authors life

Market Fun!

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

Just one more sleep until the Goode Market (Saturday 29 March, 10-3 at Pioneer Stadium), and then a week until Christchurch Armageddon (Saturday and Sunday, 5-6 April at Te Pae)!

To say I’m excited and nervous about these events is an understatement. 

Not that I haven’t had stalls at these events before—I know the drill. 

But this year, I have something new. Something I’ve been having fun with for the past couple of months.

For some reason (I’ll never understand the strange workings of my brain) I decided I wanted to have a coin-operated story vending machine. After investigating the commercially available gumball machines, I decided I’d have to make what I wanted.

I roped my husband into the project, and he sorted out the inner workings and the fiendish physics of funnelling balls into a hole (Who would have thought it was so complex?).

Then I spent some fun and sometimes frustrating hours decoupaging and painting (my first-ever decoupage project … I probably should have practiced a bit more before launching into it).

Once we were confident the machine functioned, I got to work writing 500-word stories—the perfect length to print on a quarter-sheet of paper and fold up inside a small vending machine capsule.

As someone who normally thinks in novel-length stories, I had a HARD time writing 500-word stories. I wrote quite a few 1500 and 2000-word stories before I nailed the 500-word length. But it was so much fun! I got to explore different genres, different voices, different story structures—there’s a bit of everything among the vending machine stories. I’ve learned heaps while creating these stories.

Tomorrow’s market is the first time I’ll have the story vending machine. It’s loaded with a mix of twelve different stories for ages 8 and up, each one a bite-sized morsel of adventure. What better way to liven your day?

I’m nervous, because I’m so excited about the story vending machine, and I want my readers to be just as enthusiastic. I’m also nervous because there are still some technical glitches with the machine (those crazy physics of rolling balls again …), and I just hope it works smoothly when it’s put to the test.

Want to try out the story vending machine? Visit my stand at The Goode Market or Christchurch Armageddon! See you there!

Ah … the holiday season …

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

It’s the time of year when an author’s thoughts naturally turn to …

…marketing.

Yes, it’s sad that I have spent more time considering how I’m going to sell books this holiday season than I have planning my family’s Christmas celebrations and summer holiday trips.

This year, I’ve decided to explore the summer market scene. My first market is coming up this Sunday.

The North Canterbury Creative Market will be held from 11 am to 4 pm on Sunday, 3 December at the Rangiora Showgrounds (156 Ashley St, Rangiora). I’m really excited about this market, not just for the possibility of selling some books, but also because there will be over 80 stalls bursting with locally made awesomeness. I can’t imagine a better place to find unique Christmas gifts that support local creatives.

I’ll also have a stall at the Spencer Park Market and Gala from 10 am to 4 pm on January 1st and 2nd. This event is sure to be a fun time for the whole family, with food, rides and games in addition to over 115 craft and market stalls. I can already taste the mini-donuts … 

In the pursuit of sales, I have also joined 76 other fantasy and science fiction authors to offer you an amazing lineup of gift ideas this Christmas. Check out some of these awesome books, either for yourself or those readers on your gift list.

And finally, I’ve discounted my e-books on Smashwords for their End of Year Sale. From 15 December through 1 January, my books are 50% off, along with zillions of other discounted or free books from other authors. This is definitely a sale to take advantage of. Stock up on reading material for the holidays.

And once all that marketing is out of the way, yeah, I guess I need to think about what I’m getting folks for Christmas … And I definitely need to spend a few days at the beach.

A Great Start to 2023!

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

January was a good writing month. I was blessed with three weeks of full-time writing—no kids, no day job, and even the garden was relatively low-maintenance.

Fatemaker, the third and final book of my Fatecarver series, had been hanging over my head for months. I’d meant to write it during the winter school holidays, but a different book jumped out and wrote itself down instead (more about that in a moment). In the lead-up to Christmas, I finally wrote out a detailed outline of Fatemaker, so when I hit January, the writing flowed at a rate of over 4000 words per day for weeks. On 25 January, I typed The End on the series, which felt amazing.

But I didn’t just write a novel in January. While banging out Fatemaker, I was also preparing for the publication of Demonic Summoning for the Modern Woman—a cosy urban fantasy I wrote when I meant to be writing Fatemaker during the winter. I sent a brief to the cover designer and the manuscript to the editor early in the month. Working with the cover designer was a nice distraction and break throughout the month, ending with a fun and bold cover I love. Then, on the last day of the month, I got the manuscript back from the editor, so Demonic Summoning for the Modern Woman is well on its way to a March publication date.

But that isn’t all. I wrote a new short story, almost finished a second short story, and fired off a bunch of magazine submissions, one of which resulted in an acceptance that squeaked into January on the 31st.

January was supposed to be focused on marketing—I’ve got a fun promotion project in the works—but I simply didn’t have the time or headspace to do it. I did, however, manage to make some progress, and at least get the ball rolling.

Weekly blog posts and my monthly newsletter rounded out the workload of January’s 10 to 12-hour workdays.

In fact, I accomplished so much in January, I’ve ticked off the majority of my 2023 first quarter goals. It was a great way to start the year!