Category Archives: Guy Anthony De Marco

When I re-started my writing career after a long hiatus, I had to figure out how to get back into the convention circuit. My base of operations shifted from upstate New York to the Denver area, so I didn’t know any local authors and I had no idea what conventions were in the area. Most importantly, I didn’t know how much it would cost.

I wasn’t too concerned with meeting new local authors, since I figured once I discovered where they lurked, we’d say hello. I trundled off to Google’s House to search through their drawers of data. I wanted to focus my search on conventions that involved the genres I was interested in. My horrible search string was this:

Yes, it’s written in geeky Google-ese. Translating it to English: Look for conventions in Denver or Colorado Springs for any of genres I listed. (If you’re interested in learning some tips for using Google to research things, see my Fictorians post on Advanced Google-Fu.)

I found plenty of local conventions, and my conventioneering career was underway. I reached out to the contacts I found on the con websites, offering my services on panels. The ones who asked me to sit on a panel received my highest priority, assuming they compensated me with a membership ticket. The ones who weren’t interested I put on a check-next-year list. Since I had no problems talking to a large audience (I used to teach at the college level, which helped me with my public speaking chops), programming directors heard that I “gave good panel.” I made a page on my author website that covered what panels I attended for which con, and I even made sure to include a list of fellow panelists. Sometimes it helps to name-drop.

After a few years, I was known to a large segment of the local con-going crowd. Most didn’t buy my books (I would be writing this from my island paradise if only that were true), but enough people remembered the Guy in the grey beard who made people laugh on panels. Folks would stop me in halls to say hello, and even the occasional celebrity/Guest of Honor would interrupt a conversation with a fan to say hello to me by name.

I figured I had saturated the local market with my branding efforts. I was wondering what to do at that point when my brilliant wife, Tonya L. De Marco, suggested that I start expanding my convention horizons.

Cue a Homer Simpson “D’oh!” That made sense.

I had to figure out where I could travel and remain in my budget. I decided on expanding east of Denver, for no other reason than there was more real estate in that direction. I didn’t want to fall off of the edge of my map, since it’s turtles all the way down. (Bonus geek points if you got that reference.)

I picked a couple of cities in Nebraska and replaced Denver and Colorado Springs in my Google search statement. It turned out there were several vibrant cons in Lincoln and Omaha. The first one I went to, CONStellation in Lincoln, wasn’t interested in me at first. I attended as a regular Guy just to experience what the con had to offer. The second convention I contacted, Omaha’s OSFest, was interested, and I was invited to attend as a panelist.

I’ve only been back to CONStellation once, where I shared a dinner table and conversation with Elizabeth Bear. I had so much fun at OSFest that I talked to the convention chair and helped to build an author panel track. I asked around my gaggle of Denver-based author friends and came up with a group that was interested in traveling to Omaha. The group returned for a couple of years until this year, when they were no longer interested in having us set up the author track (the new programming chair decided to go with an online submit-your-own panel methodology).

No worries, I thought. Look, there’s more unexplored territory on my map! Utah has a huge convention called Salt Lake Comic Con (SLCC), and there’s one in the other direction near St. Louis called Archon…

I opened my browser, found the names of the convention chairs, and fired off an email. I’m now attending SLCC as a Special Guest, and I’m waiting on a reply from Archon, one of the oldest fan-run conventions.

I’ll keep you informed as my horizons expand…

About the Author:

Guy Anthony De Marco is a speculative fiction author; a Graphic Novel Bram Stoker Award^®; winner of the HWA Silver Hammer Award; a prolific short story and flash fiction crafter; a novelist; an invisible man with superhero powers; a game writer (Sojourner Tales modules, Interface Zero 2.0 core team, D&D modules); and a coffee addict. One of these is false.

A writer since 1977, Guy is a member of the following organizations: SFWA, WWA, SFPA, IAMTW, ASCAP, RMFW, NCW, HWA. He hopes to collect the rest of the letters of the alphabet one day. Additional information can be found at Wikipedia, GuyAndTonya.com, and GuyAnthonyDeMarco.com.

Convention Panels for Newbies

June 2, 2015

Guy Anthony De Marco

Most professional authors have attended conventions as a fan before they were bitten by their muse. Some attend to sell books, sit on panels, and even do a reading or two. I’ve been asked numerous times how a new author can learn the secret handshake to get behind the table or podium instead of getting stuck in the back row of a crowded room.

The answer is: It depends on the convention.

Getting panel time is easier for the local conventions, and it is a good place to start. The budget for a 150-attendee convention can’t sustain bringing in a lot of headliners, so they usually focus on a big name or two to draw the crowds. This leaves plenty of room for a newly published author to get in front of an audience and polish their presentation. Smaller cons can also allow you to interact with folks who inspire you as a writer. When I started going to conventions again after a 23-year gap, I found myself sitting next to luminaries like Kevin J. Anderson, Connie Willis, Peter J. Wacks, C.J. Henderson, Carrie Vaughn, and Eytan Kollin.

Your attitude will help determine how far you’ll get. Approach a potential panel opportunity from the perspective that you will be glad to help the Con Panel Chair in any capacity. Never act like you’re doing the convention a favor by appearing in their midst. If you sold one pro short story or over fifty novels, remain humble and helpful.

Now that you’ve been invited to the other side of the table, here are a few things I’ve learned:

Be on time. You can be fashionably late when you’ve won a Bram Stoker Award®, an Edgar®, and a Hugo® or two. If you’ve won those awards, you’d probably be too professional to be late anyway.
Look the part. Be clean, wear reasonably decent clothes, and try to avoid the controversial t-shirts. If it’s part of your persona to be a smelly bum with less than three square feet of ripped t-shirt covering a beer gut, understand you won’t be looked upon with favor for the next convention.
Pay attention. When another author is talking, follow the conversation so you can contribute without repeating points others have made five minutes ago. When an audience member is talking, look at them and nod your understanding of their question. When a luminary is talking, pay close attention to how they interact with the audience. They’ve been doing the panel gig for a while, and you can learn quite a bit just by using your senses instead of using your smartphone to update your Facebook status.
Panels are not a competition. There is no need to one-up the previous panelist, and you are not getting paid by how many seconds you can keep the microphone in your hot little hands. Share with others, allow the other panelists to complete their thoughts or stories, and don’t forget to keep yourself on the topic of the moment.
Be appreciative. Always thank the other panelists and, most especially, the audience. Remember, the folks who are buying the books are the ones you want to make a good impression on, and you want to be remembered.
Be prepared. Unless you’re a last-minute addition to the panel, you should at least know who the other panelists are, what they’ve written, and you should make yourself familiar with the topic. Don’t forget to memorize a quick blurb about yourself for your introduction. I also like to bring a nameplate, some cards or treats, several pens, and a few copies of my latest work.
Be positive. Unless you have the funniest goth schtick going, you want to be remembered as someone who is fun, someone who compliments others, and an author who is professional. If you can contribute something funny, do so unless it is at someone else’s expense. Above all, never insult an audience member or the guest of honor.
Be yourself. Relax (as best as you can.) I like to imagine I invited a bunch of friends over to my back yard for a barbecue. If you have a phobia about public speaking, I would suggest taking a class, joining Toastmasters, or just focusing everything down to the person you are talking to and ignoring the rest. I find that making eye contact and smiling works best for both my nerves and the audience member stammering out a question.

Eventually, word of mouth will spread that you “give good panel”, and you will be asked to come back next year. Since there are usually several conventions in a geographic region every year, you may find yourself talking to volunteers from other events. For example, I attended Constellation Nebraska one year, and I met the chairwoman for a larger convention in Omaha. I was invited to attend OSFest, and they asked me to bring a few more authors from the Denver area. Along with Promethius Award winner Eytan Kollin, Peter Wacks, and Quincy Allen, I ended up on 13 panels, met two artists who I hired to do some book covers, and I made a lot of new friends.

If you are attending a convention as an audience member, take the time to seek out the panel chairperson. Let them know who you are, give them a professional business card with links for further information, and tell them that you are available if there are any last-minute panel cancellations. Make sure you give them your cell phone number and keep your phone with you (on vibrate only during events, of course!) I was on three panels at MileHiCon in Denver, and I made sure to tell the panel chair I was available for more if needed. Sure enough, an author had to cancel and I was the person she called to fill the open slot. They remembered I was accomodating, professional, polite, and that I helped them out of a jam. I was invited back the following year.

As for the larger conventions, it may take a while to get your foot in the door. It helps if you were on panels with solid authors who remember you in a positive light. Send in a request for a reading or panel suggestions to the panel chairperson, along with your writing credentials and group affiliations. I usually include a link to the panels I sat on within the last year (http://guyanthonydemarco.com/panels/), and note the name-brand authors who were on some of the panels. If you keep in touch with other panelists, you can always ask if there are any open slots for upcoming panels. Sometimes it takes one person to remember you so you can get your foot in the door. Thanks to Peter Wacks and David Boop, two gents from the Colorado writing scene, I was able to get on panels at StarFest in Denver, which is a notoriously difficult con to crack.

The more panels and readings you do, the more people will remember your name and your face. If they enjoyed your events, they are more prone to read your latest book, especially if they can get it signed. That’s the difficult task…getting something published that shows off your talent. If you did your writing job well, the rest will follow.

About the Author:

Advanced Google-Fu

May 28, 2015

Guy Anthony De Marco

Guy Anthony De Marco Writing Tools 1 Comment

Anyone can go to Google and search for a particular piece of information. Sometimes they luck out and find what they were originally looking for, while other folks end up getting sidetracked by a website full of cute fluffy kittens.

As authors, we tend to have limited resources, particularly time. Using efficient search techniques, our precious time can be spent on writing the next chapter instead of searching for details on how you remove the clip from an AK-47 assault rifle.

Google engineers and coders included many advanced search operators when they built their search engine. Using operators, we can focus our search on very specific terms or files.

Here are a few of the common operators:

+ The plus sign indicates something is required.
– The minus sign indicates something is to be excluded from the search results.
(x|y) Groupings – in this case, “x” OR “y”, are acceptable.
inurl: Something that is part of a website URL.
intitle: Something from the title of the web page
filetype: This indicates the result should be a particular file type.

Going back to our example, I put in the following search term:

filetype:pdf +(ak47|ak-47) remove clip

In English, the search term means:

Find an Adobe PDF file that contains either AK47 or AK-47, plus the words “remove” and “clip”.

On the first page of the results, I discover a PDF document that not only shows how to remove the clip from an AK-47, but how to do a complete teardown for cleaning (with plenty of photographs for those who are not familiar with the rifle.) Excellent! Now your zombie killer can clean her AK-47 properly.

Let’s try something that can be useful for the average author. I want to find pirated copies of a novel. We’ll use Stephen King’s novel, “Under the Dome”, as our test subject.

My very focused search term is:

What this means in English:

Looking on web pages that have “htm”, “html” or “php” in them, make sure the title of the web page is “index of”, and make sure the web page has the terms “parent directory”, “description”, and “size”. Also, make sure there are ebook files on the page (mobi and azw are for Kindle; PDFs; or ePub ebooks for the Nook, Sony or Kobo reader). The specific thing I am looking for has the words “stephen”, “king”, “under” and “dome”.

Most of the pirate dump sites are just a plain automatically generated web page with links to the files. These pages usually contain common terms like “index of”, “parent directory”, and “size”, which makes it easier to find the pirate sites.

Running the above focused search term, I get three results. The second one has a freely downloadable pirated copy of Stephen King’s novel, “Under the Dome”.

Personally, I use the filetype: operator almost daily. I can pick the exact file I want to find, usually a PDF or a Microsoft Word “.docx” file by typing filetype:pdf or filetype:docx in the search window.

Another operator I use all the time is the “-“, or NOT, operator. If I was searching for Rocky Wood, an author and HWA president who passed away last year, and Horror, I may end up with links to all kinds of unusual things, such as Rocky (the boxer), Norwegian Wood, and the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I can tailor my search like this:

+”rocky wood” -boxer -“rocky horror picture show” +horror

In English:

Find instances where the words Rocky and Wood are together, but ignore any pages that have that goofy musical and any references to boxers. Also, please make sure the word “horror” appears on the page.

Note that it is easy to get so focused that you end up with no results. Running the above query, I get only five pages back. If I wanted more pages, I could try this query:

+”rocky wood” +”horror writers association”

I get seven times more relevant pages using the second query. If your results are too small, try making your query less restrictive, or try using other key words that are apropos to your searching desires.

About the Author:

Computer Spring Cleaning

May 23, 2015

Guy Anthony De Marco

Business Guy Anthony De Marco Writing Tools 1 Comment

It’s the start of a new year, so it’s time to discuss a bit of pre-spring cleaning for your computer. For perspective, my “day job” used to involve working in an Information Technology department for a large corporation with 13,000 users, a field I’ve been working in since I started writing computer programs in 1977. I performed these tasks quarterly at a minimum on my personal equipment, and twice daily on the 983 servers I was responsible for.

1. Back Up Your Data

In the IT field, there’s an old saying: “There are two kinds of people, those who back up their data, and those who wish they did.”

Yes, everyone knows they should back up their data, but most forget to do it if the task isn’t automated. In the past, I was guilty of forgetting to do this on my laptop, and I’ve lost works in progress. So, like changing your smoke alarm battery every time there is a change to Daylight Savings Time in the United States, at the very least you should make a concerted effort to back up the data from the previous year.

I back up all of my fiction, articles, and poems onto a CD, then put it in a safe place. I also archive it on my website in case I need copies when I’m traveling. Make sure you label the disc and put it in a sleeve or CD case. Use a permanent marker, put on a sticker label (use the round ones so the CD isn’t unbalanced when spinning), or write the label directly on the CD if you happen to have LightScribe. Do not use ballpoint ink pens on the CD — use permanent markers like the Sharpie brand. Most people think the underside of a CD is the most sensitive to damage, but it’s actually the top portion that is fragile. Once the thin layer of laquer is damaged, such as from writing on a CD with a ballpoint pen, the reflective backing starts flaking off, destroying the CD. The underside may get scratches, but the CD writing process includes error correction, which is why many scratched CDs still work for data.

If you have a large amount of data, such as your story files, ebook files, audio files, and images, use a DVD-ROM to back up your work. The same rules apply for the care of the discs.

If you have a safe deposit box at the bank, consider keeping a copy there in case something happens to your house. I know several authors that were impacted by Hurrican Sandy, and several of them lost their homes and their computers.

In addition to backing up important files, I also recommend purchasing a USB external drive that comes with backup software. This way, your entire hard drive can be restored if you get a nasty virus or malware that destroys everything on your computer. One terrabyte external drives are around $100. Restoring your computer after you get hit by a nasty virus with a couple of clicks is priceless. Another option is to use an external storage solution like Dropbox (see May 4th’s post by Kristen for a writeup), Evernote, and Google Drive.

2. Anti-Virus Scanning

I’m assuming most of you have an updated anti-virus program running on your computer(s) and laptop(s). Good for you! If you don’t, there are several free anti-virus programs available, such as AVG and Avast. If your computer connects to the Internet, you need protection.

Now is the time to do something that your computer has been bugging you to do for a while. Close all of your open files and programs. Yes, that includes Facebook — don’t worry, you’ll survive the withdrawals. Open whatever anti-virus program you use and select “full system” or “full hard drive” scans, then leave your system alone. If you’re running a laptop that goes into hibernation mode if it doesn’t feel your loving hands brushing the touchpad, deftly sliding the mouse, or even stroking the keyboard, try setting your system to stay out of hibernation mode by adjusting your power settings. Leave your laptop plugged in, in case it takes a while to scan your data.

Your anti-virus program is going to scan every file stored on your computer. Depending on the number of files and the speed of your computer, this may take an hour or ten. If it finds any nasty lurking virus files, let the software kill or quarantine the offending data.

3. Dump Unused Software

If you have software installed that you never used in 2012, consider deleting it from your computer to free up space. Make sure you have the original software available should the need arise to re-install. A good example is getting rid of old income tax software. It’s doubtful you’re going to re-file your 2008 taxes again, so save your data files (onto a CD!), then uninstall.

4. Catch Up on Updates

Now is a good time to update your operating system … AFTER you have backed up your data. Allow your system to go online to download patches and updates, then allow your computer to install without slowing it down by surfing the Internet. If you have the urge to post a Twitter update, tweet using your smartphone.

Once your operating system files are updated and your computer is restarted, go through your programs and check for updates. Don’t forget programs like Microsoft Office, Scrivener, Adobe Acrobat, Java, Firefox, and any other browser updates (including browser plugins, if any.)

5. Catch Up on Writing

Now that your computer is backed up and updated, it’s time to get writing. No excuses!

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