You have probably heard by now that the LA Times Festival of Books, the biggest literary event of the year, will not happen April 18-19 as planned. Because of contagion concerns, it has been postponed until the first weekend of October. Wordsmith Writing Coaches will still have a booth there (#122!) and it is planned to be every bit as awesome as it usually is... just five and a half months late.
That's a long time to wait for all the booths, activities, free workshops, free swag, book sales, author signings and selfie opportunities.
But the independent publishing community is rallying to fill that void with contagion-free (or at least very-low-risk) opportunities to meet authors, illustrators, editors, agents, publishers, writing coaches, book doctors, screenwriters, comic book and graphic novel creators, and learn from them and interact with them in various interesting ways. We will be teaming up with some colleagues to offer a virtual "Authors' Festival" sometime during the weekend of April 18-19, too. We have never done anything like this, so I can't make any promises about who will join us or what exactly we will do, but it will be for you, and it will beat sitting around at home feeling sad that you're not at the regular LA Times Festival of Books. Keep an eye out for an email about it soon.
Of course, the Festival of Books was just one of many similar casualties in the literary and creative world. GEOCon, Fantaticon, Jambalaya WritersCon, Wonder Con, NYC Writers Conference, Planet Comic Con, GalactiCon, and particularly the Emerald City Comic Con, which should have begun today and run through this weekend.
My colleague Russell Nohelty (of WannaBee Press) should have been an exhibitor there at ECCC in Seattle, Washington. But also because of the Coronavirus ...you guessed it. So, being the force of nature that he is, Russell managed to pull together more than a dozen other creatives who had hoped to exhibit there at ECCC and organized a virtual conference of his own for this weekend, WannaCon!
It is streaming on at least three different sites, 100% free of charge. Except for not being held in the Emerald City, offering no parking hassles, no lines to stand in, and no fear of contagion, it's just like being at the ECCC! (Okay, maybe not an immersive replicate experience, yet—give that tech time to mature and scale up...) But it will be an amazing opportunity to (virtually) meet so many successful and resourceful creatives, to discover so many top-quality books and graphic novels and original art, and more. Definitely drop in this weekend, on your phone if you must (it's like peeking through a little porthole into a party) or on a laptop, or put it up on whatever bigger screen you might have.
Grace and stubbornly vigorous health to you!
—Nic
(...scroll down for the description of the emergency virtual con to replace the lost Emerald City ComiCon that was scheduled for this coming weekend!) #WannaCon2020
I have a very exciting announcement. Tomorrow I will be hosting my first every virtual convention, called Wannacon.
I was supposed to be in Seattle this week for ECCC, but right now it's on lockdown, so the show was postponed, which means I had nothing to do this week. So I scrambled to put together three amazing days of virtual panels for you, including displaced artists from ECCC and some Wannabe Press creators from our anthology books.
Here's the most updated schedule for the conference.
FRIDAY - PACIFIC TIME
12 pm PDT - Onrie Kompan and Katrina Kunstman
1 pm PDT - David Avallone and Cammry Lapka
2 pm PDT - Matt Knowles and Steph Cannon
3 pm PDT - Nicoline Evans and Melissa Beth Rose
SATURDAY - PACIFIC TIME
12 pm PDT - Christie Shinn and Carolyn Carter
1 pm PDT - Madeleine Holly-Rosing and Eddie Deangelini
2 pm PDT - Kathryn Calamia and Leanne Kathleen Ingino
3 pm PDT - Melissa Pagluica and Moana McAdams
SUNDAY - PACIFIC TIME
12 pm PDT - Comfort Love and Adam Withers
1 pm PDT - David Pepose
2 pm PDT - Travis Gibb and Erik Lervold
3 pm PDT - David Lucarelli and Melissa Massey
We'll be streaming to my Facebook page, The Complete Creative Facebook page, my author Facebook group, Twitch, and Youtube:
The Complete Creative Facebook Page
Authors and Creators Making Money Selling Books
I hope to see you there. It should be super informative and fun.
Plus, I ALSO just dropped an episode of The Complete Creative podcast. This week I'm rebroadcasting one of my favorite interviews with Cthulhu is Hard to Spell contributor, Paul Jenkins.
Paul was one of my first big gets on the show, and being able to interview him without falling over myself gave me the confidence to step up my game.
Paul has written for just about every important comic book going, as well as raising hundreds of thousands of dollars on Kickstarter, specifically for his book Fairy Quest with the equally legendary Umberto Ramos.
We talked about so much in this show, and even though we talk about some things that launched years ago, the general tone of this episode, and the advice given, is still quite relevant.
Hope you enjoy it too.
Until next time,
Russell Nohelty
The Complete Creative
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