Sharing Space with The Sublime (Martin) Shannon

This past weekend at ConCarolinas I got to spend time with a bunch of friends, both new and old. But a real highlight for me was getting to finally meet Martin Shannon in person.

Back in October of 2021 a guy reached out and asked if he could use my book for one of his Youtube videos. I don't recall the specifics of how we ran into each other...was it in the Urban Fantasy subreddit? I think it was. But he reached out, I said yes, and thus came:

Marty's First Looks - Urban Fantasy -

Bringing Home the Rain by Bob McGough

From that point on we kept in touch. Sometimes via email, mostly through spaces like discord, we've bemoaned our fates as indie authors together for years now. And for awhile now we've been talking about how Ben and I would love to come down there to the land of gators and flamingos (Tampa) and do an event with him. 

So of course, life being what it is, I still haven't made it to Tampa but we have now done an event together. In North Carolina. Where neither of us live. Because of course we did. 

Superfan Steve, who has been a friend of mine for years lives in that neck of the woods, and has become a friend and fan of Martins, as well as a pair of other authors (Michael G Adams (who I have similarly been friends with for years) and Michelle Heller (who I didn't know as well, but do now)) and convinced all three to come up to ConCarolinas. So, I invited Martin to bring a few books up with him. I should have invited the other two to do so as well, but frankly, Mike doesn't need to learn shit from me about hand selling books, and I didn't know Michelle well enough to offer. 

Three sharp looking authors, one superfan, and one portly scrub author lurking in the back.

As you may know I have a standing offer to let folks 'intern' with me, to learn how to handsell books. This honestly isn't the best con for that, not because I don't sell there (sales were great!), but because there is not a ton of room behind the table. So this is not the con I would really want to offer to do that with. But, knowing that Martin has like 65 published novels at this point, and having read and loved his Tales of Weird Florida series, I knew that he had really good stuff that I could put on the table. 

So I told him to bring five copies each of four different books (my book rack has four levels, so one book per level). And though his sales numbers are not mine to relay, suffice to say he outsold some of the other authors there! He sold more than I did at my first event, that's for sure!

Martin, wondering why the hell he ever agreed to do this, after hearing Bob's 9 millionth pun of the weekend.

So what's the point of this post? Really just me being excited that I got to meet people for the first time. A testament to the power of internet friendship maybe? A showcase of how we should all be helping each other? I don't really know. 

Long story short, go buy some great books, like: