Monster Con Appearance In San Antonio Canceled

The last week or so has been miserable on my end. I've been having migraines tag-teaming me like no tomorrow and I'm beginning to forget what it's like not to be in pain. It's really been rough on me physically and I'm behind in DEAD SPOTS. Not the best feeling in the world.

On top of that, I had to cancel my appearance at Monster Con in San Antonio, Texas in a few weeks. It really broke my heart to do so, but it became clear that the venue had become an issue. Monster Con will be in a mall.  A few months ago, the mall was pretty empty and had a lot of space for an event. Recently the mall management has been filling its store space, compressing the area where the con will take place. One of those spaces was where the authors were going to have panels and readings. Another suitable location couldn't be found, so all the author events were basically cancelled. The only other alternative was to try to somehow do readings and panels in the main mall area with the crowd bustling around us.

I had planned to attend the convention with the model who portrays Glynis on the cover of The Vampire Bride series in full costume and relaunch the series there. Kody and I ran into some glitches with the formatting of the new edition of the book (because the new interior design is beautiful, but complicated) and have been trying to resolve it with the publisher (Createspace).  Because of the delays, in order to receive my books in time for the convention, I would have paid a huge additional cost for shipping.  I was willing to pay it because I thought I'd have an opportunity via panels and my reading to promote the books. Once I realized this was not an option, I had to regard the expense of the convention with a critical eye. Adding in our promotional materials, travel expenses, hotel, etc on top of the cost of getting in an express shipment of books, it became clear attending the convention had devolved into a no-win situation for me financially.  I have attended conventions before where I did not sit on panels or have readings and spent the time watching people walk by my table all day without a glance in my direction. It's not fun.

Most of the guest authors canceled within twenty-four hours of the bad news. After a long discussion with my husband and my bff, Kody Boye, I realized that my only remaining reason to do the con (and take a hit to my finances) was because my dear friend is running the convention. I didn't want to let her down., but I had to look after my own career. With a sad heart, I had to cancel.

I wish Monster Con all the best and hope they have a killer turn out. I have no ill-will toward the organizers and I do wish things could have worked out differently. This has been yet another difficult learning experience for me.

Meanwhile, if I could only get rid of this migraine...


P.S. If parts of this post don't make sense, I blame my exploding brain.