RITA ® Award-Winning Author of Fantasy Romance
//A discussion of the agent taking a querying author’s idea and asking someone else to write it, on ideas in general, and why you still shouldn’t worry about people stealing them. Also, a party at GRRM’s and how even famous writers are still people.
//In honor of Halloween, a bit of a tour of my always slightly gothic office decor. Also, the audiobook for SHADOW WIZARD is out! Finally, some thoughts on being famous (or not) and what that means.
//This week at the SFF Seven, we’re posing the question: How do you answer when people at parties ask “have I heard of you?”
I confess that I posed this question of the group, since I get this question frequently and I’m usually at a loss as to how to answer. So for a while there I was going around asking other authors how they handle this.
My friend, Jim Sorenson, master of the witty comeback, suggested Sam Malone’s line from Cheers, “Not many people know this, but I’m kind of a big deal.” I couldn’t find a gif of that one though. The line is a good litmus test for how much someone is paying attention.
But in actuality, I’ve ended up going with a tiered response, much like KAK suggested yesterday, only a bit less… snarky. Most of the time, I’ve found, people are asking the question as a rote response to discovering the person they’re talking to just might be famous in some way. Where writers are concerned, the answer is almost always “no.”
I have, however, found another litmus test response. I return the question by asking if they’re a reader. This small-talk gambit works for a multitude of scenarios. Most of the time, the person is NOT a reader, and asking this question will elicit a – sometimes long – explanation of why they don’t read. It works really well for the principle that the easiest way to engage someone in conversation is to ask about themselves. People who don’t read will often talk about the last book they DID read, or how they hated being forced to read in school, or how busy their lives are. This gives rich fodder for letting them talk about their lives. If they’re not actually interested in the fact that I’m a writer, this lets them gracefully never return to the topic and saves me the painful sorting of the fact that, no, they haven’t heard of me.
If they ARE a reader, well! Now the conversation gets interesting. I can what genres they read and we talk books. We drill down pretty quickly to whether they read my genre and, if they haven’t read my books, they usually end up by whipping out their phone and buying one. Happy outcome!
Speaking of buying books, I’m happy to report that I’ve finished the draft of my novella for the upcoming FIRE OF THE FROST anthology! I still need to settle on a title, but it takes place at Convocation Academy in my Bonds of Magic world, taking place at roughly the same time as DARK WIZARD. You can preorder the anthology now to have it slip into your eReader in December! (Print will be available, but you can only preorder through my website right now. Print will be available via the usual retailers on release day, just not for preorder.)
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Another pic from the RT Convention. This was an amazingly lovely and delicious dinner organized (and chauffeured) by Alexandra Haughton. Also attending were lovely friends Carolyn Crane, Tamsen Parker and Megan Mulry. Love my writer friends! Spending time talking with them is one of my favorite things about conventions.
But so is meeting readers.
Which I’m not sure readers understand. This morning I saw a Facebook post from a reader who’s become a friend. She attended RT for the first time this year and commented that she came back with far fewer pics of her with authors than she’d thought – mainly because she hesitated to ask to take photos with them. She and I had lunch at the convention and she’d asked then what the etiquette was for approaching authors, asking for autographs, photos, etc. Apparently there was a newbie session where people outlined “The Rules” for this. It made me think of a time that a gal pinged me online and said we’d ridden in an elevator together and she’d been excited, but didn’t introduce herself because she wasn’t sure if she should.
Both of these things kind of hurt my heart.
Naturally I don’t – and can’t – speak for all authors, but the primary reason I go to reader conventions is to MEET READERS. I *want* readers to say hi, to ask for my signature, to have their picture taken with me. It’s flattering as all hell that anyone would want to. As far as I’m concerned, if I’m in a public space, I’m available to be approached. Maybe don’t stalk me to my room, because everyone knows that’s creepy which is why no reasonable person would do it, but otherwise PLEASE SAY HI.
Which brings me to another kind of weird thing that happened to me at RT. Several times, in fact. I should preface this with saying that I’m not good at faces. I don’t know why, but that’s always been the case. I’m the person at the table who has no idea what our waitress looks like. I remember names reasonably well and can associate them with Twitter handles and even bits of personal history, but I am terrible at recognizing people. Which means I sometimes introduce myself to people multiple times.
I’m sorry. I really am.
Still, I’d rather re-introduce myself than have no idea who a person is. So, I often use the gambit of saying, “Hi, I’m Jeffe Kennedy,” offering my hand to shake, which usually prompts people to either a) introduce themselves in turn, or b) tell me that we’ve met before. Both responses are equally good and, when I inevitably apologize for the latter, it’s almost always just fine by them.
But this year I seemed to have crossed some threshold where I got a different response, always from other writers. I bet it happened three or four times, maybe more. I introduced myself and they said, “Oh, I know.”
It was really disconcerting.
In one case, the other gal actually rolled her eyes. In all of them, it wasn’t said in a happy, excited-to-meet-you way.
On the one hand, this bothered me because in every case, I never found out who the other person was, at least not immediately. On the other… I dunno. It kind of hurt my feelings. I mean, the implication of was that of course everyone knows who I am, right? Which is so not true. It’s lovely to be recognized, but far from everyone does. Besides, assuming everyone knows who I am would be unforgivably egotistical, wouldn’t it?
This bothered me enough that, when I got home, I emailed an author friend who’s WAY more famous than I am to ask if this had ever happened to her. And she said it had, many times. It hurt her feelings, too.
I’m still not sure of the take-home message here. I mostly wanted to put this out there. Being recognized for achievements can be a weird thing because I think most of us still feel like the same person inside. I’m the gal who works from home, Tweets too much, hangs out with cats more than people, and interfaces with a keyboard all day. And who never knows which one is our waitress. I don’t feel like a particularly special person. At a conference, I want to meet other writers. I want to meet readers, bloggers, reviewers, industry folks. That’s why I go – to talk to people.
So… this might have been a little ranty. Am I wrong here? What should I say when this happens?