Time flies when you’re descending into the seven circles of Editing Hell.

We’ll make this update semi-short and sweet because, frankly, there’s book work to be done.

InfinityCon has come and gone–at least for 2023. If you follow me on social media, you probably got sick of all the pictures, but just in case you missed it, here’s the table set-up, complete with new branding. The new banner got people’s attention, and the review poster helped to hold it. Mission successful!

I went to the con with 23 books (I started with 25 but ended up selling a couple before the convention came around) and managed to sell out. This has happened for the past few years, and every year I bring a few more copies than the previous year. I’ve been told that I need to double-up my inventory, but it’s always hard to guess how a convention might run, especially after a couple of repeat years where I might be risking over-saturation.

InfinityCon has always been good to me, but other conventions have been hit or miss. I’ve joked before that writing is the least sexy of the arts. The end result is not as eye-catching as an art print or a piece of craftwork and the process certainly isn’t as entertaining, so sometimes, depending on the general vibe of the convention and its attendees, an indie author might find themselves feeling like the unpopular nerd at the middle school dance. Not that I have any kind of minor adolescent trauma of that nature that I occasionally reflect on as I’m spitefully working out or anything.

Anyway.

That’s why I’ve always erred on the side of caution when it comes to inventory.

Speaking of the least sexy art, here’s a super exclusive behind-the-scenes photo from the con weekend. I can’t be a Queen of Darkness all the time. Sometimes I’m just the Queen of Complimentary Hotel Breakfasts.

Aside from book sales, I had a lot of cool moments meeting fellow creators and talking to aspiring writers. I was asked for advice on things like self-publishing and writing diverse perspectives, which was an awesome and heart-warming question to hear from a young writer. I’m always honored whenever someone thinks that I look like I know what I’m doing well enough to want to talk shop with me!

I also met another vendor who was a huge fan of Venture Bros. If you’ve never heard of it before, it was an Adult Swim cartoon that started out as a spoof of comic books and adventure shows like Johnny Quest, but quickly morphed into its own sprawling universe with complex storytelling and masterful character development centered around the highly dysfunctional Venture family. My fellow VB fan had a ton of merch like enamel pins and stickers with deep-cut jokes, and after nerding out together for a bit, she was kind enough to trade me some of her awesome stuff for a copy of my book.

While making this trade, I got to gleefully describe Bloodlands to her by saying, “And then they just go around Brock Samson-ing all over the place.”

Connecting with someone over Venture Bros was timely, since the show also came to a close this past month with a movie. It started airing when I was 15 or 16. In case you’re as bad at math as I am, that’s a twenty-year run, though the show had only 7 seasons before it was cancelled and given a movie with which to wrap up the story.

I could easily write up a whole blog post about Venture Bros and how much it influenced me creatively (and I still might!), especially when it comes to my sense of humor, but for now all I’ll say is that I greatly admire the co-creators, who wrote the show entirely themselves. That’s rare in television, and as a result, years would sometimes pass between seasons, but the quality remained consistent from episode to episode and season to season. The creators prioritized creative quality over quantity… which might be a lesson I took a little too close to heart?

Speaking of blog posts that didn’t happen, I’ve been a little lax on my social media promos and other forms of reader engagement this past month in an attempt to prioritize my time and focus on revision, which brings us, at long last, to the monthly book update.

Chapters Revised for the Month of July:

• Prologue
• Chapter 1*
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6

So I made some pretty good progress! That chunk of chapters actually represents the entirety of Part I. You might be wondering about the asterisk next to Chapter 1, though. That’s to denote that while I did make an initial pass through it, I ended up coming back again because I wasn’t satisfied with one of the scenes.

This is where I started to slip into Editing Hell. It’s hard for me to say for sure whether something is genuinely wrong with the scene or whether I’m nitpicking myself. I’m pretty sure it’s the former and that it’s because the sequence of events doesn’t feel entirely sensible, but after you’ve read the same chunk of writing a billion times in a row, you start to doubt your sanity. I’ve got an idea for how to fix it, or at least improve it. If it still doesn’t work out for me, I’m going to throw my hands up and toss the scene to my beta readers to have at, along with the rest of Part I.

The plan for the next month will be to plug away through Part II and hopefully make a solid dent in Part III as well. There are a total of four parts in its current arrangement. I don’t have chapter names yet, but I do have some deleted scenes that you may see pop up on the blog eventually.

I’d give you some kind of treat for keeping up with my updates, but I don’t have one ready. We’re going to blame that one on Editing Hell too, which is also my convenient excuse for retreating back to the Hermit Hole.

Until next time!