I’ll be at ConDFW in Fort Worth this Saturday, if anyone in the north Texas area is interested in stopping by. I’ve struggled with this convention in the past because it falls at a time of year when I really don’t feel too social. It’s hibernation season, and being around large groups of people is jarring. Plus, it seems like either the weather is awful (there was the year we had record snowfall the day before) or the weather is nice but spring allergy season has hit (like this year — I’ll have to carry a box of tissues with me). Last year, I said I’d skip it this year, but now this year is going to be the last year, so I figured I’d go one more time. I’m only doing Saturday since the crowd is so light on Friday that it’s not worth the drive, and I have obligations on Sunday.

But I will be reading a bit from the upcoming Enchanted, Inc. book.

I am leaning away from conventions for the time being, in part because I need to be focusing on writing right now and in part because I need to figure out a new way to make them work for me. I’m at the awkward in-between stage in which the people who are at the conventions I can easily get to already know who I am, so I don’t get much of a boost out of being there, but I’m not well enough known to get invited as a guest of honor to conventions farther away, and I’m not sure that attending a convention that I have to pay travel expenses for would pay off if I’m just there as a panelist. So maybe I need to get a little more famous some other way or have a few more books before I dive in again. At the very least, I need to let people miss me, though I guess there’s also the risk of them forgetting about me.

It is a little depressing when people who haven’t been around as long as I have and who have fewer books than I have are getting invited as special guests and workshop instructors. I’ve been a guest of honor at one convention, but there are also conventions where I can’t even seem to get accepted as a panelist. So, back into my cave to plot my triumphant return.

I’d thought I’d done most of the research I needed to build this world, but I picked up a book at the library yesterday on a whim, supposedly to research an aspect of this world, though it wasn’t something that I thought needed to be developed any further because it’s a minor part of the story — and then that book gave me the solution I needed to a plot problem I’d been wrestling with. So maybe I need a bit more research.