Driving Authors Crazy

I got word yesterday that I will be on programming at the next WorldCon, MidAmericaCon2, which will be in Kansas City in August. I'm pondering next year's WorldCon, which will be in Helsinki. I'm not entirely sure what business advantage I'd have of going there, as my books aren't published in that end of the world, other than my English-language e-books, but it would be a tax-deductible trip to Finland and a chance to visit some of the other Nordic countries along the way, and maybe exposure to a new audience of people who might pick up the e-books.

Meanwhile, I'm still waiting to learn whether or not I'll be at the regional teen book festival that was started by my local library system. Unless I missed an e-mail along the way either of the "thank you for your interest, but there were so many authors and we only have so many slots" or the "yes, we want you, but please keep this under your hat because we're doing dramatic revelations" variety, they're letting authors know they were selected at the same time they're notifying the public, a few at a time via clever social media reveals. They put together teaser pictures with just a word from a book cover and have people guess the authors. And if there was no definitive yes or no message to the authors at any time, this seems like a surefire way to drive people insane. Maybe I should have a chat with my local librarian about this. I don't know if they realize just how annoying this is for authors to have to wait and watch for the information to trickle out and not being able to make plans for that weekend one way or another until they get around to announcing all the participants who were selected. I think they're down to their last few authors, so I'm getting the impression I wasn't selected, but if they weren't notifying people and verifying that they were still interested before making the public announcement, I don't dare accept other events for that weekend, which is possibly going to shut me out of those other events. It is possible that any notification went to my publisher rather than to me (though the confirmation that they received my application went to me), and my publisher doesn't seem to remember I exist, so they may never have passed any news on to me, one way or another. If it went to the publicist, I'll never know about it. And I wasn't part of this week's revelations, so I think there's one set to go.

This is when I vow that I'm going to go out and write another book that will end up being so successful that one day they will beg me to come to their event, and I will laugh at them because I no longer need it.

As I said on Facebook yesterday, this business is like getting a public performance review on every single project, where everyone else not only watches what the "boss" says to you but also gets to chime in with their own comments and then decide how much you get paid. It's not a business for thin-skinned people or wimps. Even tough people who are good at tuning out the rest of the world get discouraged every so often.

On the up side, I have a free weekend ahead of me, a convention next weekend, and I just came up with an idea for what I think will be a cool short story.