Lou Anders is the Editorial Director of Pyr Books. He is super smart and has Pyr into a fantastic publisher of wonderful speculative fiction. I am a huge podcast fan and Mr. Anders is frequently popping up as a guest on shows like Adventures In SciFi Publishing, Functional Nerds, and, for purposes of this blog post, The Roundtable Podcast.

I was listening to The Roundtable Podcast episode 36 wherein Mr. Anders said the following about what, for him, makes a good story.

A sympathetic protagonist overcomes a series of increasingly difficult obstacles in pursuit of a compelling goal.

He also gave an easy to understand MadLib for putting together your story.

When a ______  ______ encounters a _______ ______ they are forced to ______ in order to ______.

I am near the end of third draft revisions on my novel which is either the best or worse time to get this kind of formula. I listened to the episode last night and lay away trying to plug my characters into this.

My first dilemma is that I have always thought of the three sisters at the heart of the story as being co-leads, and while they are all important, lovely people, there can be only one. Let’s face it, my protagonist is Victoria. So, let’s see if I can do this.

When a frustrated inventor (banned from practicing science due to her gender)  encounters a series of devastating crises (zombie plague, dueling mad scientists, invading confederate soldiers) she is forced to break the law (building illegal scientific devices) in order to save her city and free herself from oppressive scientific regulations.

Man, that took 15 minutes of staring at the screen to finish. Can I do this with the other two sisters?

-20 minutes later-

No, I can’t.

The other two sisters have personalities and goals and arcs but their actions do not drive the story. How about that? I do not think that this means that I should cut down on the scenes with the other two, nor does it mean that they are less important. Perhaps it does mean that I should do a polish that makes some of Victoria’s actions and choices a bit crisper. Perhaps she is the one who articulates the overall goals and determines how and where the novel ends. I’ve been thinking of this book as the first of three so perhaps in book 2 it is sister 2 who is the protagonist and in book 3 it is sister 3. Victoria is no less important but, the others may need time to shine.

Lou Anders is a smart guy. Every time I hear him speak I learn something about story. Luckily for me, he is one of my best friends that I’ve never met.

I recently played a club concert as a part of a Star Wars Day/Free Comic Book Day evening of geek music and I came away with this: venue is key.

When I play at a convention, the room may be a dull, hotel cube but, it is intimate and everyone in the room wants to be there. At a club, the room may look cool but, the people in the room are not necessarily there to see me. They are there to drink and hang out. That’s cool, but I don’t like it. This is why I don’t play bars, wineries, or coffee shops unless I have a good reason.

A few years ago, before the ghost, my goal was to play at least four shows a month and for a year, I did. In order to hit my four show goal, I accepted shows where I knew that no one would show up. There was one particular coffee shop/gelato stand that kept trying to have music, but nobody – NOBODY – ever came. I accepted the show because I only had three booked that month. They said I could have a free gelato but after two hours of a public rehearsal in an empty shop, I just wanted out.

I feel much better about playing one or two concerts a month for conventions and odd events than I did playing twice as often for inappropriate venues.

Which brings me to authors.

Authors have a similar dilemma for book signings and readings. Much like unfocused musicians, unfocused authors sometimes scramble about looking for anyone with a room and a chair. Like aimless musicians, aimless authors, after having a disappointing show, will go back to that venue with little to no adjustment in their approach.  Sometimes the poor experience has to do with the author not getting the word out, not telling friends, not doing a facebook/twitter/meetup event thing. But sometimes the venue just sucks for you. If the regulars at a club expect a rockin’ band and they find an acoustic guy (granted, a pretty awesome acoustic guy),  right away it’s a fight. If the shoppers in a book megamart just want a coffee and a quiet browse and they find an author staring at them with a “buy my book” look in their eyes, it hurts everyone.

Now that your event has failed, how do you change your strategy?

What makes a good convention? Better yet, what is the one thing you must accomplish at your convention for people to think it was awesome? I think that it comes down to one basic thing: everyone has to have an awesome time and want to come back. That’s it, right? Sounds easy.

But wait! Problem number one is that different people like different things. Is there a single event/type of programming/awesome thing that would please all of the people? No. So that means you need a variety of programming. Something for everyone? No, you need more than something. You need to have so much stuff that at any given time there is almost always something for almost always everyone. So much stuff that it would be impossible for one person to do everything that they want. This makes them want to come back so they can try to do everything next year. This, in my opinion, is what makes a good con.

But wait again! Should Fear The Con con try to be equal parts gaming, literary, art, and My Little Pony? No. They are gaming focused. I’m guessing though, that will try to have board games, D&D, indie games, miniatures, and maybe some card games. Enough gaming opportunities for all of the projected attendees to play something cool at any given time all weekend long. And you know what, they probably will.

The reason that ComicCons are so freaking boring (San Diego is an exception) is because they are typically designed from the ground up with just two areas of focus: 1) Buy stuff from the massive vendor room and 2) get an autograph/picture with a celebrity. There are usually costume contests and some panels or a concert or gaming or something, but these are often presented as an after thought. I have seen ComicCon program books that don’t list all of the programming, don’t list all of the rooms, don’t include much at all except info on the celebrities and a map of the vendor room.

Let me put it another way. There are two reasons for you to go to a con of any type. Either you are there to get awesome stuff or you are there to discover awesome stuff. If your goal as an attendee is to consume more of what you are already a fan of (Firefly, Star Wars, Magic: the Gathering) chances are good that you’re not going to accidentally wander into one of my concerts. On the other hand, if you are there to discover, you might test a new game from a new game designer or you might go to a panel about something you don’t know much about.

ComicCons do not promote discovery. They promote the siloing of your own fandom and encourage convention day trippers. If you want to spend your weekend discovering and growing, I humbly suggest you do not plan to do so at a traditional ComicCon. However, if all you want is Rowdy Roddy Pipers autograph and picture for Facebook, have at it.

As an indie musician I have two options when it comes to recording. Record it myself or get someone else. It’s a simple choice that has been driving me crazy for years.

Every time I do home recordings they turn out inferior to studio recordings. Studio engineering, mixing, and mastering are all separate skills that are unrelated to being able to perform. I have used three different methods to record and release music. Here they are. This all assumes that the musician/author is not experienced at any of the technical stuff.

4. Last year, I wrote and home recorded three songs for an author friend and then put them up on bandcamp as digital downloads. The poor quality of those recordings drove me nuts and I took them down after two weeks. This is like writing a book, editing and formatting it yourself with no previous experience, and then putting it up on Amazon. It’s probably has some good moments but you should expect two star reviews.

3. I recorded the Nobody Gets The Girl EP at home on the same poor equipment as in #4 but afterwards I brought it to a studio for the post-recording treatment. This is like doing a draft after beta readers give you notes and then getting your techie friend to do you a favor and format it. You’ll probably catch most of the obvious glitches and it’ll look fine, but if the core idea and presentation don’t work, it’s too late to fix it.

2. With most of my albums I went into a studio and recorded songs with a hands-on engineer who suggest instruments and then did all of the post-recording stuff himself. This is like hiring a good editor who then volunteers to format the book because, well, it’s cheaper. This is a solid representation of your vision with some rough edges.

1. Get a producer/editor before you record/write. Go over outlines and demos. Collaborate and evolve. This is super expensive and is typically only done with a someone else covering costs. (I have not done this.)

4-poor

3-okay

2-good

1-great

Three thoughts on this.

First.

• 95% of people will notice the difference between poor and okay.
• 75% will notice the difference between okay and good.
• 10% will notice the difference between good and great.

Second. These scenarios change drastically if the writer worked as a professional editor or if the musician worked as a professional engineer. Or if the writer/musician has been doing this for a long time or if they are a natural. With chops, okay becomes good. Good will never become great without a team of people working on it.

Third. I spent around $2,500 to record my last album, Another Creepy Christmas. How much would it cost to buy acceptable hardware and software to do it myself? Probably around $2,000. Right now I have almost all of the material prepared for my next four albums. Some quick math tells me that if I record the next four albums myself, the rough cost will be $2,000. If I do them the way I have been, it’ll be between $7,000-$10,000. The first thing I record this way would dip in quality from good to okay. With work + time, it could become consistently good.

If I do this, if I learn a new skill set, my next album will take a hit. It will drive me crazy. Raise my blood pressure. Create self-doubt. And then it will get better and I will move on.

Last weekend I was the Musical Guest of Honor at Madicon. It seems hyperbolic to claim that it was my biggest convention concert fail ever, especially since fail is the theme of the blog this week. I’ll describe it and you can decide.

I was scheduled for three concerts (Friday, Saturday, Sunday). Friday, two songs in, my voice started to fail. After five songs it was gone. Dead and broken, cracking and hollow.

The upside? Because of technical problems I started almost thirty minutes late and only had to play for a half hour.

Saturday, with no vocal recovery, perhaps some continued deterioration, I rearranged my setlist to include only quiet songs that I could whisper instead of sing. I spent the hourish before going on stage lowering the keys to the songs, trying to figure out how they would suck least. This was also the show where the microphones began their slide into epic fail. Both the vocals and guitar would completely cut out for two, five, eight seconds at a time. A guy came in mid show to try to fix them and just added distortion.

The upside? Because these were mostly creepy songs, some folks thought the entire thing was on purpose. And Josh & Christine took pity on me and made me some great miracle tea.

Sunday, voice was a little better, no longer cracking, but still damaged. This was the steampunk show. I started with the quiet songs, performing acceptably and then the microphones really went nuts with their fail. I abandoned not one but two songs halfway through because I couldn’t hear. So distracted I couldn’t concentrate. In a last gasp of frustration, I shoved the microphones aside and played two last songs; Time Machine and Welcome To The Age Of Steam. These are loud songs. I made the gamble that my voice had recovered well enough to provide the volume needed to end with them and, a bright spot! My voice held out for two songs and then crashed. The show ended 10-15 minutes early.

The upside? I blasted through the final two songs and ended well.

Oh, did I mention that the performance space was inside the dealer room and that the speakers were in the ceiling?

Was this my biggest convention fail to date? The biggest voice fail? Yes. The biggest equipment fail? Yes. However, I have played shows to two audience members who showed zero interest and then left the con with zero sales. There were people in the Madicon audience who were really pulling for me. They showed great empathy for my voice and technical problems. Also, I sold a some CD’s (fewer than average) to folks who could hear through the performance to the song beneath. Is it a greater fail to have no one show up or to have enthusiastic people watch an onstage collapse?

The rest of the con was not a fail. I had a great time with the other guests and attendees. The con itself nearly doubled in size from my first one three years ago. The energy was high and the people were great. Hopefully, my onstage performances will be forgotten.