Introducing Vaughn R. Demont, AKA Me :)
I went to grad school with 127 people, the largest incoming class ever at that school. 126 of them wanted to write the Great American Novel. Now most of them are just trying to write the Great American Clickbait. Me? I'm #127, the guy who wanted to understand and appreciate popular culture instead of calling it tripe and moving on. And write stuff that made money. I was the few who was pragmatic, too.
As a result I graduated from Goddard College, a graduate school that once had an annual co-ed naked volleyball game, where you could buy weed off your professors, had at last 3 naked people in every graduation photo, and took pride in how many marriages their writing program had broken up. The only person I liked there was my mentor, Rachel Pollack, who guided me on my fumbling journey to write a work of Urban Fantasy (If you have no idea what that is? Buffy the Vampire Slayer is considered a watershed work of UF).
I actually managed to get an Urban Fantasy series off the ground starring LGBT characters, and even got to attend a convention, meet people who'd actually read my book, and throw the goat horns more times in one day than any other time in my life.
I managed a blog in the meantime, and when I wasn't writing, I wrote entries, usually after chatting with @beowulfoflegend, about whatever thoughts I was having about popular culture, usually movies, video games, whatever caught my attention. It was because while at Goddard, I was always pushed to "get outside of my comfort zone", which was code for "read only books of substance that have been discussed by serious academics in peer-reviewed journals". Honestly, I'd never had the chance to critique inside my comfort zone, and I could see critique-worthy subjects in popular culture.
I started writing up little essays on my blog under the headline, "Justifying My English Degree". It's since gone defunct, teaching was taking up my time, but after gentle nudging from @beowulfoflegend, I applied to get on Steemit to have a chance to pick it back up, and maybe share some of my Urban Fantasy works with all of you.
So I wanted to take the opportunity to say hello, introduce myself, and thank the Steemit community for welcoming me into it. I'm looking forward to sharing my work with all of you, and am grateful for the chance to see all of yours as well. :)
Steemit will be a great place for your writings :)
Thanks! I'm looking forward to sharing my stories with everyone. :)
Welcome to Steemit. You will love it.
Thanks! A friend on here was raving about it, so I figured I'd apply. Figured the worst that could happen is they say no, right? :)
Glad to see you made it, man! Welcome to the party.
Now to hope people care about pop culture criticism. :)
Those were the days I bet.
The convention? The panels I was on were okay, but mostly it's about schmoozing if you're there as an author. Being open, but not too open, always being "on", needing a quick wit to make everyone laugh. It's exhausting, honestly, but fun if you're there with friends. :)
Were the conventions worth it for authors for the sake of networking and for marketing and everything? Being on all the time can be challenging for sure but some people can do it pretty well.
It really depends who had the backing of their publishers, honestly. I was with a smaller press, so mostly we were given a few business cards, but that was pretty much it. With smaller presses you have to do practically all of your own promo, which sucks, but they did have an in with reviewers, plus you didn't have to pay someone for 4-9 editing runs of your manuscript.
Also, the place I was with, Samhain, didn't have a "first look" clause, which is a GOOD thing. Any house that requires they get first look at anything you write is one to lean away from unless they're a recognized house with authors people have heard of.
I have a friend who writes horror novels currently stuck in such a deal with a place that's a step above a vanity press. He writes the book, they run it through spell checker, respond that they want to publish it, make a very small run, maybe 50 copies, and count on him to sell it to his friends for $30 a copy. Of a trade paperback.
Honestly, the "star" at the convention I went to was Christopher Rice, son of Anne Rice, who was pushing the paranormal romance he'd been writing at the time.
I met him, he's a likable guy, but he was swarmed. You're mostly there to meet bloggers and kiss their asses so they MIGHT mention you so you'll get some overflow traffic from their sites. And they know it too. :)
Reminds me of a show called the Guild or something like that. It was a show following online gamers.
Yep! That's what helped Felicia Day climb to fame. Had Wil Wheaton in it, playing an Evil Wil Wheaton character. :)
Yeah, and I love Star Trek Next Generation and was happy to see Wil in that. Yeah, that helped Felicia? Well, that is good. I also love Buffy and Dollhouse and Firefly.
I think Felicia Day's on The Magicians now. It's been all over Twitter. Just hoping she's not playing the same awkward, "adorkable" character that she played in... The Guild, Supernatural, Buffy, Eureka...