tiffanyshearn

Renaissance Faire Pt. 2

The renaissance faire was an awesome experience this weekend. Despite breathing in a pound of dirt, sweating in the hot sun, and wearing my poor feet out, I loved meeting so many wonderful vendors and fairgoers. I was floored by the reception to my book. Thank you to everyone who stopped by my tent to hear a little about me and my work.

First, I want to say another thank you to my sister and husband for working my tent with me this weekend. They showed me the ropes learned from last weekend and stuck around in the blazing sun to help make the event a success. We easily found our rhythm, and their passion for my books matches mine. Without a doubt, I could not have managed without your support.

Impressions and Surprises

The biggest surprise for me was how the day flowed. Nine hours of standing around plus two of set-up and prep sounds like it would drag on endlessly, but you move quickly through the day. An hour of unpacking and set-up, and then you have an hour to relax. Other merchants would often come over to chat with us, or we would roam around chatting ourselves. Before you knew it, the gates were opening.

Showing off my book from in front of my tiny tent!

During the first hour or so, most people were drifting around scoping out the offerings or heading to the first show at eleven. We saved our voices for later, mostly nodding to people and showing off the book. The handful of early customers helped us warm up our book summary skills and gain energy from chatting about something we all enjoy.

The joust would let out, and a wave of people made their way through the aisles. It was always fun to see someone perk up when they heard my husband shout out about “fantasy books.” That would be me passing by and hearing someone call out to the reader in me. I immediately had something in common with everyone talking to us, which was a relatively new experience.

From there, it was a flurry of activity and trading off lunch breaks until around two in the afternoon. The late-lunch-lull allowed us to trade another round of short breaks and reapply our sunscreen. Things would pick up again between four and five. We caught our breath then, until the final rush in the hour before closing. Then, it was time to pack up again.

With short breaks and talking about books all day, the time flew by much faster than I expected. Based on this experience, I 100% want to come back next year. I now have this dream of standing at my tiny tent in 2023 and having someone call out, “Oh good! You did get a tent again this year!” #authorgoals

Closing down and packing up after a wonderful weekend!

After Hours

I have still never been to the evening events the fair also offers at the taverns on Saturdays. Instead of attending, we joined the cast and crew D&D session Cleric Games hosted after hours. They ran a little two-hour session for people who wanted to join.

I played a barbarian for the first time. Before this, my paladin was my favorite. My style is to “run in and hit things,” so melee works for me. Barbarian might be my new favorite. I would have to give it more than two hours of play before I make that decision, but raging is very “Tiffany.”

Final Note

Welcome to any new readers checking out and signing up for my blog here after meeting me at the ren faire. If you are here because we talked about my publishing journey, click on the “publishing” tag (by the little tag symbol) below and start with the oldest posts.

If you are here because you loved the books and want to keep in touch, I encourage you to follow my blog by subscribing at the bottom of this page for weekly posts, my newsletter by subscribing on the homepage, or any of my social media accounts. You can find those via the links at the bottom of the page.

As always, thank you all for your support, and I hope to continue sharing more books with you all in the future!

Renaissance Faire Pt. 1

Despite precautions, I took ill after my trip last week. To ensure this did not pass beyond me, I remained home for rest and recovery this weekend. This post is a tribute to the massive efforts put forth by my husband and sister. When I could not attend, they stepped up on my behalf.

Going into the Renaissance Faire, I had no idea what to expect for sales. At my first event, which was much smaller in scale, I sold seven copies. Hour-for-hour, that would put my book needs around seventy. General advice received would put the need closer to five hundred of each book, though I would need to do the math again on that.

Either way, we all went into this with tempered expectations. Sanitized and wrapped in PPE, I pre-signed fifty-eight copies of book one and forty copies of book 2. It was not enough.

The faire initially sold out, so they opened more capacity for Saturday. Roads were clogged, and people waited for hours to get in. Everyone crowded into the grounds excited for their next fantastical adventure. As they passed by, my husband called out to lovers of fantasy books. Then, he and my sister would introduce them to my stories.

Family and friends stopped by to help out through the day, but it was the two of them who set up, tore down, and stood for nine hours two days in a row selling my works. They sold out both days and continued selling even after supplies ran out until the fair closed each day.

Take the kids for a day? Sure, Sis. You want to stay late to play D&D with other vendors next weekend? Of course, my darling husband. I know you both did all of this for family, partnership, and love and not for any exchange. My immense gratitude is yours.

New Readers

For all my new readers, welcome to my fantasy world! I hope you have as much fun with these characters as I do and look forward to the next installment. Rest assured, Hidden Promise is already with my wonderful alpha readers, and I’m about thirty thousand words into the final book rewrite!

See you at the faire on the 20th!

GenCon Indy 2022

Whooo! First time at GenCon Indy, my friends! August is a big event month for me, and this was just the start.

My favorite event we did was a bank heist escape room. We “got caught in the act” by not making it out in time. I always end up a handful of minutes away from escaping, but we get bogged down in the final room thinking we found all the hidden clues and only need to open one more box when there are about seven things left to locate. Despite that, I love escape rooms. I think they rank right behind ziplining for me.

Ebony Bay is one of two True Dungeon events we participated in. This is the only one we survived. Despite a valiant effort in the other, we failed to defeat the boss.

My husband enjoyed the True Dungeon the most. These are half role-playing games, half escape room stories you do with a group. There were seven rooms in each of the two dungeons we were able to sign up for with shuffleboard combats and creative puzzles to solve. The item pucks do matter, so I appreciated that the experienced TDers did not push for hardcore mode with all of us noobs tagging along with only a handful of pucks on our cards.

We also tried out the Artemis Bridge Simulator. This is a game where each person plays a role on a starship bridge on a separate computer screen. We only did the training version, so it was mostly us flying around, engaging poorly in battle, and running into docking stations. There were also two D&D games in which we participated. One was more role-play-focused, where you tried to play to your backstory. The other was a first edition game in which we did not do too poorly, avoiding horrific deaths at the hands of monsters and dangerous items.

The dangerous Tower of Gaxx! My fighter/magic-user came away with a magic shield, while my husband’s paladin found an Ioun Stone! Not bad for first time AD&D players.

Early this year, my husband and I decided to volunteer as GMs for a company running some D&D games at GenCon. I think the games went pretty well. We each ran four separate 4.5-hour one-shots, deciding to do one a day and pack in other fun around them.

If I had to pick a couple of favorite parts from the games I ran, they would be:

My groups usually barred the doors the second time the ceremony was interrupted, thereby trapping themselves and the parishioners inside with the next monster to emerge.
One of my groups made an elaborate plan to distract the monsters while one party member snuck forward to rescue the high priest. The approach was very clever and unique, as most of my groups ignored him lying on the ground.

Would I volunteer again? Maybe, but probably not for four games. We had little time to attend the convention center and had to scramble to get from one event to another. We volunteered to ensure we would not have large chunks of time without anything to do, but that would not have been a problem. There would also need to be some changes to the coordination up front for me to feel comfortable volunteering again. I had too much to carry around with me all day because of how much I needed to bring. I enjoyed running the games, and I hope my players had fun.

For anyone concerned: Gen Con had fairly strict COVID restrictions (I fully support). My husband and I also double-masked the entire time and brought our hand sanitizer with us for liberal use throughout. We will monitor for symptoms and test before we head to the Renaissance Faire this coming weekend for more crowds of awesome nerds.

Stay safe, stay cool, and stay awesome everyone!

Heatwave

Western Washington had a late start to summer after a horribly long, cold, wet, and gray spring. But! As of this week, we officially crossed the 90-degree (Fahrenheit) threshold, joining the rest of the northern hemisphere in this epic heatwave.

I’m cold—think ice-cube toes and frigid ankles—about 80% of the year, so I generally avoid complaining about hot weather. Even before I had AC in my home, I did not start grumbling until day five. I love soaking in the heat and letting it relax my bones until I’m no longer a scrunched-up, shivering mass.

Summer is my favorite season. The sun. The growing vegetables. The grilling. Only one thing could improve summer, if—sorry twelve-year-old me—children were still in school! To be fair, I would give them two-week vacations periodically throughout the year in exchange. We could even stagger the school breaks between states, so no one has an overcrowded vacation spot.

All kidding aside, I would love to keep my summer heat without the global record high temperatures. Locally, several parks are turning on their sprinklers and setting up cooling stations for people to stop by. We have a low percentage of households in Western Washington with AC. I believe it is less than half, with a good portion of the rest only having a window AC. I know, from personal experience, that nights can get rough after a few days when even overnight temps and open windows will not cool down the house.

My pre-AC strategy: light clothes, hang out in cooler rooms, close off rooms getting the most sun, stay hydrated, use damp wash clothes, and take cold showers. It is also fortunate a main hobby of mine is reading because I can veg out with a book, unmoving, during the hottest parts of the day.

Whatever you do to stay cool, try to take some time to enjoy the great things about the summer season. Happy grilling!