Dream Journal: Book Promotion at a Talk Show

No doubt the topic of the dream was sparked by being at a con and having books and book promotion on my brain.

So there I was, in my dream, in the audience at a talk show. (Something like the Tonight Show, but the host wasn't one of the actual historic hosts, though I have this vague sense that he was modeled after some tv host I watched in my youth.) There was one set of "special" seats with whom they did an "audience interaction" segment (which, in the way of Hollywood, was taped separately in a different location after the regular show). One of the folks sitting in that area had to leave before the end of the show and offered me their place. So there I am thinking, "What an opportunity, because when they ask me to tell a little something about myself, I can casually mention being an author and I just happen to have copies of my books on me to display (as you do)."

So when the regular part of the show was finished I and several other people got whisked off to be prepped for the special segment and assigned a couple of attendants to explain the ropes and do makeup and the rest. There was a bit of a competitive "Hunger Games" vibe to this part, because evidently the prep crews had a bit of rivalry going in whose guest made the best showing in the segment. My crew was telling me I was way more interesting than the other guests, with an air of personal triumph.

But then they screwed up my make-up and were having trouble getting it fixed and I had to rush off for the taping, and realized I'd left my purse and the books behind in the make-up booth, but also someone had given me bad directions for where to go for the taping and by the time I realized I was going in the wrong direction and backtracked, the prep area was deserted. [Only now while typing this up does it occur to me that those "bad directions" might have been part of the prep-crew rivalries. I'm not sure this counts as being part of the dream, since it didn't occur to me while I was asleep.]

I got a janitor to let me into the make-up area but my stuff was gone. So I rushed off to the stage where they were doing the taping and arrived just as everything was over (and found my purse and books sitting there on my empty chair). As the crew was packing up, I went up to the host to apologize for the screw-up and for not having been there and to offer him a copy of my book anyway. He was all snippy and said, "After that, I wouldn't even read your book if you paid me. Well, ok, maybe I would if you paid me."

So I pulled out a ten dollar bill and said, "I'll give this to your favorite charity if you accept the book." And then we chatted some more and in the end he decided I was an ok person and agreed to look at my book. So the dream ended positively with the vaguest hope that a major tv talk-show host might some day say something nice about my books.

Analysis: We will ignore the enormous implausibility of the actual scenario. The various logistical disasters in the dream probably represent standard anxiety motifs about being over-scheduled and afraid that I'll drop the ball somewhere. But the generally positive conclusion seems to reflect my more relaxed feeling about how my books are doing this time around. (As I've mentioned in previous dream journals, my symbolism tends to be fairly direct and transparent.)

Westercon report: Saturday

Not going to be quite as detailed this time, I think.

Attended panel "Shakespeare in Sci-Fi" - Nice wide-ranging discussions, covering Shakespearean themes and references in all manner of media and pop-culture. Direct references, re-envisionings, re-interpretations. Discussion of what aspects of the material remain relevant and which seem dated when transplanted into modern settings. How to use pop-culture interpretations as a gateway drug to the plays.

Attended single-presenter discussion on "Creating an Author Platform to Promote Yourself on Social Media" - I've attended a number of these at various conventions to get different angles on the topic and I have to say that some people are really gung-ho about the whole social media thing. But I'm not sure that presentations like this one are going to win converts to the fire-hose approach to marketing yourself through social media, but may instead send people fleeing from the entire concept. I'm also skeptical about the effectiveness of some of the suggested techniques. (E.g., if you have thousands of twitter followers and follow thousands in turn, send out dozens of promotional tweets a day, but you only ever read direct mentions, what gives you confidence that any of your thousands of followers are reading what you send out? I have this vision of entire networks of twitter connections that are blindly tweeting at each other with nobody actually reading anything.)

Chatting and lunch, then attended "I must create a system: Inventing myths for fantasy worlds" - Panelists shared examples of how they created or used mythologies in their writing. Comparing the complexities of historical mythological systems which often involved layers of accretions, with the necessarily simplified mythology used to convey world-building. In your world-building, are they myths "real" or reflections of folk traditions?

I took an hour off to decompress a little then decided to take in the panel "Fanfic, Profic, Fic: Undrawing the Line?" mostly for the interesting mix of panelists. Discussion of where the lines are blurred and where they remain firm, various social and legal issues around fanfic, various ways in which industry has tried to cash in on or control fanfic. A big emphasis on how overlapping the categories of "pro writer" and "fanfic writer" are these days.

Vague-blogging: if you are an aging sf author who has a chip on your shoulder about the fact that you haven't published any new books in the last decade and a half, and you've decided you need to get your face in front of the fans on the convention circuit to revitalize your career, it is a poor move to spend every panel you're on telling people about what a big shot you are. There are even poorer moves than that to make, and you made several of them as well.

There were a couple of "sf poetry salon" sessions listed as a sort of spontaneous drop-by event. The one in the next time-slot had the theme "science and mathematics" so I stopped by to check it out and ended up performing a couple of my biotech pieces. A small group, but appreciative.

My only panel today was in the last session of the afternoon: "Heroines as Catalysts". The panel topic was somewhat unfortunately worded, managing to imply that the vast majority of genre protagonists are men, though women sometimes get to be main characters if they're kick-ass types, but that women often appear as "catalyst" characters. Well. The first thing we panelists agreed was that the premise of the panel as we understood it was bunk. We did discuss the problems with the idea of a "catalyst character", as well as various types of motivation a catalyst-character could provide. But then we moved more into a discussion of how characters can be significant plot-movers without being "kick-ass", and of various ways to avoid gender stereotyping in character development. (It was also noted at the beginning of the panel that of course the panel on female characters was all female. Though to be fair, all of us were also on other panels not related to gender.)

I'd set up dinner plans with Kit Kerr and included Lisanne Norman in them as well, then at the last minute we added Bradford Lyau and a marvelous time was had by all. Lisanne and I went to take in the masquerade afterward, which I haven't done in quite some time. It was fairly small but with some very imaginative entries. (I think my favorite was a duel between Iron Man and Dr. Doom reimagined as Shakespearean drama, including Elizabethan interpretations of the costumes.) The "half-time" entertainment while the judges were out was a rock band doing a sort-of Lovecraftian mini rock opera. It wasn't quite my thing, I'm afraid, though a lot of that is my aversion to loud music where I can't understand the lyrics. (And since the lyrics were telling the story, in this case, not being able to understand them was a problem.)

And so to bed.