Con Report: MystiCon, Saturday

I arrived pretty late Friday night, so ended up blogging and settling in early. Saturday I began AJ Hartley’s reading, which turned into a great discussion with AJ and Stuart Jaffe on self-pub vs traditional publishing. Stuart talked about an intriguing project started by Hugh Howey, king of the self-pub world with his phenomenally successful Wool series and more.

 

Authorearnings.com is a site featuring data collected from Amazon.com and statistically sliced and diced to a faretheewell. The upshot is that the stats demonstrate the scope of the shift in the publishing world, and that the once-derided self-pub world has fully come into its own in terms of author viability and success. The raw data is also freely available for those interested and able to delve into their own statistical analyses. A quick glance at the site convinces me it deserves more attention when I’m home and not suffering on the uber-slow hotel internet access.

 

Next I enjoyed Gray Rinehart’s reading of part of his short story “Light Weaver in Shadow”, which will be published in Baen Book’s upcoming Shattered Shields anthology. Gray also sang several songs from his CD, Truth and Lies and Make Believe, which is available for free listening and purchase from BandCamp, as well as songs he’s working on for his new CD. 

 

Next up was Danny Birt reading several sections of his short story “To Thine Own Sylph Be True” in the BadAss Fairies anthology which will launch at BaltiCon this year. Danny also sang several of his filk favorites, including “Ob-la-di, ob-la-da”,  “Silent Letter Blues”, “She’ll be coming round the planets when she comes”, and the mischievously naughty “Girlfriends and Dragons”. He also introduced our audience to linear thinking puzzles, soon to appear in an app near you, which are 20-Question-style whodunnits. Danny and Leona Wisoker also talked about The Scribbling Lion, their new retail venture for authors and artists.

 

My final reading of the day was Leona reading her wicked short story “Silver and Iron” in the Sha-Daa Pawns anthology. I followed this with some hall-conversation time and a preview swing through the dealers room. Met up with friends for dinner and am now resting a bit before the ConCarolina’s room party and the midnight drum circle. All in all, couldn’t ask for a better con day!

 

Music	Jesse Cook, Free Fall
Time writing	30 minutes, including some followup research