The Supanova Weekend Begins Today

This afternoon I'm heading for the Sebel Hotel in Melbourne, where I will be meeting the Random House staff and other RHA writers, Ben Chandler, Rhiannon Hart, Nansi Kunze, Deborah Abela and Michael Pryor. Michael lives in Melbourne, so I have met him many times at SF cons and YA events. I've met Rhiannon twice, at the CYL, plus following her blog. I know of the others only through their writing, including following Ben and Nansi through Twitter, but feel as if I know them already. I'm very much looking forward to meeting them in person, though. I'll try to get at least one group photo I can put up in the library at some stage, and, with permission, on this blog. We're going to get some tips on marketing our books, which I will be happy to learn - anything that helps sell more copies! So far, I've kept a blog, which I keep up to date, I've joined Twitter, I comment on other blogs, leaving links, I make up bookmarks, I do panels at conventions and readings from my work, I've TRIED to get gigs at conferences and festivals- unsuccessfully so far, but I'll get there. Jack Dann once said to me,"You've always gotta hustle!" and he's right. And I've seen his ears prick up and his hand reaching for a business card when I introduced him to my publisher.;-) and he's one you'd think would no longer need to hustle! The thing is, you can overdo the hustle; I have already unfollowed someone on Twitter whose tweets were entirely about great reviews of their novel and where you could get it and am considering unfollowing another,"Lookamee!" writer. Yes, we get excited and want to share, but people can be put off when it's ALL you do. So I'm very excited to be learning what else I can do. Tomorrow and Sunday we're going to Supanova here in Melbourne. It's likely to be a very interesting con, but we'll be entirely in the dealers' room, promoting and, hopefully, signing. I will post about it tomorrow night. If you're in Melbourne this weekend, why mot come to Supanova?