One More to Go

Holy crap, folks! October has been a ridiculously busy month. I was traveling so much to promote myself and my works, I didn’t have a free weekend—until Halloween!

I love getting out and doing presentations and workshops and meeting new people, but it’s also incredibly exhausting. If you’ve read my blog before, you know that I get incredibly anxious when I travel, so this entire month has threatened to push me into panic mode. I’ve overcome, though, and had some amazing adventures.

I have one more conference to go to this year, and I’ll be in Philadelphia at the end of this week for the Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association conference. I will be speaking about Women and Slasher films and also doing a 5-minute presentation about being undead obsessed and finding meaning in zombies.

I’m excited and nervous all at the same time. I think I’m handling this trip better than the Long Beach trip—I had nightmares for 2 weeks before that trip. I had a nightmare a few weeks ago and one last night, so maybe? I’ll let you know how it goes.

In addition to this exciting adventure that’s coming up, I also had an outstanding weekend.

Because our sleds are new, we had to take them out for a break-in ride. There wasn’t a ton of snow, but we found enough to ride in. I hadn’t realized how much I missed riding until I got out. There’s something so magical about not having anything to worry about except cruising through the snow. It was incredibly therapeutic.

Zed (my sled; zombie + sled = Zed; plus, it pays homage to so many zombie films) did awesome! I’m looking forward to more snow so I can see exactly what she can do.

While we’re in the hills, we don’t have any cell service, so I turned off my phone for a while. When I got back into town, I turned it back on and saw that I had an email from my amazing book manager (hi, Pam!).

Apparently, Life After the Undead was in the top 100 for certain categories. According to the email, here was the breakdown:

#73,634 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

#94 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Children's eBooks > Science Fiction, Fantasy & Scary Stories > Science Fiction > Dystopian

#95 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Children's eBooks > Action & Adventure > Survival Stories

#143 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Children's eBooks > Science Fiction, Fantasy & Scary Stories > Scary Stories

What?! It was freaking insane! I wanted to scream and cry and happy dance all at the same time. None of my books have ever ranked that high, so it was incredibly exciting. I’m still floating on air from the experience.

There’s a lot of really exciting things happening. I’m giddy. I’m going to ride this wave of amazement for as long as I can. I hope that you all are having a fabulous time as well.

What Was I Thinking?

I hate to travel. And by that I mean when I go to the airport, I usually have a panic attack. I freak out going through security, and then I have to take a Xanax before I even get on the plane.

I never used to be like that. My freshman year of college, I attended school in Florida, and I flew back and forth several times over the course of the year. It never bothered me then. In high school, I went to Australia and switched planes multiple times before reaching Perth. Didn’t bat an eye.

Now, it’s all I can do to stay calm. The older I get, the more mental I become.

(Side note: my coworkers and I were talking about this the other day at work, and one of them said that the reason it’s probably an issue now is because I’m more aware of my mortality. When I was young, the world couldn’t touch me. But now, I have different priorities—kids, family—and losing them or having them lose me is probably where the fear stems from.)

Despite this fear, I sent in proposals for two separate conferences that will be occurring in the fall. One is the Long Beach Indie Film Festival in Long Beach, California, and the other is the Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Right after I hit send, my stomach started tingling and I became anxious. What was I thinking? I can’t go to these places. I’ll have to get on a plane! I’ll have to be in a big city! I’ll have to speak in front of people!

Then I took a deep breath and told myself to calm down—which only slightly worked.

The reason I put in proposals for these conferences was because the world isn’t going to come to me. People aren’t going to find out who I am just because I have books on Amazon. Sure, a few might, but I want to increase my readership. To do that, I have to tell people about what I do. I have to get out there and show them what I’m doing.

I’m fully aware that this may not lead to book sales, but it still gets me out there. People will still be able to see my name and know that I wrote something. And, on top of that, I like talking about what I’ve done.

I picked these specific conferences because they focus on film and scholarly work. My presentation is based on my book Life Lessons from Slasher Films. I am incredibly proud of the work I put into this book, but I rarely have a chance to show it off. I felt that these two venues gave me the opportunity to do just that.

It’s scary as hell, and I’ll probably wind up having a panic attack at some point, but I need to step back for a minute. First of all, I haven’t been picked yet. There’s no guarantee I’ll have to present at either of these conferences. The first step was to make the effort, and the second is to wait for a response.

Despite my fear, I really would like to get out more. Even though it scares me, I really enjoy presenting and getting people involved in discussions. The workshops I’ve done around the state of Wyoming have been fantastic, but this gives me a chance to branch out. Being at the conferences also gives me a chance to network with others who think like I do.

There are far more pros to going to these conferences than there are cons, but convincing my brain of that is sometimes difficult. I just hope that I get the chance to go. If you would be so kind as to wish me luck or cross your fingers or sacrifice a chicken so I get picked, I would really appreciate it.

UPDATE:  I received an email this morning informing me that my proposal had been accepted for the Long Beach Indie Film Festival.  Wooooooot!  This is going to be fun!