The Mind of Bryan Lee Peterson

This weekend, the Chicago Comics and Entertainment Expo had its second run at McCormick Place in Chicago. I only took in one day, and even that was about half the day, due to particular circumstances beyond my control. This particular con is something of a new format for cons, and you can tell they’re still working out what they want to be and how to go about it. It was a good time, with a great crowd, and as one of the top few cons in Chicago, is well worth the visit, but through the experience we can learn a lot about what goes into cons.

The idea of C2E2 is to be a pan-geek con, covering comics, movies, games, just about anything in the world of geekdom. When you think about it, it is very smart. Something I heard a couple of weeks ago that has been resonating quite a bit lately is that the younger market increasingly distinguishes less between mediums. There is little difference between a comic, a movie, a video game or a book, and there are many examples of projects which blur the lines. This is one of the reasons the YA book market is one of the strongest segments for publishing. Doing a convention based on all of these rather than just one segment makes a lot of sense, it capitalizes on the overlap of fandom.

One of the best ways to lay this out on the table for everyone to understand is to get a huge guest of honor. Last year, Neil Gaiman was the keynote speaker, perfect because he is huge in comics, books, and increasingly, film and television. He would bring people to the convention like few others could. If you don’t know it, Neil is hard to book and expensive. There was a discussion with him shortly after last year’s con where he explained his $40,000 (I think I remember that right) appearance fee. He explained it as a way to weed out people who weren’t serious about booking him, and a way to make sure we keep him writing by not overbooking him. If you want a symbol of cross media success, Neil Gaiman is probably the best fit.

Last year’s con had a very strong indie presence, and a refreshing open feeling, it wasn’t overly crowded, you could talk to people, and there was good representation from various industries. A movie Prop Auction house had a large presence, and the various medias were represented in small but probably fairly proportionate numbers.

The significant point of this is to define that you are not a replacement  for comicon, establish yourself as something different.

This year, the con was crowded as comicon, and felt much like it.

In talking to one of the organizers we knew, he mentioned a few things that stuck out to me. One was that a lot of people didn’t do so well last year, and so didn’t return, particularly non-comic vendors. The problem is how to attract those vendors back.

I can identify a major limiting factor in the con, in particular, the name. Years and years ago, I was at a Neil Gaiman signing, back when Neil showing up somewhere would attract 150 people instead of 5,000. Somebody asked him what he liked about books vs. comics particularly regarding Stardust which had been a comic first, then a novel (and some years later the movie came out), and one of his points was that the Stardust comic had sold at best 10,000 copies, whereas his novel of it had sold 100,000. And books aren’t as widely consumed as movies, which are losing out to video games lately as far as gross dollars of sales.

So think about this: of all the media you’re trying to cover, the only one mentioned by name in the name of the convention is the smallest market by at least a factor of ten. Sure it mentions “Entertainment,” but what the heck does that mean? I don’t even know. I can think of forms of entertainment that appeal to wider audiences than this convention, and they aren’t represented, NASCAR, Hip-hop and pro bowling for example. Any of these would fall under the “entertainment” banner (though I question the definition of them as entertainment) so that’s just a non-descriptive term. If I looked at “Chicago Entertainment Expo” I would have even less clue of what it’s about.

If you drop comics from the name, you probably lose the independent nature of the show, as comics are the most independent industry of the bunch, and the easiest for a single creator to get an edge in. It is nice to see an artist’s alley that is about half the size of the show. You don’t want to drop it entirely, but the other media needs to be spelled out in some way.

The other way to do it would be to call it what it is-the Pan Geek Media Expo. You want to bring people and vendors and guests the way San Diego does? Well, you don’t have the proximity, industry or history, so branding is going to be one of your most powerful tools to accomplishing this.

In Chicago, we had a very interesting related event in comic conventions when Wizard World bought out the Chicago Comicon from Motor City Conventions. I was at the last couple years of the Motor City cons, and when you walked in, you waled into Artist’s alley, which was huge, and made your way to the majors. They were like milk in the supermarket, you’re going to go there, so they make you walk past all the other stuff you don’t need to get there. There was a separate dealer room. When the major company took it over, all off the majors were up front, booths doubled in cost leaving many indies priced out of even artist alley. I had a company that made an appearance, and paying off the booth was a challenge. The entire con probably cut to half the size. I think because of this, there’s a big opening in this market for a large, independent driven convention.

So I think C2E2 attendance was up, but industry participation was down. It’s a new con and needs years to grow. This is probably nothing to worry about in terms of the con returning next year. I just hope it finds it’s market and thrives, because it could be great.

I have entered a short story into Indiehorror.org’s Cannibal Cookoff short story contest. My entry is called “Control Group.” I’d incourage you to visit the forums here to read all of the entries. You have to join to vote, and you can vote for three. I’m not a big rah-rah kind of guy when it comes to this, vote for the best ones. That’s how it works.

That being said, this is a synchronicities post, and two of them happened in writing this post. I got a direct tweet which probably a few hundred people got asking for a submission to this, and the rules said the story had to be written after Jan. 22nd (I think, mine was actually written this week after grinding on the initial idea for a week). So I came up with this idea about lab-grown meat, and the next day, on one of my regular news sites, there was an article about how one man was working on lab-grown meat as a food alternative, and how he went about it. I thought great, the universe is helping me out again.

Let me explain what I mean by that. This isn’t like when I wrote about the University of Illinois Chicago linguistics professor who transplanted a group of Guatemalan abuelitas to Chicago to learn their Mayan dialect, and then a month later found out about a real life University of Illinois Chicago linguistics professor who transplanted a group of Guatemalan abuelitas to Chicago to learn their Mayan dialect. This was more like when I was in college, writing my senior thesis novel about a group of men made immortal by Anunnaki in ancient times, and during the break before I began writing it, a copy of Archeology Magazine arrived at my house, addressed to me, with a relief carving of an Anunnaki photographed on the cover. I didn’t have a subscription, never asked for a free trial, and another issue never arrived. That’s what I mean. The world provided me with research material, poked the story on.

During the writing, I used a number of articles I’d read in the past to guide the conversation in the story, and mentioned the creation of skin in the lab. I didn’t have anything to go by. The day after I wrote that, an article on making skin in that lab came up on Fark.

I know. Strange. Go visit the contest. Vote. Maybe for me if you like it.

Was in California last week. Got caught up to the point I had left off on “Inside.” That feels good, I’ll be able to put words at the end again, will be able to progress towards the end.

This delayed me getting to upload The Hidden: Urban Decay, but not to worry. I’ll be getting it up this week.

The writing games, Stories from a Hat and Flash Friday will probably run every other week. Just too much going on to keep up with a couple of short stories and make forward progress on the real writing. Practice is nice, but I need to get the real stuff done.

So that said, I’m hoping to finish the second chapter of Inside and a short story by the end of the month.

So that’s the business. Next, some more writing about writing.

The rest of the year is going to be very hard on me, I know this, so why the hell am I setting myself a huge writing goal on top of all of it? The more pressure I feel, the more I rise to the task. I work retail, and yesterday was day 1 of Christmas. That’s going to be a huge challenge given that I’m trying to settle into a new position (actually, I’m pretty settled, its more about turning around and excelling in my job now), and I have some travel coming up, and my wife’s surgery on top of it. She’s having hip work done, and if you know us, you know what’s going on, if you don’t, well, understand there’s at least 12 weeks of recovery time from this, and that overlaps pretty much all of Christmas. It’s 12 weeks where she can’t walk (for at least 6 weeks not at all), after that, crutches, and can’t do anything around the house, won’t be able to do much to care for our daughter. It’s just a fact of the next 12 weeks, not a complaint or anything.

I need to finalize my pitch materials for Inside, and will probably work on that tonight. By the end of October, I hope to be shopping stories and agent hunting.

I’m changing around what I’m doing with the blog for Inside, and there’s more in the post on that blog. The Hidden will go on the backburner for a bit. I’ll work on the next storyline a little probably starting in December. It’s already written in script format, so doing a prose version won’t take very long. Just need to let the batteries on Malcolm recharge.

So I’ve given myself some big goals on top of this, just to see what I can come up with. There’s going to be a lot of writing, both here and stuff I’ll save to submit, and stuff for a few other sites. I’ll be working primarily on “Inside” and End of the World Times, but there are also some short stories and other things running around in my head.

But I also want to use this site to bring more writing instructions and ideas into my audience’s head. I’ll be resurrecting the idea of Stories from a hat, and I’ll post what I draw each week, and if I come up with something, I’ll post the results. I’ll also post some pictorial writing prompts and other writing challenges. But don’t think I’m going at this alone. I want you to participate in this, too. So here’s the idea. I’ll post prompts on Fridays, and Stories from a Hat on Sunday. You have a week on stories from a hat. You have the weekend on the Friday prompts. The idea is to make the Friday prompts more of a flash exercise. Send them back to me, and I’ll post a follow-up containing all, or the best depending on how this grows.

For those of you in the area, the Compulsive Writer’s Support Group will be meeting every Sunday. Get a hold of me for info on that. I’m posting my public events or other interesting things I’m doing in the calendar widget on the right side of the blog here.

All of this is designed to get me back into a state of flow, which is really the only place I want to be right now, and has been harder and harder to achieve these last few years. Instability works against flow more than you’d imagine, and I’m done with it. Time to get past it.

After this quarter year, life should be changing significantly, and I’ll be in better places. I keep telling myself this. Someday it will be true.