Hello, friends! I am bumping up this post to receive feedback on my first draft of this tour. As you may have noticed, I am traveling to VERY MANY PLACES this year! I focused so heavily on convention appearances last year that I didn’t get to do as many of my own events as I wanted. While I’ll still have quite a few cons in 2015 (including my first Guest of Honor stint ever, at ConQuesT in Kansas City!), I wanted to book a few tours this year to cover the US, Canada, and Europe.
In the past couple years, I’ve only managed to do events in London, Manchester, Edinburgh, Paris, and Amsterdam. I know that I have a sizable audience in Europe, but I’m not exactly certain where everyone is. The point of this post is:
1) to determine which cities will garner the biggest turnout
2) to help me plan out the actual logistics of traveling in Europe
3) to solicit support so that I can pull this off and entertain you by ruining your life.
Let’s get started!
Where should I go?
Please use the comments below for this. Simply, tell me what city you would love for me to visit. If you agree with someone, please upvote that comment. You can comment, too, but upvotes is the easiest way to communicate interest. Feel free to tell me WHY I should come to your city. If you know of a venue you could help secure, even better. But this is pretty uncomplicated, and it will help me determine where I should book dates.
How do I get there?
Here’s my tentative schedule:
June 25: Oslo
June 27: Stockholm / Multicon (Will include con events and public event.)
June 28: Copenhagen
June 29: Berlin
June 30: Munich
July 1: Cologne
July 2: Amsterdam
July 3-4: Brussels / ENCon (Will include con events and public event.)
July 5: Paris
July 6: Geneva
July 8: London
July 9: Brighton
July 10: Bath
July 11: Manchester
July 12: Leeds
July 13: York
July 14: Newcastle
July 15: Edinburgh
July 16: Glasgow
July 18: Belfast
July 19: Dublin
If I know you or am familiar with you and you can offer me a spare bed or couch in any of these cities, please let me know. If you’d like to do a road trip and can drive, let me know! Again, while I love making friends and interacting with people in the REAL WORLD that I’ve talked to online, please don’t take it personally if I do not take up your offer. I have to keep myself safe, and I rarely, if ever, take such offers from people who are total strangers to me.
Finally, do you know where I could host an event? This is, honestly, the most complicated part of this. Booking events in the US isn’t so bad because I speak English, I can at least reference my Hugo nominations or point to my community, or I actually know the book stores/libraries/etc that I’m reaching out to. It is much harder for an independent writer in the US to do this in Europe. I don’t have an agent or anything, so it helps if those who actually live in these cities and communities act as an agent to help me book these. I am absolutely not opposed to Mark in the Park style meet-ups if a date falls on a weekend! My only issues are that a venue has to be accessible (no stairs or an elevator if there are stairs), they don’t have a mandatory admission, and it will admit minors or those under the drinking age. My audience skews young, and I want folks to be able to come. I can afford to rent venues if necessary, but only if its not exorbitant.
And finally!
How can you help get me to your city?
The easiest way? Buy something from me or donate to me or use that Amazon link described in this linked post. This is not a cheap thing to do, and I’ve never done a tour where I made money. I always lose it. I expect that, but I’d like to get closer to breaking even. So, that’s the easiest thing you can do to get me closer to making this a reality. (And then I can start planning my ultimate goal: Mark Does Stuff in Australia. IT NEEDS TO HAPPEN.)
Please feel free to ask questions or for clarification; if you’re wary of IntenseDebate and don’t want to use it, my email inbox is for you! markreadsandwatches at gmail. Thank you so much for your support and for making this… hell, making this even possible. It’s incredible to me that I’m at a point in my life and my career that I’m actually putting up a post like this. Thank you. <3
