table, laid out my books, sat on some panels, and talked with other authors. Made some sales. Had some conversations.

Overall, it was a great weekend. Longer thoughts to follow.

Behold….my books!

My Table

My set up is pretty decent, as you can see from the picture. The table banner looks a lot better than that rolled up poster I used to have. I think putting the free pictures under the plastic sheet really helps keep them from moving around, and putting the business cards in card holders instead of spreading them out just keeps the table clear. It just looks more orderly than previous tables.

Talking with visitors is getting better. My elevator pitch for the two Renaissance Army books is okay, or at least I feel comfortable with it. I had to work through a few iterations of the Champion Bold pitch before I found one that felt right. I’ll probably practice some more before the next event.

There are a few things I’ll want to do in the future. for starters, I’m going to need to get something vertical to hold my books up, since I’m already going to have several more books once the supplements come in, and I’m going to be adding more titles in the future. Another idea I want to do is get some reviews off Amazon and Goodreads and put them up for people to read.

And, maybe, get some cool sci-fi videos for my picture display.

The Panels

I was on three panels at Minicon: Procrastination or Preparation, A Sense of Wonder in Sci-Fi, and Dealing with Writer’s Block.

I’m not going to bore you with details about each panel. They went well. I participated in discussions, responded to questions. I still felt like the junior member of the panels, but by most standards I probably am. It’s not like imposter syndrome is going to go away just because I want it to.

If I was to acknowledge one critique, I need to work on ending my response. More than once, I would say my bit, then sort of babble for a bit. What I need to do is say my thing, and the be done.

Readings

I was scheduled for one reading, I did two.

My individual reading was Friday afternoon, and no one came. Unfortunately, it was left off the schedule by accident, one of about half a dozen events that faced such a challenge. I don’t take it personally; it happens. I ended up sitting in my room reading my eBook for half an hour.

Later Friday night, I was approached by another author. he had assembled an Indie Author Reading Buffet; a handful of authors, reading for ten to fifteen minutes, but several of the authors had dropped out, and he was looking for readers. I had a copy of Champion Bold on the cloud, so I read as part of the group. Got at least one sale out of it.

From what I gather, this may be something we see more of in the future. Groups of authors reading in panels, rather than individuals sitting in rooms. I’m hoping that will mean more chances to read: a fantasy panel, a scifi panel, etc. We’ll see how they set it up next year.

Conclusion

Was it worth it? Absolutely. I made some sales of the new book, and had a lot of people ask about Book 3, which has to be my primary project for the rest of the year. I made some contacts and opened up some opportunities over the next few months that I want to take advantage of. There may be more announcements coming in the near future.

For now, I’m recovering from the con and prepping for the next projects. Looking forward to having at least one new title for next year.

Cheers!

Michael

Book Report: The Other Queen

Cover Image courtesy of Amazon

The last book in Philippa Gregory’s historical fiction series covering the Wars of the Roses and the Tudors, the Other Queen is about the imprisonment of Mary, Queen of Scotts, between fall of 1568 and summer of 1572. It follows three characters: Mary and her two captors, George Talbot, the 6th Earl of Shrewsbury, and his wife, Bess of Hardwick. Each character is experiencing personal hardship in this story, watching their world fall apart in their own way.

Did I like this book? Hard to say. For most of it, yes. I liked that each character provided a unique view of the events. I felt compassion for each of them, though only one of them I felt came out (mostly) untainted at the end. But then it ended in a way that just killed my enjoyment: I’ll explain at the end of the post after a spoiler’s tag.

First, I want to discuss the characters.

Mary, Queen of Scotts

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

Mary, Queen of Scotts, is a prisoner of the English Crown. She has the claim to several thrones — including England’s — and is married or engaged to several suitors. She is eager to head back to Scotland and reclaim her birthright.

The character of Mary is a frustrating one. On the one hand, you understand her position completely. She does not believe she deserves to be there. Afterall, she is a crowned queen away from her throne, a mother away from her child. She believes she is divinely chosen to rule, and her confinement and the restrictions placed upon her are an insult. All that comes through.

But with that strong belief comes the conviction that she can lie and scheme to get what she wants without consequence. From her perspective, every action is warranted. So, the book is her plotting her escape and her revenge, or bemoaning the failure of whatever plot almost worked.

Mary gains sympathy because she’s a woman denied her right as a queen and her freedoms as a person. But she squanders it by arrogantly plotting. At the same time, what else can she do? She’s helpless, and fighting against being helpless, which brings us right back to sympathetic.

George Talbot, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

George Talbot is the nobleman selected by the English crown to hold Mary Queen of Scotts for a time. He is eager to do his duty to Queen Elizabeth, but as the story progresses, begins to find himself drawn more and more to Mary’s cause.

George is the second most frustrating character of the three.

He is an honorable man. When he was a judge as Queen Mary’s trial (before the start of the book) he judged her not guilty because the evidence was not sufficient, despite pressure to find her guilty just to be rid of her. He tries to do the right thing in a court where the right thing often changes as the whims of Queen Elizabeth and her senior advisor, William Cecil.

But when Mary comes into his household, he falls for her. As an honorable man, this tears as his soul. He wants to serve her, but he has a queen; he wants to love her, but he has a wife. George wants to believe the best of her, despite constant evidence that she plots and schemes.

This is where George fails. He’s an honorable man, but he refuses to navigate the world he lives in. Not that he can’t: he refuses.

George constantly hopes that the world will right itself and come into focus the way he wants it to. But he knows it won’t. He could take steps to protect Mary or Bess, but he doesn’t. He keeps hoping for a solution, but refuses to do anything to bring one about, because any solution he can bring about won’t be what he wants. in the end, he does one thing to mitigate the consequences of his action; I’ll discuss that in the next section.

Rich and politically powerful, but emotionally powerless.

Bess of Hardwick, Countess of Shrewsbury

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

Bess, wife of George, is the third character, and the only one who doesn’t lose me by the end of the book.

A lady of some means, Bess is on her fourth marriage, and has amassed a sizable amount of wealth in land and items to pass along to her children. She is a competent manager, balancing income and expenses in account books that she proudly knows back and forth. Bess has the character and confidence of a self-made woman.

When Mary is sent to their household. Bess sees the danger. As a queen, Mary expects a certain lifestyle that the hosts must pay for. The monthly allowance from Queen Elizabeth’s government is not nearly enough, nor is it consistently paid. Instead, they must drain their accounts and mortgage their lands to pay for the queen’s mini-court. All of which endangers the wealth Bess wants to leave to her children.

Bess is the opposite of George: she is realistic where he is idealistic. She does not expect to be paid. She is also an agent of William Cecil, Elizabeth’s most trusted advisor, and informs on Mary’s activities to the crown.

Why is Bess the only character who doesn’t lose me by the end of the book? Probably because she’s the only one who’s story isn’t dominated by their character flaw. Mary loses me because she’s too self-centered; George because he’s too idealistic and naive. But Bess knows she’s in danger and does her best, hoping to endure until she can survive or thrive.

She does survive, but only because George takes a step to separate their fortunes. This is what I alluded to last section; the one thing George does to mitigate the consequences of his actions, and it’s for Bess, not for himself. He gives her back the lands and fortunes she had at the time of their marriage, in exchange for her forgiving the debts he owes her. She comes out none the richer for her marriage, but she still retains everything she wanted to pass along to her children.

Not perfect, but the better of the three characters.

Spoiler – My Annoyance

Now we get to the spoiler ending bit. If you don’t want to know, don’t read beyond this.

Now.

Okay.

For real this time.

Here we go.

The book is primarily set between Autumn 1568 and June 1572. Within that nearly four-year period, Mary sees her rises and falls, George falls in love and falls out of favor, and Bess has to divorce her husband in her mind if not by law. Sounds good, right?

The last chapter is set fifteen years later. Bess hears about the execution of Mary, and spends several pages considering the last fifteen years. how Mary entrapped and involved those around her in her schemes and how many of them paid with her. How her husband became so attached to Mary that he wept at her execution. And how Bess worked hard to distance herself from both and protect herself.

Makes sense, doesn’t it? Why not? What better way is there to cover fifteen years of events? I agree.

So why does it bother me?

Because it is set up as just another chapter. As a reader, I found it jarring to go from weekly or monthly advances to more than a decade without warning. It pulled me from the flow of reading to sit back and figure out what was happening.

Now, it is true that the chapters all start with dates on them. And yes, if I was paying more attention to the dates maybe I wouldn’t have found it all the more jarring. But perfect readers are rare, and I can’t fathom why you wouldn’t label this last chapter the epilogue, or put a break page with a ‘fifteen years later’ announcement. Anything to keep the reader informed.

Completely jarring.

Conclusion

I’m glad I read this book. The characters were well written. Their flaws are front and center and truly debilitating, even fatal, to their well being. The end was jarring, but not enough to put me off or re-reading it.

What’s truly memorable is that this is the last book in the series. I’m now done with it. I’ll probably do a reflection blog post on the series at some point. But for now, I’ll just appreciate finishing the series.

Cheers!

Michael

April 25 Update

March was a good month. I finished the Champion Bold revisions. The paperbacks are sitting at home. The hardcovers are on their way. The supplement second round of proofs are sitting on my table waiting for revisions. I had my first event of the year, getting people interested in my new book and having people ask about book 3 of Sasha’s series.

It was a good month.

Projects

Finishing Champion Bold has been big. Not only do I feel better about getting a project done, but I’m ready and eager to tackle the next ones. and with the BPRG system, I believe I can get them done quicker and to the table faster than the last few books.

I still have to finish the supplements. The books have a number of minor adjustments to make to some images and formatting, but they do need to be done before I can say ‘complete!’ So, I’ll get them done.

Once this project is done, then I’ll focus on the next two projects: Book 3 of Sasha’s story (The Colonel Lieutenant) and the sequel to Champion Bold (titled Champion Impact). There are other projects I have in development that I’m not giving up on, but those are the two big ones.

April goals

  • Sasha 3: Re-game and re-write the big campaign
  • ChamImp: Finish plotting process
  • ChamImp: Get forms out to backers
  • Other projects: Knock 10 things off to-do list

Books

  • Angel Fire East (eBook; Fiction)
  • Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (Non-Fiction)
  • Idiot’s Guide to Game Theory (Research)
  • War and Peace (Audiobook; Fiction)
Image courtesy of Amazon

To my frustration, I did not finish any books this month. I made good progress in both Angel Fire East and Sapiens. Also, I re-started Game Theory at my new reading desk station in my new place. War and Peace is my new free audiobook/podcast at work. the 10-15 minute runtime per chapter work for those short time periods just before lunch.

What’s really bad is this puts me at four books read for the year so far. My goal is 36, so I should be at nine. I’m five books behind schedule. I’ll need to pick up the pace a bit.

Oh, darn. I need to read more. How terrible. (End sarcasm.)

April Goals

  • Finish Angel Fire East
  • Finish Sapiens
  • Finish Idiot’s Guide to Game Theory
  • Start and finish one fiction book.
  • Start and finish one non-fiction book.

Movies and Shows

Image courtesy of Wikipedia
  • Shazam: Fury of the Gods
  • Pacific Rim: Uprising
  • New Mutants
  • Marvel: What If? (Season 2)

Knocked a good number of things off my watch list this month, and yes, most of them were so I could watch them on the fixit podcast I listen to. But honestly, none of them were as bad as I thought they would be.

They weren’t great, and I see why they didn’t take off, but they weren’t terrible. This is going to be quick and short.

Shazam: Fury of the Gods had a decent underlying story. But it suffered from spending too much time with the superhero characters and not enough time with the children.

Pacific Rim: Uprising had an odd plot: it kind of made sense, but it didn’t quite feel right. The rest of it was a lot of the right parts that did not fit together well enough to make a good movie.

New Mutants was probably the closest to a good movie of the three, and the one I most wanted to be good. But there were too many ‘good idea, but they didn’t think it through’ plot holes. Which is a shame, because it wasted Maisie Williams, Anya Taylor Joy and Charlie Heaton.

Finally, Marvel: What If? Season 2. Nine episodes of alternative Marvel histories that wrap up with an overall narrative. All of the episodes were good. And I want to give a particular shout out to Episode 6, with the dialogue almost entirely in Mohawk and Spanish.

April Goals

  • Watch one Best Picture winner (3 left)
  • Watch two of four remaining Fix-It titles
  • Finish one started TV title
  • Start new TV show

Games

Image courtesy of Wikipedia
  • Baldur’s Gate 3
  • Space Marine 2
  • Madden 25
  • Football Club 25

Started two new games this month. One, Football Club 25, it one I got for me and my roommate to play against each other alongside Madden 25. Football and football. What a treat.

I also started Space Marine 2. I wanted a game that was fun and didn’t require a lot of thinking and planning. Just get in, shoot and fight. And nothing says simple shoot and fight like a Warhammer 40K game.

April Goals

  • Advance to next chapter of BG 3
  • Advance to next chapter of AC Odessey
  • Advance to next chapter of RDR 2

What’s Coming Up

I’ve got a convention coming up Easter weekend; I’m excited because I’ll have my new books ready for it. At least, the paperback copies. The hardcover copies are on their way.

I’m also planning a book launch party in May. I don’t know dates yet, but I will post when I know.

Until then, keep on writing.

Cheers!

-Michael