Daniel J. Hogan's Blog

In another attempt to land an agent and to get Magic of Eyri published by a big publisher, I sent out a query letter to yet another agent a couple weeks back. Well, I'm sad to say I met with the same results--a sorry not for us form letter, BUT there was a silver lining.

He hand wrote on the form letter that he didn't think my book was something he could 'pull the trigger on' at the moment (I'm assuming sell) but to please keep him mind for future projects. That's the closest I've ever gotten with an agent, so that was very encouraging. None of the others (I think about six or so) said anything like that, or even hand wrote anything to me (other than one who wrote, "Sorry, not for us"). The more I do this, the more I'm thinking that people don't want to touch a book that's already been published. We'll see tho.

So now I'm trying to think of some other projects I've been kicking around. Perhaps I'll mail him again and say, "Well, then how 'bout this?" I have a couple ideas I haven't done anything with yet. And I'm doing a week long trip to the Upper Peninsula/North Michigan/Bois Blanc Island this summer, I was considering keeping a journal and turning it into some kind of humorous short story collection. I figure as a yuppie "Troll," (slang for someone who lives south of the Mackinac Bridge--under the bridge, get it?) I'm bound to have a few adventures up there.

Not to mention there are my yearly pilgrimages to Sleeper State Park in the thumb and the NASCAR race in Watkins Glen, New York (for the record, I'm not a NASCAR fan. I go to spend time with my dad and for the people watching, and to visit the awesome friends we have out there). So I'll have lots of sources for stories.

EDIT: I am totally going to this place in the UP: http://www.oswaldsbearranch.com/

I had the pleasure of talking to students at Haslett Middle School today about being a writer (and self-publishing, etc). It was fun, the kids (ages 11-12ish) were very polite and many had a lot of questions for me.  I gave each of them a promo card and those who answered certain questions got a free mini-pin.

They started paying more attention to my questions after I started handing pins out.  I think I did a pretty good job talking about writing, self-publishing and self-promotion. I donated a copy of The Magic of Eyri to their library, which they were happy to take. I grumbled a bit at first about having to be all the way in Haslett at 8 in the morning, but it was worth it.

I asked some fun questions to keep them involved, like if I pay $16 a copy to have a book printed and sell them for $20 at a con, how much money do I actually make? And what is that amount of money called? They all knew the answers, which was good. I had fun explaining what a satire/parody was too.

Hopefully some of the kids visit my sites and check out my book from their library, some seemed excited when I told them I was donating a copy. I also gave a copy to a lucky kid after drawing a name from a hat. Thankfully, there were four different groups so by the time I got to the last one I had my routine down pretty smoothly.  I also mentioned National Novel Writing Month and having to write 50,000 words in less than 30 days. I asked the kids to shout out the longest thing any of them of written, I think the longest was 35 pages.

All in all, it was a great time and I hope I got some kids interested in my book.

Tomorrow is going to be a pretty amazing day: I'm seeing Indiana Jones in the morning with Lovely Assistant and later that night I'm going Game One of the Stanley Cup Finals! Woooo! Let's Go Red Wings! (and a special thanks to my buddy Jon for getting me a ticket)

AND to kick off this awesome weekend, Lovely Assistant and I are going to Famous Dave's for dinner tonight. Hmmm, BBQ. We ate there last weekend at Motor City Comic Con and loved it (NOTE: not going back to the same one). I'm usually not one for chain resturants but Famous Dave's is a tasty exception, along with Red Robin.  I'm a sucker for good BBQ (and good burgers).

On the subject of writing related news, I'm almost done with the revision of my short story, Slow and Steady. Lovely Assistant checked the spelling and grammar last night, so after those many changes are made I'm gonna send it off to Jay at Comics Obscura so he can decide if he wants to adapt it into a comic. I'm excited.

And I  sent Michael a list of what drawings I want for the first ten chapters of The Magic of Eyri. I think I did a good job at keeping my requests simple. I'm looking forward to what he comes up with, I'm sure it'll be nothing less  than amazing. These will be for the long promised 2nd Edition (or Special Edition, whatever I end up calling it) and the serializing of it on magicofeyri.com

Great news! I talked to Michael Church, my cover artist, and he agreed to do drawings for each of the chapters of the second edition of The Magic of Eyri that I'm planning. This means 50 drawings kids, which I know is quite the task. But I told him just black and white and no shading, so that'll make things a little bit easier for him.

I'm also decided that I am going to serialize the book with weekly chapters on magicofeyri.com, and use Michael's art for that--which was the main reason I asked him to do it. People like his art and it'll add an extra li'l somthin' to the whole affair. Yep, a free chapter a week, for 50 weeks. Although, I may considering doing two a week (maybe two chapters once a week). We'll see.

This isn't something I'm going to start tomorrow, that's for sure. I want to plan this all out and have an actual start date so I can advertise it, and I want to have the second edition ready for sale when I start serializing it (so if people don't want to wait, they can just buy the whole thing, which would be nice).

My reasons for doing this are:

1. the book has been out for over a year.
2. people do like it (and the idea of it based on the reactions I got last weekend at Motor City Comic Con).
3. giving it away for free will help get me more attention, and create more of an Internet Buzz.
4. the book keeps selling, which means I'm doing something right.
   
5. it is a good excuse to revise the book.
6. getting a good fan base for the first book will help me with the second book.
7. I don't have any other convention appearances planned until the fall.

Now, which I say revise, I don't mean I'm going to change the story. I'm gonna clean up the grammar a bit and cut out some of the wordiness. I may reword a few things here and there, perhaps even rewrite some things, but the overall story isn't going to change. Y'know what that means for those of you who already have a copy? You'll have a collector's item ;)

My order of 40 mini-pins through CafePress is seven days late. I need these bad boys to give out at Motor City Comic Con next weekend. Needless today, when I got home today and they still weren't here (should have arrived on the 2nd according to my email) I was not a happy camper. But, one quick phone call to CafePress later and they have re-sent out my order and upgraded it to One Day Shipping. I should get this new batch by Tuesday. Phew. However, I'm never using their Economy Shipping again.

They also said that if I do in fact get the original order to just keep it as a "thank for shopping with us." Bully. That would be kind of nice, to have an extra 40 buttons to give out after this little fiasco. The original order was sent out on the 23rd of April and whenever I went to check the UPS tracking info, it said none was available. Grrr. Thankfully it looks as if this situation has been taken care of and it should all work out in the end.

The only other thing I gotta worry about is if my promo cards (all 500 of 'em) I ordered through Lulu.com get to me in time. I did tell them that I needed 'em by Thursday after I emailed them back about making a few changes, so hopefully I don't hit any snags there. If it came right down to it, I'd rather have the cards than the pins. They are more useful. But then, if I don't get my cards I can always improvise something at the last minute before leaving for the con. It'd be like taking your cousin to the prom: it wouldn't be pretty, but at least you wouldn't show up empty handed. While I like getting those cards through Lulu.com, the process through which you get them is a tad clunky.

First you order them. They, usually the next day or so, they email you and ask you what you want on them. You send back the info and then, usually a day or so, they email you back what they came up with a soft proof .PDF to approve. If you don't like it, you email them back and say 'hey, change this.' Up until this time, they used the same layout for me each time and it was great. But it looks as if they redid their design because the front and backs are different. Plus they put the link to my book on lulu on the front and back cover . While that's nice,  "www.magicofeyri.com" looks a heck of a lot better than "http://www.lulu.com/content/572500" and I don't want people to go right to my lulu page. I want them to go to my site, look around and hopefully get very convinced to buy the book.

Sigh. The joys of self-publishing.

Yeah I kind of dropped the ball here and forgot to write about my last day at Penguicon over the past couple weeks. Oops! I've been busy. Honest :/

Sunday

Since I had a 9 AM panel (followed by a 10 AM reading) I decided to call it an early night on Saturday. I kind of regretted it at first because Saturday night is the big party night, but the next morning I quickly realized I made the right choice. My first event of the day was the Guerrilla Marketing --- The Art of Self-Promotion panel. Usually, 9AM on a Sunday isn't the best slot for a panel (see above about Saturday being the big party night), but the room was PACKED. I was joined by The Time Traveler and Michael "Freon" Andaluz. The Time Traveler recorded the panel and I think he's gonna post it on his site at some point. This was a fun panel and it was my first time being a moderator, which was interesting.

The three of us talked about what we each consider Guerrilla Marketing and how we promote ourselves. I told about how I put my website address on everything I can that I give out, or in some cases wear, at conventions. And how I always carry cards with the websites on them, because you never know when you'll be somewhere you can leave a few laying out or meet someone who is interested in the book. I've found that when people ask me what my book is about, giving them the card makes it a lot easier (and they like the cover art on it too).

I must digress for a moment, because I ordered a new batch of promo cards yesterday and I changed what they said a bit. Above www.magicofeyri.com it used to say 'Learn More At" , but I changed it to "Discover the Magic at." I like that a heck of a lot more.

Back to the panel: we focused a lot on internet stuff and I told of how I'm on Livejournal, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, YouTube and Internet Movie Database. I also have this blog syndcated to my profile on Amazon.com. So I'm all over the place. I had a lot of fun on this panel and hopefully those who attended took home some helpful info.

Immediately following the panel, I had a reading with Freon at 10 AM. I was very nervous about this, as I have yet to do a public reading of ay of my stuff. Getting up and talking in front of people doesn't bother me at all, but reading some of my stuff aloud does. Go figure. Well, thankfully (but also sadly) I dodged a bullet. No one showed up to the reading, it was just Freon and I. So we sat around for an hour and chatted.

After the 'reading' I headed over to the Dealer's Room and thanks to William and Deborah Jones, was able to set up camp at the Elder Signs Press (ESP) table. I sold three copies while in the dealers room, which was great, and led to Deborah teasing me that I was monopolizing the table. I stayed in the Dealer's Room until my last panel of the weekend,  How Has the Ease of Computer Animation Changed the Monster Movie?

This panel was a  hoot.  I was joined by William Jones, Jeff deLuzio and another gentlemen filling in for John Scalzi. Sadly Scalzi had a family emergency pop up at the last minute and he had to leave, so I didn't get a chance to meet him. Oh well. I still had a lot of fun. This panel had the most audience participation of all the panels/events I was a part of. We talked about all kinds of things, "less is more", flimmakers having limitations in the old days and how that made things more interesting, movie trailers showing too much, and all kinds of other fun movie related things. We of course touched on Cloverfield and pretty much all agreed that it was a step in the right direction in regards to using CGI in a monster movie.

After the panel I bummed around the hotel for a bit, talking to friends and fans -- even selling a copy of The Magic of Eyri in the halls. But the best part was when I was stopped by a fan:

Him: "Wait...you're Daniel J. Hogan?"
Me: "Yes."
Him: "I bought your book back at ConClave (October '07) -- I loved it !"
Me: "...Realy?"
Him: "Yeah! It was fan-f@#%ing-tastic! I couldn't put it down."
Me: "...Really?"
Him: "It was so hilarious, my mom kept asking me what the heck I was laughing about. It was great, and your world is totally believable."
(one side note: this is the second fan who's told me my world/characters are 'believable.' I guess I'm doing something right.)
Me: "What was your favorite part or character?"
Him: ::thinks:: "The ducks! I loved the ducks."

That was certainly one of the high points of my weekend. So, I'd say Penguicon was a big success. I had a great time.