Last week we discussed what kinds of events that you, the aspiring author, should be attending. This week we cover what you should and shouldn’t be doing there. And we start with some don’ts.

The word of the day? “Booth Barnacle.”

If last week’s ‘cast was a little long-winded, this one is downright rambling, coming in at a hefty nineteen minutes and thirty-eight seconds. Oh, the anecdotes! If you thought we were name-dropping last week (Phil Foglio, Kevin J. Anderson, and Lawrence Schoen) this week we throw around names like Larry Niven, Steve Jackson, John Ringo, and Tom Doherty. We sure hope you can learn from our meandering, celebrity-brushing reminiscences.

And speaking of celebrity-brushing, brush up against us this week in Montreal at the World Science Fiction Convention! The Writing Excuses Panel is on Friday from 2:00pm to 3:30pm in P-513C, and will feature all three of your Writing Excuses hosts with as-yet-unnannounced special guests from the world of publishing, editing, and of course authoring genre fiction.

And again, on the topic of celebrity-brushing and networking in general: one piece of linkage you introverts (and you untrained extroverts) absolutely MUST have – “Networking 201: How to Work a Room,” by Diana Rowland.

The long-awaited writing prompt (last week we just gave you the first half) is… a man arrives at a convention with something important in his pocket. It is an entire universe… and it has not been peace-bonded.

This week’s episode of Writing Excuses is brought to you by the bad accents of Dan and Howard as they pitch Dungeon Crawlers Radio.

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Transcript

As transcribed by Mike Barker

Key points: Don’t be a booth barnacle. Beware of the fan moment! As an aspiring professional, present yourself as a professional. Know who you want to meet, and why, and respect their schedule. Have leading questions that are easy for them to answer, such as “Do you have a few minutes some time to talk?” “What panels are you on that you would recommend for an aspiring writer?” or “What are you working on now?” Don’t ask “What are you looking for?” Don’t be belligerent. Have a plan, and listen. Go to the publisher panels and listen. Don’t carry a manuscript. Do carry a business card. Do plan to take notes. Do look for blogs. Do go to panels on writing. And mostly, quite sincerely, have fun.

[Brandon] Howard is very emphatic about his do’s and don’ts so I’m going to just hand the mike figuratively to him. Go for it.
[Howard] So you are attending a convention as an aspiring professional. You see your hero whose ear you want to bend, whose time you want to spend, sitting at a booth. You walk up to him and introduce yourself. There are right ways and wrong ways to do this. Being overbearing and creepy and I’m your number one fan… never say number one fan…
[Jordan] Can you say number two?
[Brandon] I’m your number three thousand six hundred fifteenth fan…
[Howard] Something like that might actually be interesting. The guy that you don’t want to be is the guy who walks up to the booth, introduces himself, and then stands a little bit off center for 25 or 30 minutes just staring.
[Brandon] And you particularly don’t want to be that guy if you’re female. Because it would be a guy. You don’t want to be that person.
[Dan] Thank you for that helpful advice.
[Howard] You don’t want to be that person. Thank you for helping me with my gender nonspecific political correctness. I’m not very good at that. I often refer to those people as booth barnacles.
[Jordan] I love that term.
[Dan] So if you’ve done that at one of Howard’s booths, now you know what he thinks.
[Howard] If you’re a fan… if you are just there as a fan, fans do that. They go all fan boy or fan girl. That just happens.

[Brandon] That’s fine if you’re a fan. But I think what Howard is pointing out is, you want to present yourself as a professional if you are an aspiring professional. People tend to think of you how you present yourself. But the question is why are you going out and talking to your hero in the first place? Can you approach that as a professional, what can you get from it, what are you looking to get from it, what…
[Howard] Let me tell you about my first meeting with Steve Jackson at ComicCon. I walked up to Steve Jackson’s booth. In front of me was my friend Richard who has been a fan of Steve Jackson forever. He said, “Hello, Mister Jackson. I don’t know if you remember me, but you and I talked at a convention 15 years ago at BYU.” Richard kind of went fan boy gushing. Steve went glassy-eyed and slack-jawed. “Oh, one of these guys.” Richard turned around after he had done this and looked at me and said, “What have I done? Usually I’m very articulate, and I just went all fan boy on my hero.” I stepped past Richard and reached out and shook Steve’s hand and said, “Hi, Mister Jackson. My name is Howard Tayler and I’ve been anxious to meet you.” Steve and I had communicated via e-mail. He shook my hand and said, “Oh, I’ve been meaning to talk to you, too.” “Well, Steve, I’ve got some time right now, can we go talk?” Steve said yes and it was awesome. We went and sat down and talked about all kinds of things. What grew out of that was the publication of Schlock books. He was hugely helpful — instrumental in making that happen. Richard is a marketing genius, and didn’t understand that that fan boy moment will creep up on you and make you say dumb things. I’ve said exactly those dumb things. I said them to Larry Niven two years earlier, which I hope Larry doesn’t remember, but I remember it. “Hi, Mister Niven. I’m a huge fan of yours. I think I’ve read everything you’ve written.” He looked at me, straight in the eye, and said, “I doubt it.”
[Brandon] That’s Larry, though.
[Howard] But you don’t want to be that guy.

[Brandon] Whenever someone says, “I’ve read your books,” I love them. I am flattered. I don’t mind if people come up to me and say, “I’ve read all your books. I think you’re a wonderful writer.” Hey, that’s great. I think it’s the next step. I think what we’re looking at here is you as an aspiring writer approaching one of these old pros are hoping for advice. This is what I… at least that’s what Dan and I were looking for. When we would go and talk to an author, we would want to know a couple of things. We would want to know who their editor was, who their agent was. How they got their editor, how they got their agent? Why they decided to pick that editor, that agent? If they had any specific advice for aspiring writers, that sort of thing.
[Howard] Getting those answers out of them at the booth might be tricky. That’s why the question I would lead with… because this is a question they are prepared to answer and want to answer… that is, what panels are you on that you think I as an aspiring writer should absolutely attend?
[Brandon] That’s a great question. That’s an excellent question. Though we do have to point out there aren’t going to be any booths at WorldCon. Well, there are, but…
[Dan] We’re talking about a signing or a reading, I think. Meeting them at a table…
[Howard] If you see them at a signing or a reading, or at a media convention, you might see them there… if you bump into them in the hall, that’s a good opening question.
[Brandon] Dan and I would often lead with “Do you have a few minutes some time to sit down and chat?” What we were looking for was not… we want to demand your time right now… we were trying to be schedule conscious. If they gave us five minutes some time that we could sit down and chat with them at their own leisure… A lot of them would, especially at World Fantasy. They’d say, “Yeah, sure, I’m going to be at the bar getting drinks between these two…
[Dan] Steve Stafle [sp?] I guess he’s an editor. He sat down with us for about 15 minutes and just talked and talked.

[Howard] There are two places that are great for having that conversation. One is the bar, and the other is the con suite. If you bump into these people at the con suite… because if they’re sitting down, it means they’ve got a little time to sit down. If they’re walking in the hallway, often they are between panels and that is not a moment when you can have 30 seconds.
[Brandon] But that didn’t stop us. That never stopped us.
[Dan] We just nagged them without mercy.
[Brandon] Here’s the thing, Howard. We were looking specifically for certain individuals that we wanted to know.
[Howard] Man, you were aggressive.
[Dan] We were.
[Jordan] Tell them the Tom Doherty story? [almost inaudible, may not be exact words]
[Dan] That’s a great place to start. Moving into…
[Howard] Tell us the Tom Doherty story.
[Dan] There’s nothing really to tell about Tom Doherty except that we ended up talking to him.
[Brandon] Here’s what we can say about Tom Doherty. Tom Doherty, we didn’t realize, is a publisher, not an editor. We were looking for editors. We found Tom Doherty, the head CEO publisher of Tor. We thought let’s talk to him. What we didn’t realize is a publisher generally hires editors to do the acquisition. Tom was not going to acquire or read our books, he would have editors to do that.
[Howard] Did he give you the time of day?
[Brandon] Oh, yeah. Tom’s a great guy. He sat and talked to us. But we could tell he wanted to get away.
[Dan] What that experience taught us is that we needed a better plan. The next time I think it was that same day we said we’re going to target people. We’re going to know who we need to talk to, we’re going to find them, and we’re going to talk to them. That’s how we found the editor that we have. We were talking to… I don’t remember who…
[Brandon] [garbled Mike Igvolus?]
[Dan] who said, “There’s a new editor at Tor who’s currently acquiring books. His name is Moshe Feder. You should find him.” We spent two straight days looking for him. Finally found him.
[Brandon] But at that same con with Tom, I think it was Ginger Buchanan. After the Tom thing, we thought, “Wow, we approached that wrong.” Because it was stopping him in the hall and he was trying to get away. That’s when we said let’s just ask them if they have time sometime. We went to a panel that we knew Ginger was on. We sat and we listened to her panel. Then afterward we walked up to her and said, “We are aspiring writers who would like to have you answer some questions. We don’t want to hand you a manuscript. We just want some advice. Do you have a few minutes sometime?” She said yes. She gave us a few minutes. Happened to be right after that panel. Let’s break for a commercial. And then let’s come back.

[Dan with accent] Good day to you. I am Armando Gonzolito del Cartio de la Fantissimo Bibliotheque.
[Howard with accent] And I’m Haggis McShiny. And his name is too long.
[Dan] And your name is too silly.
[Howard] But one thing we agree on, is that Dungeon Crawlers Radio is, it’s just made of all kinds of awesome.
[Dan] It is indeed. It is almost as awesome as I am.
[Howard] It blows up my kilt.
[Dan] Yes, but that is not very unique in this world. Anyway, the point is dungeoncrawlersradio.com — it is a place that you should go. Right now. I will wait.

[Brandon] And we’re back. I want to say a few things about what’s going on here and I want to add some caveats. The first thing is, Dan and I were aggressive. We’re not necessarily saying that you need to be aggressive or that you should be as aggressive as we were. We are both outgoing types, very bullheaded, and very go-get’em types. We had spent the money on this con, we researched the editors who were there, we got a list of them. We had Peter do a lot of that because he’s better at it than us. Then we sought out these editors specifically with questions to ask them.
[Howard] And you both now have writing careers.
[Brandon] We both now have writing careers. But let’s add some caveats here. We have the type of personalities that works for. Number two, we learned very quickly not to be belligerent. I don’t think we were belligerent at the beginning, but we were a little bit too much.
[Dan] We learned how to do it right, and a little later we’ll talk about some easy…
[Brandon] Talk to it. Go for it.
[Dan] Right now? You want to go for it now? By the time we found Moshe, we knew what we were doing. I’ll just walk you through that process. First thing we did is we found him because we all had name tags. We said, “Oh, Moshe.” We did the standard introduction. “We are aspiring authors. We would like to talk to you. We would like to get some advice.” He said sure, I’ve got a few minutes. The first question was, “What are you working on right now?” That’s a great question for an editor because they are there to sell stuff just the same way you are. They love to talk about what they’re working on right now. It gives them a great outlet for that. He told us for about 45 minutes about some mathematical thing that he was working on. Then at the end we said, “That sounds great. We’ve got some books of our own, we’d like to send them to you. Would that be OK?” He said sure. That’s pretty much all it took.
[Brandon] We sent them to him. Later on, he told me, he said, “I didn’t want to reject your book without actually reading it because you seemed like such a darned nice guy.” He said that specifically to me after he’d bought me… bought my first novel.
[Jordan] [inaudible]

[Howard] Can I point out something that both of you… I wasn’t there, but I’m sure both of you did this right. You had showered that day, and you were not dressed as storm troopers.
[Brandon] No. There’s nothing wrong with dressing as a storm trooper, but it’s the… what… present yourself. If you want to go to one of these cons and do cosplay, that’s great. Do that for the masquerade. Set aside distinct times when you are going to be going and talking to editors. When you go to the parties where the editors are, go dressed… don’t get drunk. Go dressed looking like a professional. That does not mean in this business white shirt and tie. This is relaxed environment. Business casual.
[Howard] Clean, crisp clothing. A T-shirt that does not have an offensive slogan on it.
[Brandon] Or a button up loose untucked T-shirt… not T-shirt…
[Howard] Polo, whatever…
[Brandon] Something like this. This sort of thing. You’re looking to present yourself as a professional. After the last podcast, Jordan said something that was very lucid, I think. He said to us, “This is what happens at all conferences in any professional career you’re in. People go to network.” People go to Worldcon and World Fantasy — editors and authors — often go to network. That’s not exclusively why they go. Editors will also be going, and authors will be going, to promote themselves or the books they’re working on. They will go to have fun and meet their friends. They will be doing all of these things. But they are also there as professionals in their professional environment. Authors generally want to talk to you because they want to convince you to buy their books. Editors are willing to talk to you because they are there looking for people to acquire a lot of time. You are not imposing upon them. Though, let’s take a step back and give the reminder… we’ve said this before I believe on the podcast… these conventions are run by fans, nonprofit, who love fandom and are throwing these bashes to celebrate fandom. The industry professionals are there as guests. We’ve talked a lot about the industry professionals using these conventions, but remember that you are a guest. These things really exist for the fans to go and have a panel where they discuss why Firefly is awesome or how to create a storm trooper costume. But the industry has started to jump on these, particularly Worldcon and World Fantasy, as places to congregate to chat. World Fantasy — there are no costumes, it’s only a professional convention. But Worldcon… if you’re going to Worldcon, don’t go with some sense of entitlement that it is for you. Worldcon is a place for people together and have fun. A lot of them have very different motives. Your motive can be I am going to go meet these specific individuals, and get their advice, find out whose agent represents whom. Remember you can also have fun. Howard talked about this. Dan and I didn’t do a lot of it. Now I do much more of it. You can go and have fun.

[Howard] My very first fan convention was PenguiCon in Novi, Michigan. Up until that point, I’d been doing trade shows for Novell. All of a sudden, here was something where there was science fiction panels and discussions happening. I went to that in March. By September I had quit my day job because I realized these are the sorts of events I want to be attending. This is fun. I worked my butt off while I was there, but I had a blast. I met John Ringo.
[Brandon] Sitting and chatting with Moshe that night at the party… where, after he agreed to look at our stuff, we still chatted with him for an hour about our favorite books. It was a blast.
[Dan] Yeah. And it was just hanging out. That’s the kind of thing that you can do at these. One thing I want to point out because Worldcon… by the time this airs… is going to be just a couple of days. Worldcon is especially great because like we said editors are there in part because they are trying to sell their own books. Each major publisher does its own panel where they basically just do a slideshow of everything they’ve got coming out in the next six or seven months.
[Howard] You can learn a lot.
[Dan] You can learn so much. That is an opportunity for you to sit there for 50 minutes and listen to the editors you want to sell to talk about what they love.
[Brandon] Yeah, and what they bought.
[Dan] What they’ve bought, what they’re looking for, what they focus on. I have met so many editors that way, just sitting in the back and going OK, I really agree with her, I really think that guy would like this particular book I’ve written. Then you go up after and you do your standard little soft approach. It works great.

[Brandon] Two quick don’ts. Don’t have a manuscript in hand to give to them. You can bring one to the con if you want. In your room. Don’t carry it around with you. Just in case, the one in a billion chance someone says, “Yeah, go ahead. If you’ve got one right now I’ll take it.” Say I’ll have it delivered to your room, or go run and get it for them and bring it to them at the next panel. Don’t carry it around. It’s intimidating.
[Dan] I would say don’t even offer to give it to them. Because most of them aren’t going to want it. If they ask for it, sure. But for the most part…
[Howard] The one thing I would always have on hand to hand out is a business card that has your name and your phone number and a website address that says something about who you are.
[Dan] Most of what you are going to be doing after you get that golden answer where they say, “Sure, I’ll take a look at your book.” You make sure to get their contact information. You go home, you print it out, you stick it on an envelope, you write “Requested Material” on it. You address it to that editor personally. Another thing David Hartwell told me is that if you address it to an editor, the editor will read it. If you address it to a publishing house, it gets read by the high school interns who are working there for the summer. You send it like that and then it goes to the top of the pile because it says “Requested Material” on the envelope.

[Brandon] Don’t number two. Never go up to them and ask them, “What are you looking for?” Don’t ask that. So many people want to ask that.
[Dan] That’s an awful question.
[Brandon] The reason it’s an awful question is because they’re looking for great fiction. They’re not going to say, “Oh, I only want this or I only want that.” Now through conversation, you can sometimes get out of them that they are very interested in teen girl romance vampire books or they’re very interested in this and that can help you. But don’t just… that question’s like a call of death. Do go planning to take notes. Understand if you’re not one of the people… and we’re going a little bit long, but I think we can on this one?
[Howard] That’s fine.

[Brandon] If you’re not one of the people that’s like Dan or Howard or I that’s very in-your-face, understand that you can go and you can network without networking. Meaning you can go listen to panels that editors are sitting on, that agents are sitting on, and write down the stuff that Dan said.
[Howard] I need to link to it in the sidebar… or not in the sidebar, but in the liner notes. I think her name is Diana Rowland wrote a fantastic list of how to work a party for writers, for introverts. Something that said this is how you act like the sort of person who… because if you’re an introvert, and… I am an introvert. I don’t sound like one…
[Brandon] What?
[Howard] Yes. I am an introvert.
[Brandon] No you’re not.
[Howard] Yes, I am. I am, I am, I am. I’ve just learned enough extroverted skills that I can be in-your-face when I need to be.
[Brandon] And I’m an introvert too.

[Brandon] Next thing. Look for blogs. Meaning go to the con. If you talk to an editor and you’re scared to ask them anything else, you can at least say, “Hey, do you have a blog? A professional blog that people can follow?” A lot of them do. These are wonderful ways to make a contact that you can follow and read what this editor or agent is talking about and see what they’re interested in. Do go planning to listen to panels on writing even if there is not an editor sitting on them. We’ve focused a lot on editors, but you can learn a lot just by sitting and listening to Terry Pratchett and Stephen Donaldson and John Ringo and these people.
[Dan] Absolutely. One of the first World Fantasy’s we went to had Neil Gaiman there. For crying out loud, Neil Gaiman. We got to sit there and listen to him talk about what he loved in characters and how he wrote his characters. Things like that. That’s gold.

[Brandon] I think we’ve gone long enough. Let’s go ahead and finish our writing prompt. Dan? What does the person have in their pocket?
[Dan] What does he have in his pocket?
[Brandon] It’s not the one ring, that’s not allowed. And it’s not allowed to be nothing, either.
[Dan] It’s not the one ring? He has an entire universe in his pocket.
[Brandon] Um. And it’s not peace-bonded.
[Laughter]