By skyforbes 
Three sci-fi writers share their experiences from the epic event
In this 50th episode of the Bald Ambition podcast, three indie science fiction authors — Mookie Spitz, Ingrid Moon, and Greg Sorber — break down the mayhem, lessons, and human magic of LA Comic Con 2025, held at the LA Coliseum. Over three exhausting, exhilarating days, they shared tables, stories, and caffeine, surrounded by 120,000 fans, stormtroopers, holograms, and hopeful artists trying to make their mark in a city built on imagination.
The trio came away with a shared revelation: the real power of Comic Con isn’t the sales, but the tribe. Amid the chaos they found a rare kind of harmony. Everyone belonged. The crowd was wildly diverse, with no politics or ego, just pure participation. The authors describe the event as a temporary city built on acceptance, imagination, and freaky joy — a place where being weird wasn’t tolerated, but celebrated.
Best Practices from the Floor
- Engage or Vanish: Don’t wait for buyers. Talk, laugh, wave. The con floor rewards momentum, not modesty.
- Layout Sells: Your booth is your battlefield. Arrange books and signage for maximum approachability from all angles.
- Covers Over Everything: Visuals are currency. A great cover is worth more than a thousand clever blurbs.
- Ask Before You Pitch: Use consultative selling. Find out what readers crave, then connect your story to their hunger.
- Personalize Every Sale: Add the event name (LA Comic Con 2025) when signing — it turns a purchase into a keepsake.
- Create a Crowd: People attract people. Fill your booth, even if it’s with friends pretending to shop.
- Network Like a Pro: Swap cards, talk to artists, talk to editors, talk to cosplayers — you never know who’s watching.
- Experiment with AI: Use it where it amplifies your vision, not where it erases your voice. The line between tool and theft is drawn by intention.
- Celebrate the Tribe: Remember why you’re there — to be part of something bigger, stranger, and more human than commerce.
The group also tackles how artificial intelligence is reshaping creative production, from marketing visuals to potential full-fledged story adaptations. Together, they conclude that AI is inevitable — not a replacement for creativity, but another tool in the evolving arsenal of the modern storyteller.
Ingrid Moon
Ingrid Moon is an author, editor, and science teacher. She currently has four science fiction novels, three audiobooks, and three science reference books for worldbuilding, with more on the way. Ingrid is a Southern California native who can’t surf because she spent most of her youth navigating mountains and watching sci-fi television, all of which inspired her writing career.
Greg Sorbel
“I’m a lifelong fan of science fiction, fantasy, and comic books. Some of my earliest memories are of Land of the Lost, Speed Racer, and The Six Million Dollar Man. Seeing Star Wars in the theater for the first time in 1977 was a life-changing experience. An avid reader from an early age, I’ve always loved books that engaged my imagination. Reading The Hobbit in 7th grade English class and writing a short story that same year set me down the path of becoming a writer. I live in Riverside, California with my family and two dogs.”
Here’s the podcast…
Here’s the transcript…
Mookie
Hello and welcome to the Bald Ambition podcast. I’m your very bald host, Mookie. And the ones loaded with ambition today are Ingrid and Greg. They are my fellow indie science fiction novelists. Welcome aboard Ingrid and Greg.
Ingrid
Hey! Hello.
Mookie
Hello. We just had the privilege and exhaustion of attending LA Comic-Con 2025 at the LA Coliseum, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, September 26th, 27th, 28th. I had a terrific time. I am the newbie. I was the virgin. Ingrid was gracious enough to share her table with me in my concoctions. And I got an opportunity to meet Greg as well. We also share a discord chit chat group for indie sci-fi novelists. And I brought them on the pod to share our experiences, best practices and general observations about this monumental event.
Ingrid
Because I’m nice.
Mookie
In science fiction, fantasy, cosplay, gaming, horror, Stan Lee, virtual holography, droids rolling around the floor, and all sorts of zaniness for three, what I thought were amazing days of fun. How do you guys, how do you guys feel about it coming out of the event?
Ingrid
Exhausting but amazing. I don’t know how I feel. I feel like we could have done better. I feel like there were some challenges probably with the con overall and also with our location. And also just, you know, it’s always hard to try to match the right audience with wherever you are. So, but it was good overall. We had a great time.
Mookie
All right. So I’ve got some minor thumbs down and gee, it was okay from Ingrid. How about you, Greg? How’s your feeling about it?
Ingrid
Hahaha!
Greg
I had a good time. I always have a good time when I go to these shows and I try to make the best of it no matter what happens. And so I always try to use every show, good or bad as a learning experience. And I had a little bit different experience. You all were upstairs in one of the main halls in the small press area. I was downstairs in the artist’s alley, which was really cool. was really, really interesting. Like Ingrid, I have some questions about just the whole structure of the show and if everything was set up as optimally as it could be. For us, I know it’s always just we have to adapt to the situation and do what we can to do that. My overall impression with LA Comic Con was that it was big, huge. It’s the biggest show I’ve been to before. The biggest one previously was WonderCon, which
Ingrid
Yeah, me too.
Greg
My feeling was maybe about half the size, maybe. I’m not 100 % sure. I’ll have to look up the stats eventually. But yeah, it was definitely big. And finding the right audience was very, very challenging.
Ingrid
Because people go to these things for such different purposes, right? Some go, they want to see, you know, get photos with their favorite actors and some go and they want to get, you know, signatures on their toys and some go and they want to buy toys or whatever. And some are looking for comic books. And so I think books are sometimes a little bit of a kind of a extra thing. And so, you people aren’t going there to buy books. So unless you’re my husband, he don’t only does that.
Mookie
Yeah, I mean, I’m the newbie and I got the feeling too that it was, it was a sprawl. So there was no center of focus and splitting up the booksellers and then distributing some of the booksellers like you, Greg, among the, the, the artists, the active artists might’ve been a little bit disorienting and confusing. Ingrid and I had a table on the far end of the main floor.
Ingrid
The very far end.
Mookie
All the way in the South Hall. We were near like the cafeteria. So it was almost like a perimeter afterthought for folks to kind of like flow on by from here to there. So yeah, there’s questions about the logic of the layout and making best utilization of this vast arena. And to give listeners a little bit of context, the OG of Comic-Cons is San Diego, if I have this right. and a company called Kamikaze LLC. In a sense, you could call this one a copycat from the original. It occurred, what, about a month or so after the San Diego OG event. It did attract a hundred plus thousand people, according to stats, and it had to inhabit the LA Coliseum. And you had hallways and panel discussions. You had first floor, second floor. And to walk the perimeter of this thing was literally, I did it a few times, just kind of looking around and trolling around and networking at least two, three miles on foot to just circumnavigate this thing. So, you know, from a seller’s point of view, it’s like, we were like the little who’s in Whoville, right? We are here. We are here.
Ingrid
Yeah, and if you’re walking up and down every aisle. Yeah. I think so San Diego is run by a different company. San Diego Comic Con and WonderCon are run by a company. And then this one is used to be called Comikaze. And it started up about, I don’t know, five or six, seven years ago. And then they switched it over to just be LA Comic Con. Maybe they merged with somebody. I don’t remember. But yeah, it’s big.
Mookie
Yes. Yeah, people have trouble telling the difference, right? LA Comic Con, San Diego Comic Con, and New York Comic Con is also pretty big. And I think from a branding point of view, it gets all mish-mashed together.
Ingrid
Yeah. Bye. I think a lot of the smaller ones too, because they’re more, you get the local people as opposed to people who fly from everywhere to come join you. But the local ones don’t have as much, you know, big names and stuff like that. because we were at Long Beach the week, a couple of weekends before and it was a little, it was a little different because it was very small and cozy, but also I sold as many books. So, you know, so size does not matter.
Mookie
Right, right. That’s the thing. Right, that’s the initial best practice. We are logging best practices for anyone listening and wanting to sell. And speaking of selling, let’s take a second to introduce ourselves to our listeners in terms of our indie sci-fi roots and work. Do you want to lead the charge, Ingrid, with who you are, what you’ve written, what you were selling?
Greg
Thank
Ingrid
I guess. Mookie, I hate introductions. My pitch. All right. I learned how to do my pitch better from Mookie. Thank you very much. So I’m the author of four science fiction novels with some fantasy in the works. And the two main books are The Biohunter, which is Hunger Games meets Fallout. So yeah, got some hunting going on there. And then the other one is
Mookie
And maybe hit us with your pitch too, when you’re at the table and people swung by and they’re like, hi.
Ingrid
The Handler’s Gambit, which is my award winning debut novel, which is, what did we say that? that’s Ender’s Game Meets The Expanse. but yeah.
Mookie
100%. I wheeled in a few middle-aged men.
Greg
Hahaha!
Ingrid
And that’s a weird thing because normally I get a lot of women to stop at my table probably because I’m a woman, right? Maybe or I don’t know. But like I don’t feel like my stuff should appeal more to women. But you know, some women like science fiction too, just like me.
Mookie
Yes. Yeah, you can act. Yeah. Right, right, so the, you know, the, Enders game, you know, parallel there and me and my bald head waving, waving at the spectrumy men walking by.
Ingrid
It’s not very Ender’s Game at all, but whatever. Well, I think you did a good job with the… I think you did a better job than me selling Biohunter. Probably because, you know, you’re bald and they were just like, there’s a bald dude selling books. No, I’m just kidding.
Mookie
They hit. Yeah, and I tend to be, I tend to be gary-less, you know, in a social setting. I might be the introverted reclusive writer, you know, sitting here scheming with my multiverse book. But when it comes to a social setting, I just love to, to bloviate. And it was a great opportunity to help sell your book. And it was my appreciation to you for inviting me. So I had, I had a terrific time overall, even if I was kind of tired. So, so how about you, Greg, tell us about
Greg
Yeah.
Ingrid
Yeah.
Mookie
Your mechanical future.
Greg
Yeah, so my name is Greg. I’ve been writing for about six years as of this month, and I currently have five books out. The fifth book, which is the last book of my series, came out last week. That was kind of fun having a launch week and a Comic-Con all wrapped up together. And so my series is kind of space opera. I like to call it Transformers Meets Braveheart.
Ingrid
I love
Greg
It’s called Mech Haven. And so, yeah, so if you liked Robotech or Voltron or Transformers, this series is right up your alley.
Ingrid
That sounds good.
Mookie
Great. I think that’s a terrific intro because just like Ingrig was mentioning, people need a frame of reference, especially when they’re coming to you from scratch. Like in Hollywood, the old thing is this is Jaws meets Indiana Jones in the diehard tower. Like, does that make any sense? Well, it doesn’t have to make any sense, but at least I know what you’re talking about, where it comes from. So, you know, I think that sets it up pretty well for people who are new to you and your oeuvre.
Ingrid
For It’s like Jaws in Space.
Mookie
So I think that that’s great. Emmy, I’m Mookie. So if you’ve been listening, then you’ve been hearing me bloviate about my book probably in the past. And if you’re new to me and the group here, I’ve written two substantive works over the last three years. One is the illustrated holiday satire, Super Santa, where Santa Claus is a boring boomer to today’s kids. He gives up on Christmas. If can’t beat them, then join them, become a superhero and mayhem ensues. And I did that with a very talented illustrator, colleague and friend of mine, Rusty Unisoff. And then over the last year, I went solo to write really the sci-fi book of my dreams. Ever since I was in my twenties, I wanted to write the sci-fi book. And finally, after raising three kids and two divorces and surviving the cataclysm of American adult life, I just gave up. and decided to become a child again and damn the torpedoes. And I did it. So I hunkered down and I wrote Johnny Fazzulli and the Transfinite Reality Engine. It’s my pride and joy. And Ingrid was generous enough to give me half of her table to hock it live and to see how people might respond to it. So from my virginal vantage point, both in terms of Comic-Cons, barking my own books,
Greg
Let’s.
Mookie
I just had a great time. had no benchmark, right? You guys are more seasoned. You’ve been to a number of these. So you guys could nitpick, find things that were good and things that really annoyed the hell out of you. I was like, my God, a stormtrooper just walked by. That is pretty cool. And yeah, yeah. And my one observation though of this community overall is
Ingrid
Hahaha! yeah, yeah, there’s no stormtrooper, whatever.
Mookie
I got zero shade, no politics and minimal attitude even from people who were annoyed that I was pitching my books in Ingrid’s. So people were walking by in streams. It was kind of like being at a busy airport on acid. was everyone was dressed weird and kind of acting funny. was kind of campy fetishy, the whole environment.
Ingrid
Ha ha ha ha!
Mookie
But at the same time, was kind. was inclusive. was diverse in background. had black people, white people, Latin people, old people, young people, male people, in between people. Nobody cared. Everyone was into the moment. They were into dressing up. And frankly, lot of their, a lot of the people were there to buy cool shit. Some people beeline to you, Ingrid, because I saw you had fans come to you and, and,
Ingrid
I have friends.
Mookie
Yeah. And then, and you have people who are like, have, I have 50 bucks and I’m going to buy shit. And I had this general feeling of inclusion and welcomeness and freakiness and fun. And that’s really the top line emotion that I walked away with from this event.
Ingrid
I don’t know if they’re fans. Comic cons and you know, like sci-fi cons, anime cons, all these things, they’re your tribe. So like, if you fit into that culture, you’re totally like you, this is where you belong, right? These are the people who are gonna, they’re not gonna judge you. Well, they might judge you a little bit, but not really. They’re like, look, somebody dressed up like so and so. And you’re like, you know, and other people are like, I don’t even know who that was, you but it’s, you know, you just appreciate everybody being there and being cool.
Mookie
Right. Yeah, that’s so cool. And the quality of the outfits too. You had somebody went to Target and got a Jack Skellington t-shirt. And you had someone like your buddy who has like an ensemble at home of 25 Hollywood quality Star Wars outfits. Everything from the Red Imperial Guard to the Rey. Let’s give a call out to Rey. I was stunned.
Ingrid
He’s a nut. That was my friend Ray. I’m just going to put Ray.
Mookie
And you had a lot of folks who just went all out. So I love that range of commitment and creativity. How about you, Greg? You’re down in artist’s row. You had slightly different perspective.
Greg
Yeah, so I mean, obviously I love the cons. I mean, the reason I started going to the bigger cons too is because I would be going anyways. And so coming as an artist or a writer, small press, whichever fits me for that particular show is a lot of fun. I usually bring at least one of my two sons, if not both of them along to help out and sometimes my wife. So for us, it’s kind of usually a family affair. This time I only had one son for part of the show. and he was more into the cosplay thing too. And so he’ll work with me at the booth for a little bit whenever I need a break or if I get busy and then he goes off and does his own thing and has fun. So that’s pretty good. both my sons and my wife enjoy the heck out of all these things. And so we’re fans of all the different franchises in anime and stuff. So for us, it’s kind of a fun and yeah, as Ingrid said, it’s kind of our people. You know, we may not, you know, have everything lined up politically or morally or ethically or whatever, but it’s all fun when we go to have the shows. So that’s really good. Everybody’s there to have a good time. And so, yeah, so that was really good. Down at Artist’s Alley, had, there was a kind of, we had our own little small press section. I don’t know, I don’t think it was intentional. I think it was unintentional. But I had a group of,
Ingrid
Ha ha!
Greg
Or they were basically either under or unemployed VFX artists that had become writers. And so they were sharing a table and talking their books. And so they were right across from me. if one of their books didn’t fit the reader, they would direct them over to me. So that was very much appreciated. And I would do the same thing for them. And then right next to me, I a lady selling kind of It was kind of futuristic fantasy. So it was kind of good. leaned, her presentation leaned a little bit more to what looked like a romantic angle. Although she said there wasn’t as much romance as people thought in her books. And so, but the way she displayed everything, it looked really, really good. And so having the three of us together was kind of cool. And then there was another fantasy author a couple tables away. So we kind of had our own little. Small press section, think the, under the downside where we were in artist’s alley, I think there were two downsides. One, I don’t think people were directed to down to artist’s alley. And if you were a new con goer, you didn’t know to look for an artist’s alley, you might not see it or get to it. Veterans con goers always know, you got to check out artist’s alley because that’s where some of the really cool stuff is. But then there was also the photo ops with a lot of the big, big name actors like David Tennant and Billy Piper and all, you know, all the big name people were down there. think Daredevil and Kingpin were there also. So there was a lot of people heading that way for autographs and they would make a beeline for the autographs. So they’re really hard to grab their attention on the way in. And then on the way out, they had already spent.
Ingrid
Yeah.
Greg
150, 200 bucks on their autographs. So it was really hard to try to grab them for books. And they may not have been book people anyways, but it was kind of, that was one of the challenges we faced down where we were. yeah, so that was one of the interesting elements.
Mookie
Speaking of family, my own son, I have a 19 year old and he brought his girlfriend. And I thought that that was sweet that they came to to represent, but they were kind of freaked out. They’re like, you know, Gen Alpha people where they just look at their phones and there were all these people. And I think really it was sensory overload for a 19 year old, for two 19 year olds. Not Gen Alpha. They’re still Gen Z at 19.
Ingrid
It’s too much. Your son is Gen Z, not Alpha. No, Gen Z. Yeah.
Mookie
Really? I should know these things, but to me they were kind of like gen alpha because they’re like digitally native and overwhelmed.
Greg
My son was 19 also.
Ingrid
No, Elphas, the babies are in school right now. Yeah. There you go.
Mookie
Okay. All right. Well, thanks for the clarification, but I felt that they were just wiped out.
Ingrid
My son is 19
Greg
Thanks.
Ingrid
Also and he did the same as Greg’s son. Like basically I’ll stand at the booth if you need me to but really I want to be walking around cosplaying my own thing, doing my own thing. So he had a great time. He normally I’m lucky to drag him for one day but he came all three days and I was that was exciting.
Mookie
That’s pretty good. So we had representation and Greg, you were saying that you had the little press row down there and you were differentiated. So you had the kind of romantic sci-fi seller. You’re the, you’re the mechanist, right? So you stood out.
Greg
Yep, yeah, was was pure sci-fi space opera. The booth across from me, they had a mix. They was kind of like a sci-fi thriller, fantasy, kind of more of a romance and then more of a dark romance. And so that was kind of their thing. Yeah. But I mean, it was nice having a variety. None of us were in direct competition. And and one of the gentlemen, believe his name was Scott.
Mookie
Right. Mmm. Mm-hmm. Right, right.
Greg
He was definitely outgoing and he would do whatever he could calling people over, getting people engaged. And I, as an introvert, I’m, you know, like probably the both of you, my natural inclination is to be reserved and quiet and let people come talk to me. But I also know at these shows you have to kind of step it up and be outgoing. But I did find it really difficult, especially I would say Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, really difficult to engage people. People were just really like in their own zone and not wanting to talk as much. By Sunday afternoon, I think people were freed up and a lot more willing to talk and come over and chat. And they had bought everything they wanted to buy. And so they were willing, more willing to kind of explore other options at that point.
Mookie
Best practice number one. Yeah.
Ingrid
I did find Sunday was way better, way better than the other two days. Yeah. It seemed a little like Friday was Friday. That’s how all three day shows seem to be. And then Saturday, usually that’s a huge, huge bump, right? Maybe it’s cause they had all the, the signatures downstairs and the photo ops and whatever, but, I don’t know. It was the slowest day of the three days. And then Sunday picked right up and everybody was buying stuff and enjoying themselves. So
Greg
Yeah.
Ingrid
I mean, everybody enjoyed themselves all the time, but.
Greg
I think that might be one of the downsides of a bigger show is everybody wants to check the show out to make sure because funds are limited and they want to make sure they really get the thing that they came for first. And then if they have extra money, I know I did have one person, he came and talked to me every day. So it’s like, the first day he came, I told him about the book. The second day he came by and goes, hey, you’re the one who had the book about, and they basically repeated my pitch. I’m like, yep, that’s me.
Ingrid
Mm-hmm.
Greg
He’s like, okay, I really want to buy your book. I just got to make sure I get everything else. And then sure enough on Sunday, he came back and said, okay, I’m over budget, but I’m still going to pick up your book. So I’m like, thank you very much.
Mookie
I thought there’d be more Sunday traffic because of that. I thought there’d be, my anticipation of the flow was that people would save their money and knowing that sellers had inventory to unload would wait until Friday afternoon and say, you know, I saw your book. Can you give me a deal? And that really wasn’t very much the case at all, which to me says I’m coming to Comic-Con. got some money and I’m going to enjoy the process of shopping.
Ingrid
That’s nice. What’s his name, Chris?
Mookie
And buying and talking to artists and writers. And it’s not so much about saving money here. It’s just about the experience itself more than anything else. And that brings up best practice number one, as you were saying that, which is get attention. So you need to, you need to cut through the noise. And literally, if you’re standing there at a booth, hundreds, thousands of people are going to pass right by you. And Ingrid.
Ingrid
Yeah. Yeah.
Mookie
Demonstrated the effectiveness of this technique right off the bat where she was just talking to everyone. You guys read, Hey, you guys read sci-fi. And then I chimed in from the sidelines. And if you don’t, now’s the time to start. You need to, you need to flag them down. You need to engage. And I saw this time and time again, proven by Ingrid skill in selling her stuff. And then I picked that up too, which is.
Ingrid
Hahaha! We got a lot of laughs. Mm-hmm.
Mookie
Someone could be completely indifferent, not even notice you’re there. You’re just washing into the backdrop. You engage them personally. You make a connection and all of a sudden their eyes light up. This artist at Comic-Con is giving me attention. I might’ve just paid 50, 100 bucks for an autograph from Daredevil, stood in line for three hours, but this person is actually coming up to me. They have content and let’s talk. And I saw Ingrid time and time again, just make a, a conversion from nothing. They would have walked right by our little sci-fi area and not a thought in the world, zero probability in the multiverse of anything happening. And literally you just, you fish them in, you engage them. And then a conversion, a self literally comes from nothing. And I think that’s.
Ingrid
Yeah, not even glanced over. Hahaha! but you also get a lot of them where you’ll talk for 10 minutes, five sales walk by and you don’t get a sale from that one. And you’re like, well, I just lost six sales really. yes. Yeah.
Mookie
Nothing. Yeah. Right, right. And that’s why tag teaming was good for us because while you
Mookie
Were engaging one person, I said, hey, it’s fallout meets hunger games.
Greg
That is great when you can have two people at the booth. That way, if you’re signing something or engaged with one person, somebody else can grab the other person. I know the one thing I look for is I try to try to look for their eye contact as they’re walking by, but you sometimes that’s hard. Don’t necessarily like to yell and grab them, especially like when in this case, I had another person across from us and I didn’t want to be like dueling people back and forth. So, but one thing I do notice, cause I, my
Mookie
Right. Right. Right.
Ingrid
Mm.
Greg
Artwork is, I think, pretty decent on my covers. And so a lot of times I’ll catch their eyes looking at the art and they’ll be turning their heads back as they keep walking. And that’s when I know that’s the time I like to go in. Like, hey, do you like what you see? Do you read space opera? Do you like Transformers? And I have another thing. I have a Voltron toy that’s really nice and shiny.
Mookie
Yeah. That’s warm. That’s a warm lead. Right, right, right.
Ingrid
Huh. Yep, yep.
Greg
And I have that on display on my table and I use that as not that I, not that my books are directly inspired by Voltron, but it’s kind of the same vibe and it gets kind of the audience I’m looking for. If they recognize Voltron, that’s usually a good sign they might be interested in my books. And so it stops a lot of people, even if they’re not interested in reading, they will stop and talk about that. And then sometimes that does lead into a more deeper conversation.
Ingrid
Yeah.
Greg
About books and reading and then sci-fi and then that’s another way to hook them in.
Mookie
Yeah, everyone’s got their own unique style. Your style is a little bit more passive and you’re looking for a more qualified lead. And I think Ingrid and I were like, we had, I think the benefit too, that we had our own little sci-fi press area in isolation. So there weren’t too many direct competitors near us. So we could be, this is the sci-fi HQ.
Greg
Yes.
Ingrid
Yeah, we didn’t have to compete with anybody. Yeah.
Mookie
He got sci-fi, you know, here’s where sci-fi indie novel writing and sharing is happening. So that was kind of our initial pitch and you know, it worked. The first sale that I got for my Fuzzuli saga, inclusive of Ingrid’s works, I think this one guy who was walking, shambling like a zombie. He was impervious to any stimuli whatsoever, let alone us. And I called out the usual pitch and for every 20, 30, 40 people who would walk right by without any acknowledgement, he, for some reason, just mechanically turned toward us. He came to me and Ingrid was involved in another sale at the time. And I started doing the, Ender’s Game buzz. And he got interested in that. He picked up Ingrid’s book. He was making a move. Then his eyes wandered to mine and I managed selling both to him.
Ingrid
Mm-hmm.
Greg
Wow, nice.
Mookie
So we got a dual sale from someone who had literally zero buying signs up to the point where he actually reached in his wallet bought a couple. So I think again, that’s best practice number one, pitch according to your natural inclination and your natural style. But at the same time, you gotta engage one way or another at these live events. You can’t just.
Ingrid
Yeah.
Greg
100%. Yes, yes, yep.
Mookie
Expect people to come to you based on the grandeur of your own content and display. It’s just not going to happen for you. I think that’s best practice. Numero uno.
Ingrid
What was interesting is, so on Friday we had, I didn’t have my signage up at all, right? You had your sign down, your Fazzuli signed down at the bottom, which people got people’s attention, right? But for the most part, there wasn’t a lot of sign, there was my big banner in the back with my spaceship. And I felt like, okay, the way people are walking in this direction and moving in this particular flow around our booth, I need to have more stuff facing that way and not so much kind of spread out around the whole table. And so we shifted everything on Saturday so that we had both sides had kind of the similar looks. And no matter what direction you came from, you could see the books, the covers, how beautiful they were. And I think that helped a lot. so we had so nobody looked at my signage. That was kind of the weird thing. And I have people of color on my signage, too. And I thought there’s so many people of color here. Maybe they’ll see themselves in one of these characters. Maybe that’ll draw that just I felt like no eyes really at people would glance at it and then just keep going. But I felt like the covers are what really drew people’s attention. And I know my covers are very bright and beautiful. And so I know that they attract attention. But and yours was white with the purple on it, which is so unique. especially in that clutter zone, that was a nice place for your eye to drift to, right? So I think that was huge. I would probably not do as much signage again.
Mookie
All right, two best practices there, just to summarize, and then I’ll pass the mic to Greg. Best practice number one is layout. So in summary, when we started on Friday, Ingrid had, imagine a 90 degree corner angle, and Ingrid had one side and I had another. And the problem with that is people were shuffling in both directions and they didn’t get the totality of everything we had to offer. So Ingrid’s great idea was to combine us on each side. And the best practice is their layout and display is critically important for selling as as a, as a to do. And the other one is covers. couldn’t, I couldn’t agree more. I saw people just magnetically drawn to your content based solely on covers and they, they wanted to touch the books and they, could tell they were instantly visualizing their bookshelf at home with their favorite sci-fi stuff.
Ingrid
Yes!
Mookie
Wouldn’t this look cool on my shelf? This was pre-pitched. I don’t know what the hell this book is about. I don’t know what it’s like, but the cover rocks. this can’t be under emphasized for selling content in a live set.
Ingrid
Yeah, and I also learned over many, many, many of these all year, having your books right in the front on the edge of your table stacked up, people pick them up, they look at them, even if they don’t listen to what you’re saying, right. So other than that was a very important thing.
Mookie
Layout, right. Awesome. Make it a visual and tactile experience. Make it an experience for people. What about you, Greg?
Greg
I’ve always, mean, I’ve always everything I’ve ever been taught or learned about books is, you people say, don’t judge a book by a cover, but that’s 100 % false. Every single person judges a book by a cover, which is why I’m kind of dismayed at the state of fantasy and science fiction book covers these days, because they’re all, you know, not there’s anything wrong with text based because you have a text based cover.
Ingrid
Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
Greg
But it looks great, right? But for me, fantasy and sci-fi should just be jump out and grab you, have that spaceship, have that robot, have the character, something just to grab you. And so that’s kind of what I did is I maybe went a little overboard for a starting author when I got my covers. Maybe paid a little too much for them, but they look great. And I’ll be able to use them, I think, for years to come before I ever have to recover them. One thing I do notice is that Ingrid has glossy covers, which I think look beautiful. And my artists, my cover artists, both of my cover artists would tell me, I’ll just go with Matt, go with Matt. But I think in a live setting, the glossy covers really, really stand out a lot better. And so I’m going to have to think about doing that with my next series and maybe even converting the ones I have, the glossy covers, because they just much nicer.
Ingrid
Yeah, especially if you have color.
Mookie
Color, color glossy. They’re drawn right to it. I had the opposite, which is minor matte matte covers. And I had cats and bongs and shit on my cover. So people would cut. were kind of curious, like, what the fuck is this? But at the same time, there was no connection to any kind of multiverse jumping, you know, a multi-dimensional civil war space opera. It didn’t convey the content.
Ingrid
And a bathtub.
Mookie
In any way that resonated. It was more like an almost like an art poetry kind of book, like, you know, cats and bathtubs and wires. So it looked cool and it was contrast, but it was like, again, it was a quizzical glance, whereas Ingrid got an immediate and visceral magnetic draw. I want to touch it. I want to hold it. And I want to put it on my shelf.
Greg
Yeah, no, it looks good.
Ingrid
It was attractive.
Mookie
So that’s a very, important takeaway. And again, I wanna give points to my niece who did my cover. I love my cover. I think it’s fabulous. We’re on audio, but this is a great cover for the book that I loved writing and sharing. But as far as selling it at Comic-Con, that’s not gonna go, man. It’s like, this is not some Berkeley, you know.
Ingrid
I’ve said that before.
Mookie
Tea, you know, Earl Grey tea drinking session with the Poetic Society. It’s not going to work.
Ingrid
I think some book covers will do better live and some do better as ebook, like, you know, when you see them online and yours maybe is like definitely like online. Plus you have the description right there. People are like kind of looking at that whole thing. Whereas if they see it live and there’s no context around it, you’re like, I don’t know. Although your signage with, you know, hooch or Fuzuli, like people are like, what the hell does that mean? So at least you got that engagement.
Mookie
Right. Right. Yeah, and it’s got the freaky file. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that was a great call out too. Come here to hooch your Fuzzuli, right? You want your Fuzzuli hooch? Come on here to Sci-Fi HQ. Yeah, that’s a little naughty. It was a little naughty and people are like kind of wondering if they could hooch their Fuzzuli with me and Ingrid. Sorry, we’ve laid out a few really good.
Greg
Hahaha.
Ingrid
People are like, whaaaat? It just sounds so dirty. It is dirty, but.
Greg
The Hahaha!
Ingrid
Just you, just you.
Mookie
Best practices, which is get attention, lay out the table in a way that’s organic and engaging so they come up and they want to touch and interact. And also covers, covers, covers for artists. can’t, if you’re going to spend money on your book, it’s even more important than editing because most people aren’t even going to read it. If you want to sell your book, get a cover that pops. So those are three.
Ingrid
Yeah, the number people who buy it and never read it. And that’s fine. I don’t care.
Mookie
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which was
Greg
Hahaha!
Mookie
Part of my point to you in terms of pitching, because you could pitch the story hoping that that’ll get them in. But even if they tell you they love space operas and your book really isn’t about space operas, there’s probably elements in your book which is space operatic. And not to lead the witness or sell something you’re not actually able to deliver on.
Ingrid
Mm-hmm. Enough of that, right?
Mookie
But it’s all really a matter of interpretation, right? I mean, there’s even a little bit of romance in your book, right, Greg? I mean, the machines are kind of… Yeah.
Greg
Yeah, mean, it’s hints of it. There’s definitely characters have pasts with each other, and there are some subtle hints at relationships. There is even a, I don’t know, I’d say one of the deeper romance, there is actually a deep romance between two robot characters that’s kind of a central theme that runs throughout the story.
Mookie
Right.
Greg
You know, it starts one way in book one and then you have something that happens and then by the end of book five, that’s kind of a driving force for some of the subplots. So obviously I don’t want to spoil it, but yeah, there’s definitely some, some, some romance in there. And it’s not like key, it’s more about the action and everything, but there’s definitely a little bit of a line there that people can latch onto. And personally, it’s some of the little, the little The little romantic touches that I did add are some of my favorite things that I put in the books. And so they definitely, I think hit really well.
Mookie
Practice number four, listen and ask questions. Ingrid was great at this. So someone would come up and, hey, you read science fiction? And if they said no, then I would chime in, like, you know, I’d photo bomber from behind goes, today’s the day that you start. But if she would get the affirmative, which is actually a majority of the time, because it is a comic con, hey, do you like science fiction? I’ll go, yeah. And then she would draw them in by asking what kind of science.
Ingrid
Because we had such a variety at the table.
Mookie
Right, and regardless of what they liked, you could kind of spin your own book to fit it. Because if you’re a good writer and it’s literary, it’s gonna have romance, it’s gonna have conflict, it’s gonna have drama, right?
Ingrid
Mine has no romance.
Ingrid
I zero romance in either book. Or either in the series or the book. Zero.
Greg
Hahaha.
Mookie
Well, but anyway, anyway, there’s going to be human emotion. So when you, you know, one of the themes of this podcast series, you know, bald ambition, I interviewed startup founders and people who do everything from FDA compliance to us. And a common theme is selling consultatively and the art of consultative selling is that you don’t just offer what you got. Like the used car salesman, Hey, let me sell you this car. It’s got an AM FM radio. It’s got leather bucket seats and a four 57 Hemi. Boom. You want to test drive, talk to your customer, find out what their implicit needs are and what their expectations are. So by asking people what kind of science fiction they like to read and engage with, they are giving you vital information. And instead of trying to sell them something they don’t want your addressing pain points or needs that they are sharing with you so that you are providing a benefit that they can’t wait to purchase. That is the essence of consultative selling. And I saw it in action. Ingrid did an awesome job. I’m sure you were laying it down there, Greg. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s it’s organic, right? You engage with your audience. So I think best practice number four is sell consultatively, which is ask questions, get answers, and then
Ingrid
Took me all year to learn how to do it, but.
Mookie
Noodle your pitch based on who you’re talking to. And I think that that could, that works in every setting. And I saw it in action with us. And I think that’s a key takeaway for anyone who wants to like bark their books. Amid 120,000 people dressed as everything from Jedi Santa Claus. saw one of those to like, you know, people in a Bart Simpson t-shirts, you know, you know, and funny hats.
Ingrid
No.
Mookie
So I thought that was terrific. And I’ll introduce best practice number five, which is very tactical. And I got this from Greg. So when Greg came to visit us, I’m like, thanks for visiting. And we have our discord thread where we share our indie sci-fi adventures with each other. So this was my first time meeting Greg in person. I said, Hey, Greg, welcome. And I gave you a copy of my Fuzzuli book, which is you’re a partner in crime. Let’s get to know each other. and here’s my book and I signed it for you. But I left a key thing out which you taught me after I came down to visit you and you reciprocated by offering me your first in the series. Like, hey, Spitz, Mookie, here’s, you gave me your book, I’m gonna give you mine and you signed it. And you not only signed it by Mookie, enjoy my mech series.
Ingrid
That’s right.
Mookie
But you signed LA Comic Con 2025. Now this is a minor thing, but I think it’s so smart. You are turning it into a memento from a major event. People are spending hundreds, not thousands of dollars to go to this event. And it is a milestone. It’s like a landmark in their life of being a cosplay, sci-fi, fantasy weirdo. They remember all this stuff, right?
Ingrid
Indeed.
Mookie
So when they’re on their books, they look at their bookshelf or they share the book. What’d you get at Comic-Con? got this. And then years later, they’re flipped through the book. It’s like, here’s my son copy. So when you’re on the New York Times bestseller list, I go, I knew Greg when he was down at Artists Row. And look, you open up the book and it’s got its time and place stamp. So I wanted to share that as a key, I didn’t even think of that.
Ingrid
Never occurred to me either when I saw it, when I was looking and because you had the book was there and I opened the thing and I saw your signature and I was like, damn, I’m not on a really important thing here.
Greg
Hahaha!
Mookie
That’s a winning, winning best practice.
Ingrid
I just want to sign and get it out. Here, take my book, take my book. Give me your money, take my book. It’s…
Greg
Yeah, you know, I’m not sure when I started that,
Mookie
Yeah.
Greg
But I think at one point I was just I would put two so and so, you know, and then I would just put I don’t like to sign it. I want to believe some so I try to put like I have a certain quote that I put in each book, depending on which book a person buys. If they buy all of them, it takes a long time to sign them all. But I was like, it’s missing something. And so was like, well, why don’t I put it where they got it and
Ingrid
Mm-hmm. huh.
Greg
It’s kind of cool because if they do come back at another show, then they’ll have one from the Dina Comic Con, then they’ll have one from WonderCon, then they’ll have one from LA Comic Con. not only will they know, they know where they got it and it’s a memento, but also I usually write down, I’m not too busy, I do write down the name of the person, the book. I guess it’s kind of like what a doctor does or whatever. I write the name of the person. the book they bought and watch things. So that way I just remember. so, you know, usually at the start of each show, I’ll kind of just flip through that and just say, okay, so and so and so and So that way too, if I get a repeat buyer, if they say their name, it triggers. Yeah.
Mookie
Awesome sauce. Great. It’s like your own CRM program. Ingrid has a newsletter, which is awesome. And she had fans come in to visit her. And you’ve got your own fan club. So brilliant. Brilliant. Know your customers and then repeat customers. Is a great, great.
Greg
Yeah, it’s like, hey, I remember you, you know.
Ingrid
Hahaha!
Greg
Mm-hmm. Yep, They’re really fun. That’s really interesting.
Ingrid
The repeat customers are fun.
Greg
As kind of back to your number four, had a listen to your customer I had at Pasadena Comic Con last year, which was in May instead of January because of the fires. I had a young man come up and. He started talking to me and he had this plan for this whole book series and was explaining it in depth, right? It was really like he was talking to me for a long time. And you you nod and smile and like, okay, I’m not sure if this is gonna convert into a sale or not, but you know, I always wanna be nice, especially for aspiring writers or aspiring readers, right? I’ll give them as much time as they wanna talk. And so later he, you know, He definitely wasn’t a sell for Pasadena. then at LA Comic Con, some guys come up, they’re probably in their early 20s. And one of them started talking to me and he seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place it. And then he’s like, Oh, I bought your last book at Pasadena. I’m like, Oh, okay, cool. And there was like four other guys and they were talking and then he convinced one of his friends to buy a book. And I’m like, yes, you know, good. And then he picked up both. book two because if you buy two books you get a discount so that way they got a discount. I was like yes thank you. Then they had a third friend with them and then he started talking to me so you probably don’t remember me but I was the one talking to you for a really long time in Pasadena. And so he’s like I just wanted to apologize I didn’t want to eat up all your time like that like no no no it’s no worry or whatever. He’s like okay well they both promised to give me your books when you’re done and then I will buy a book at some point. He goes I promise.
Mookie
That’s great.
Greg
That was just a lot of fun because you get to build the relationship with the fans, which I think is maybe, I don’t know, another best practice for these shows is really you get the personal contact with the fans, which is, I think, the best part of doing them.
Ingrid
Yeah! Mm-hmm. Yep.
Mookie
Ingrid was a maestro of this. You brought gaggles of friends of friends and you had your own posse several times.
Ingrid
I had a posse, but they weren’t necessarily buyers. They were, you know, just friends from old times. But I did have a few like Michael, who’s like my number one fan, I’ll say, because he’s the only one who’s not my family who literally came to get his third book. So got one in Pasadena, got one on some other thing we were at. And then he got one at this one. And his brother had come to Long Beach and was like, you’re here. you know, Michael couldn’t come.
Greg
Yeah.
Ingrid
I’ll take it. So we took a selfie to like kind of boast to Michael that, you missed out and whatever. But he’s like, no, we’ll be at, we’ll be at LA Comic-Con. And I was like, great. if Mookie, if you remember like every day I was like, okay, are Chris and Michael gonna show up? Are Chris and Michael gonna show up? And they didn’t, and they didn’t. And finally on Sunday they showed up and I was like, yay! It was a big party.
Greg
You wow.
Mookie
Yeah. And was like a little party in the booth. And, and,
Greg
Hahaha!
Mookie
Know, I, I ran a nightclub for years in the nineties and you know how they artificially keep a line at the door. They like let people in slow. That’s everywhere. Restaurants, nightclubs, any kind of business because it creates a buzz. So best practice number six is if you can create a buzz at your booth, then go for it. Even if it’s like your family.
Ingrid
Mm-hmm. Seven.
Greg
Yeah, yeah.
Ingrid
Mm-hmm.
Mookie
Like they come
Ingrid
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Greg
Yeah.
Mookie
To like support you. People, people are attracted where other people are. It is the con, it’s the opposite of an empty booth with an empty section. It’s, it’s, it’s like kryptonite for party goers. It’s like that party died or it’s not even happening. People are drawn to a party because they, they, they feel FOMO. It’s like, what’s going on over there? There’s clearly something going on. So you did an awesome job of like,
Ingrid
Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah, it’s FOMO.
Greg
I’m leaving.
Mookie
Getting gaggles of people to just hang out at the booth. And that was like a magnet. It created a magnet for other people. And there were many times too, where you had your gaggle of friends and fans. Then there were two or three people interested in the books. And it was even harder with the two of us to multitask because, know, people, all of a sudden the interest went from us begging for attention to like, we were literally overwhelmed. We were short staffed in that little corner.
Ingrid
We also blocked the hallway, so.
Greg
Hahaha
Ingrid
Mm-hmm.
Mookie
And that’s some of the irony and paradox
Ingrid
Only my son would be helpful.
Mookie
Of doing this, which is like trench warfare. Like you’re either bored out of your mind or you’re overwhelmed with terror. Yeah. And I think best practice seven, if I’m keeping track here, I’ll try to bullet these out. It’s networking. So to me, and what I learned,
Greg
Yep, that’s true.
Mookie
Was you can sell books, which is good. And it’s an individual transaction. So you’re getting your content out there. People are showing interest. They’re obviously reciprocating by paying you. So there’s money and we all hope to turn this into some kind of professional venture, right? Like I would, I’m fair to say not to speak for either one of you or both of you. Wouldn’t it be great if we could just be indie sci-fi writers professionally full time?
Greg
Yes, 100%. That would be my dream.
Ingrid
Yeah.
Mookie
I mean, that’s kind of no brainer in terms of an aspirational
Ingrid
So.
Mookie
Development. And that takes, that takes mullah, you know, so short of getting option for a Netflix mini series, selling books is our ladder in that direction. But along the way, it’s not just individual transaction of book sales. is connecting with people. So we connected as we’ve already described with number one, other writers. other artists. And even though other writers might be competitive or, you know, you’re, kind of quid pro quo-ing each other in some kind of way, like, you know, rub my back, rub yours when you meet people at the other booth, you know, that kind of thing. You’re kind of competing, but kind of not because, you know, rising tides lift all boats. But at the same time, it’s so important to enhance your network with people of like-minded souls because you’re just expanding your reach exponentially with every person you get to know and talk to, even if they’re doing the same thing you are. And as an adjunct to that, before I pass the mic back to you guys, I think any and all kinds of connections in the industry are vital because that way you establish these kind of weak bridges, which is the number one way mathematically that you grow a network. That’s been shown to be true. So I just got huge value. from connecting with other podcasters, sharing cards. This one guy who is the editor of the science fiction anthology of 2022, 2023, 2024, really nice guy. I think he was with Pepperdine University or one of them. He’s like, I think by day a professor and by night a cosplay, Comic-Con weirdo.
Ingrid
That’s right. We’re not weirdos, we’re normal!
Mookie
He gave me his card and I have since submitted two of my science fiction short stories to be in the anthology of 2026, which is like, why the hell not? Right? So I network with this guy. He helped me maybe get into a publication. You meet people. Ingrid and I met Anand Gandhi, who is the director writer of Ship of Theseus, an award-winning movie. He’s now partnered with Hugo Weaving, the agent Smith and the elf king.
Ingrid
Yeah. That’s right. We.
Greg
Nice.
Ingrid
Bernard, yeah. Yeah.
Mookie
Has done the voiceover
Ingrid
Rond.
Mookie
New book, the Maya world building narrative on Kickstarter. And he was gracious. He came to our booth. He was all over Ingrid. He was like touching Ingrid’s books. And I kind of like moved in there with the fizzle. Here, take this book too. Pay attention to me too. But that was a huge connection because this guy is out there and he was trolling around, buying up other people’s books as kind of a courtesy. And that’s a great connection.
Greg
Thanks.
Ingrid
I’m trying to find his info.
Mookie
So, you know, I pinged him online. I went to his Instagram, you know, I got the book on Kickstarter and I’m trying to be like, Anand, remember booking in the multiverse and why not? Right? It’s just a way of making a connection. So how do you guys feel about this other aspect of selling, which is not just selling books, but making connections with our colleagues and making connections with other influencers and decision makers in
Ingrid
You
Mookie
This world of crazy cosplay creativity.
Ingrid
I think that’s very important. I think definitely you need to do that. I’m terrible at that. I’m actually, once I got over my fear of selling the books, I haven’t gotten over the fear of like networking with people. I’m just, that’s just not something I do very much. Like obviously like Greg and I bumped into each other a hundred times now. So like, I feel like we’re buddies, you But you know, a couple other people maybe too, but like I’m terrible at it. like at Long Beach, I did walk around and I, cause things are really slow.
Greg
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Ingrid
Like some point. I walked around and talked to a bunch of other people. got a whole bunch of cards, like, you know, people who someone’s going to help me like get my audio book onto audible because they don’t like my files, etc. So it was definitely good. Definitely a good thing to do. I didn’t get as much of it this time. But I was also exhausted. So I did get an artist though, and an artist is actually making art for one of my characters right now. Just signed a contract today. Yeah. Yeah.
Mookie
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ingrid
Ya think?
Mookie
Awesome. That was going to be my
Greg
Ooh, that’s awesome, nice.
Mookie
Best practice number eight. You’re beating me too, but for sure. Yeah. How about you, Greg? How’s your feeling about it?
Greg
Yeah, I mean, yeah, networking is really important. And when you’re a brand new writer, starting out, and you’re like, how am I ever going to get to know other people? And it’s really daunting because writing is, by definition, kind of a very solitary task unless you’re with a writing group or whatever. And so you can go to conferences and meet people. And that’s been OK for me. But I think the shows have been better. But it’s not just doing one show, it’s doing multiple shows. know, I guess this is my rounding out my second year of doing in-person events. And I’ve done like three or four a year. So it’s not like I’m doing a ton of them and not doing every, every weekend or even every month. But, you know, after you do the same shows, you do start to recognize the people, the vendors, and even some of the attendees you get to recognize and they’ll say, Oh, Hey, how are you doing? And then, you know, wave. And so. So yeah, that part is great. I mean, yeah, I mean, networking where three of us are here because we networked in some way, shape or form. So that’s great. so yeah, like Ingrid, I didn’t really get a lot of networking done at this one. I mean, I talked to both of you, obviously. talked, there were two folks, a comic book artist and another indie. writer came around to admit at other shows and we talked a bit. And then of course the writers across from me and to the left of me, we talked and networked. So I guess that was a fair amount of networking for a show, but I’ve had other shows where there’s been a lot of other people walking around networking and talking. And this one just didn’t, for me, didn’t seem to have quite that much, maybe in other areas or different parts, maybe it did. There were, mean, there were. Yeah, there were hundreds, you know, at least hundreds of vendors, would think, at the show. So it is hard for everybody to get around and talk to everybody in three days.
Mookie
Yeah. And that’s a perfect segue to best practice number eight. eight or nine? What? Whatever we lost count. I’m amazed. I’m even like tracking this far, but, anyway, vendors and other people in it to win it for the cashola or the money. So specifically, from my vantage point, I spent some time when I’m trolling around going down to artists row where you were Greg and
Ingrid
Yeah. whatever, we’ve lost track, it’s alright.
Greg
I think it’s fun. Mm-hmm.
Mookie
Here’s what I put in my bald head. I pretended I had a hundred thousand dollars in disposable income that I could spend on repurposing my Johnny Fazzulli multiverse adventure into an ass kicking graphic novel. This is just a fantasy I had. I do not have a hundred grand to unload on this project. But the reason I did this was if I had that in my pocket bulging, then which artist would I want to work with?
Ingrid
Right.
Mookie
And I scrutinized everyone, like I zigged and zagged aisle after aisle. And I ran into one, Don Aguilo. He’s a Filipino American out of San Francisco. And his stuff nailed it for me. It’s kind of a combination of the Silverstein ink splashes from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, if you remember that, with a character who’s fairly photorealistic. but you have heavy airbrush and you have explosions of color, which are kind of this expressionistic outpouring of manic energy. And that’s what this guy had in droves. So I went up to him and I said that, I go, you’re awesome. know, how do you work with writers? How do you, so he goes, well, I don’t want to see your book. Send me an NDA before you tell me anything about it. And to me, this, screen professionalism. Like, I don’t want you blaming me for ripping off your shit and I want you to feel comfortable and visa versa. So I said, cool. And then, you know, toward the end of the conference on Sunday, I went to visit him again, just to say hi. So he’d remember me. And that to me was another kind of networking connection because he works with a lot of writers and then he’s got, I think rise the rise series is his aesthetic contribution.
Greg
Yes.
Mookie
And that’s got some legs. So he’s fairly well known and he’s a professional comic artist. So that was a meaningful connection to me where it wasn’t so much like this is a producer for Netflix or Hulu, but this is a guy who could potentially repurpose content. And even though he’s way, he’s probably way outside my current fiscal spreadsheet budget, it was eminently worthwhile to talk to him just for the sake of it and get it in motion.
Ingrid
You came back all excited.
Mookie
Yeah. Yeah. Have you guys thought
Greg
Hahaha.
Mookie
About like graphic novelization, that kind of stuff for your books? Not that graphic novel. You don’t see that as a stepping stone potentially to, to that.
Ingrid
Movies, not, I can’t even, I can’t even fathom it. No, I think it would be a great seller at these cons, but I don’t think I could stomach the length of time it takes for people to draw and to get it all right. I mean, these are, you know, big books, big series. So I don’t even imagine how they would do yours.
Mookie
Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I worked with an illustrator on Super Santa. We’ve got it’s over 500. It’s like 150,000 words and over 180, 190 illustrations. To your point, that was challenging. And, you know, I’ve, and as a result, I, I found myself on my own with Fuzuli. So part of me is I want a creative partner, you know, who could draw with and
Greg
Bye. I definitely think. Hahaha
Mookie
Most people aren’t going to work on spec. They’re not like, well, I love your book and you know, I’ll just do the graphic novel for free said nobody ever.
Greg
Yeah, I definitely think my series would be really, really good as like either a graphic novel or a cartoon or a manga or an anime. I definitely think it would fit that genre really well. But again, the budgetary process, because I would love if somebody would do it on spec and we would split the royalties. for me, mean, that my sales are not to the point where somebody would be willing to take that risk and I wouldn’t ask anybody to take that risk. It’s been hard enough with audio, you know. But yeah, I would love it and I think it would help sell it honestly. So at some point I may have to allocate some funds to at least do a first issue and see what the reception is.
Mookie
It’s And egos get in the way. Yeah, egos get in the way like. Yeah. And that’s my next segue, which is to ask you guys about AI. So, you know, we, we write our books, which is tacitly understood. So we didn’t GPT our content. but I’m talking now about imagery and content repurposing. Ingrid and I were chit chatting at our booth and you know, I used AI for a website.
Ingrid
Use that as a teaser. boy.
Mookie
For the Johnny Fazzulli Transfinite Reality Engine website where I literally rendered the main characters and some of the main scenes for a website. And I actually, I based the morphology of my anti-hero on a dear friend of mine in Chicago who had passed away. So I kind of kept his spirits. He has Marfan syndrome, which is a genetic ailment that Abraham Lincoln had, abnormally tall and thin with tons of systemic issues, everything from sleep apnea to… you know, horrible vision, a sunken chest. And I took his face and I put it into Dolly and Johnny Fazzulli is Tom, my old friend in his face with a huge bouffant of blonde hair. I got immense emotional satisfaction from bringing Tom back to life. So in the Johnny Fazzulli rendering on the website and in the different posts I’ve made, Tom has come back in his, and it enabled me to be creative. I have the visualization and I’ve got visualization of scenes from my book. have a four dimensional general who comes in cross-section, three dimensional cross-sections in the book. And I tried to recreate him and it looks kind of weird, but it helped me visualize that. So I’ve used AI for that. So I’m just asking you guys in general, what’s your feeling about AI for rendering some of our visuals for potentially repurposing content? And as a last point, just want to make Sora too is coming out by, it’s already out by invitation. It’s going to change everything. It’s an app. And you could, with prompts within seconds, create custom videos, which are cinematic in quality, about 10, 15 seconds in length. And you could chat with your friends. It’s a social network of AI mini reels. It’s going to change everything. That’s my prediction as a digital guy. Everyone’s going to be using AI and everything’s going to be AI visualization. We are content creators. are storytellers for us not to dip our toes and eventually dive into this AI stuff. I think is a missed opportunity because they need us. They need original content. The bots are already regurgitating their own shit. So how do we address this AI challenge and also huge opportunity in a way where we retain our individuality?
Greg
Yeah.
Mookie
We tell our own stories. We avoid being blamed for prompting our content. And at the same time, we might even be able to, the technology is almost there folks. I’m telling you only in a year or two where you’re to say, here’s my book. Here’s bio Hunter. Okay. And you pump it into the LLM. And then in a nanosecond, it generates a graphic fucking novel. I think that’s going to happen. So how do we address that? How do we deal with
Ingrid
You want to go, Craig? I have a lot to say and I don’t want to, I’ll talk for an hour and you better talk first.
Greg
OK. Yeah, so
Mookie
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Greg
I mean, yeah, I mean, the world is becoming AI. I mean, in my day job, we are encouraged to use it to some degree to make our lives easier, to automate tasks, to make our jobs easier, less repetitive. So the world is definitely becoming more and more AI based. There’s also a very virulently anti-AI
Mookie
Right.
Greg
Especially when it comes to art and writing. And so that’s a whole nother tightrope to walk. Personally, I’ve started dabbling with it a little bit. I’ve always used ProWritingAid whenever I first started writing. Gosh, like back in 2019, people were saying, use ProWritingAid. It’s the best grammar checking software out there. And there was no issue about whether it was AI or not. And so…
Mookie
Mm-hmm.
Greg
I’ve just been using that all along and I use that before I hand it off to a human editor. So I clean it up as much as I, my manuscript up as much as humanly possible and possible with the writing aid. And then I hand it to the, to my editor and then he sends it back and then I make his changes or most of his changes. So that’s kind of that. In writing my fifth and final book, the fifth book was It took me so long to write, it was close to two years to write and I got lot of just personal life, stop, business life, stop. So I never could get quite the momentum going that I wanted. And so I found it difficult to remember what I was doing in the story. And so I was like, there’s gotta be a solution out there to help me. And then I heard about Google’s Notebook LM. And what I did is I loaded my previous books up there and it was like having a Wikipedia page of my own book. And I could say, oh, well, what faction is so and so in, you know, a certain character? And it would pop it up and like, oh, thank God, I don’t have to spend four hours searching, flipping through, you know, four books to figure this out. And so. it became really, really good for me to, and then it would offer up ideas and suggestions about just like its observations of your story and I’ll say, you have themes of this, this, and this in your book. And like, I never even thought about that, but yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Okay, cool. So I have used that. And then also in the fifth book, I did kind of the same process that I always do. I finished writing it, you know. all 100 % me writing it. And then I went through and edited it and Power Writing Aid sent it to my editor, sent it back. But as I was reading through it, I felt it was missing something. And so I would take the chapters and I started experimenting. What would happen if I put this in the different LLMs to see what it would come up with, if it would point out the same errors or if it’d find different errors. And sure enough, I found different things, some things I implemented, some things I didn’t. Definitely though, I wrote the book. There’s no me pushing a button because I played with it and I tried that and I’m like, wow, this is garbage. So I was like, I’m not going to put that in my book, or at least it wasn’t anything I would like because it’s not me, right? It’s not me writing the book. So that’s kind of… So at this point, I’m using it as a tool to help me put out the best product possible.
Ingrid
That is garbage.
Mookie
Yeah, your energy is not going into it, right?
Greg
I’m not using it to create, I’m using it to help refine my creation so that it’s the best it could be. And so by the end of the process, even though it took me a lot longer than I expected, I was really happy with the fifth and final book of the Mech Haven series. And so now I’m exploring brainstorming with my next series because I already have ideas. So I’m like, okay, let’s brainstorm. Let’s come up with, does this make sense? Does this make sense in the current market? Like, how does this fit? How do these ideas fit within the current fantasy market? Does it make sense? And, you know, yes or no, and some information is better than others. And so I thought, okay, and I haven’t started writing it yet, but I will probably in November. And so that’s good. Now the interesting things, sorry if I’m taking so long here, hopefully I’m hitting on some of the same things you will. Some of the things that
Ingrid
That was fun.
Greg
Looking for now is and these are where kind of more of the controversy comes in is I’d really like to get audiobooks out for all my books but yeah do will there be artists that want to take the risk I’m doing a royalty share all right I already have one book and he’s a friend the ordinary there’s a friend of mine so he did do a royalty share but In terms of sales and stuff, it’s not knocking anybody’s socks off. And so for him to go and do the rest of the series, probably not going to be very likely. So would it be better? Well, I mean, I could still try to go get a new narrator, but nobody likes that when that happens. Or do I do some sort of AI reading? There’s some really good programs out there. Part of my Part of my editing process this last time was I fed my chapters into 11 labs and had a human-like AI narrator read it to me. And man, it was, I don’t want to say life altering, but it was really impressive as to, I was like, don’t even mind listening to this. This is getting pretty good. Within a year, I think you won’t be able to distinguish it from a human or it’ll be really, really hard to. And then there’s translations, right? So translations I’m hearing are really, really easy with AI. And, you know, we all want to be able to optimize our creative works, our creative properties into, you know, some sort of financially viable product without going into debt because going and $20,000 in debt to get everything published the way you would like to just doesn’t seem like a very good idea. And then like you were saying, Mookie, with the visualization, with the artwork and stuff, I think I would still probably tend to stay with established book cover artists, but for visualizing story elements or even just something for a website or a newsletter. Why the heck not? I’m not going to pay somebody for that anyways. So I don’t know. And I have a feeling some of these ethical questions are gonna disappear in a year or two. And I think there’s already people using everything. My son and I were walking through Hobby Lobby one day and we noticed that the artwork they were selling in the store was very likely AI generated. So somebody’s already profiting off of these images. so. You know, not that not because everybody should do it. You should do it. But I don’t know. So I’m kind of I’m kind of Usae as a tool, but I’m definitely leaning to eventually using it more creatively. But I still don’t want it to generate my words as a writer. That is something I want to reserve from me. OK, that’s all I have to say about it.
Mookie
I thought that was a great overview and very earnest. you know, thanks. And it was also comprehensive. I just focused on content repurposing for graphic novels and video, and you went into audio books and you went actually into the creative process too, which is terrific.
Ingrid
Yeah. I think you hit all of my points really too.
Greg
Thanks. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.
Mookie
Yeah.
Ingrid
I would always rather pay a real person to do my stuff, which is why I’m paying an artist now to do some visualizations of my characters, right? And I’ve always paid for my book covers and stuff. So I don’t want to be taking anyone’s jobs or using quote unquote stolen property, which at this point, I know the AI companies just want us to believe that it’s too late, we don’t care. Like, why should we care at this point? Nobody’s ever going to get their money for any of stolen stuff. But ethically, I do have a very strong, I guess, resentment that this tool is available but unethical to use in that way. it’s such a torn thing. I wouldn’t want to take anybody’s job away, I guess is really the point. But at the same time, I’m not like a production studio or one of the big five publishers, I don’t have thousands and thousands of dollars to spend yet, right? So if I’m using a little AI to create some of my characters and make little posters or even a little, you know, book trailer, I don’t feel too bad about that because I want to be to the point where I am paying people to do that. And I’m not going to get there without some of these tools. But at the same time, Every time I make one, feel incredible amounts of guilt knowing that this stuff is all based on stolen property. so I’m always torn. My husband and I are always having conversations. He’s much more anti-AI than I am because he’s in the game industry. And right now there’s no entry level jobs for game industry people because they’re just throwing all the code at AI. And I’m like, but they still have to have people who know how to either put in the code stuff or make it so that it actually like fits together and works. Like AI isn’t doing that yet. So it’s just job repurposing versus, but artists, there’s no job repurposing. You either make the art or you don’t. And I want people to be doing it. yeah, so I’m always gonna try to like move in that direction. I just, you know, it’s a tool. It’s a tool right now and it won’t ever write my words. Yeah.
Mookie
Yeah, it’s like a kind of like a Mars Venus perspective on AI, where, know, Greg’s very Mars. He’s very practical, right. And functional. And you’re taking a very Venus point of view, which is very emotional and empathetic. I don’t want to steamroll someone who makes a career out of making awesome cover art. Right. And I, and I don’t want.
Ingrid
Emotional.
Greg
I do think it’s horrible though, the fact that we’re even having the conversation that a tool that would have been so good just for getting the drudgery out of our lives, the processes, the automation, and move on to bigger and better things. But what are they doing? They’re taking over the creative industries. I do think that’s horrible. It’s like, these things we should have reserved for ourselves, for humans.
Mookie
Yeah, think, yeah, that’s the heart of it.
Ingrid
Yeah.
Mookie
Right.
Greg
That’s, it’s kind of a bummer, but we also have to live it. Exactly.
Ingrid
Go do my laundry so I can make art.
Mookie
Right, I’m 100 % aligned with both of you. I’m a Gemini for whatever it means. So I have that duality. I’m able to kind of see both points of view. And essentially they’re the same point of view, right? From these different angles, humanistic, functional. And regarding my Fasuli book too, I had my niece do the cover. So that’s about as human as it gets. She did it on a tablet, but she hand drew the kitty cats. And you know, there’s, bongs and cards and she did the iconography and a little smile. It’s about as human and emotional and as personal as you can get. And that was deliberate. That was deliberate. Also, my book is written in three line sentences, which is bizarre. So when you flip through this book, the first thing a lot of people might conclude is this is machine generated. There’s no one sat there and like obsessively wrote and rewrote paragraphs so they fit. But I did that. I honestly knew that I wrote the whole damn book. To follow up on Greg’s comment about using the LLMs, I’ve got hard science in my hard science fiction book. So there’s something called the spider’s jar, one example. It’s a cylinder that’s 10 meters by 10 meters and down to the Planck level, Planck second and the Planck meter. It simulates every possible universe. with every possible parameter. All of reality that has happened, is happening and will happen can be simulated within the spider’s jaw. So to make it realistic in my book, I was like, what’s its volume? How many Planck units are in it? And what kind of computational power would be required with the amount of energy it would take to actually generate a 10 by 10 slice of every possible reality. That’s a badass idea. That’s like Borges library. It’s his olive. It contains every possibility. And my bad guy in the book, Alice, the avatar hacks into the jar and the story unfolds. So I went to chat GPT and I asked it a series of iterative questions to answer these. And that helped. That was awesome. I’ve gotten an Alcubierre warp drive spaceship in my science fiction book. What would it actually be like to be on the bridge of one of these starships? What would you see when it warps space and time to traverse across the galaxy? And I got a ton of cool info from LLMs that would have taken me days to research, scanning websites and journal articles. And it compressed it.
Ingrid
Mm-hmm. And then synthesizing it all. Yeah.
Mookie
It synthesized it in a nanosecond and I had the lexiconography, I had imagery, I had terminology, and I come across sounding like a badass in Fasuli because I knew how to use the LLMs. Did they write my fucking book? No. But did I become a better science fiction writer, a better hard science fiction writer for using it? And I think the answer definitively is yes. I think it’s badass, these sequences.
Greg
Ha ha.
Mookie
They sound super cool, even though they’re sci-fi, because they access a thousand journal articles on warp holes, on wormholes and warp drives. So as a creative artist, that’s cool. That’s kind of cool. So I’m kind of Pollyanna about this shit. And if I can do a graphic novel by, you know, storyboarding my book with LLMs and then using the new visual tools, maybe I’ll do it.
Greg
That’s awesome.
Ingrid
That were fed to it illegally, so you know.
Mookie
You know, forgive me Donna Guilo, can’t pay you, know, 30 grand for one comic book right now. And it sucks. I would want to. Right?
Ingrid
Mm-hmm.
Greg
I think that would be something, you know, we should all look at is like, okay, yeah, I’m building up a base and eventually when I do hit it, then I can go back and A for these services and do a human edition. I mean, cause one, I mean, one of the things, one of the arguments I hear about is accessibility, accessibility for the creative process, accessibility for the consumption process.
Mookie
Right.
Ingrid
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Greg
And, you know, if I make an audio, if I don’t make an audio book, does that limit somebody’s accessibility to my novels? And they can already play it if they download it in a Kindle, but it’s a really horrible experience, at least from what I’ve seen. So why not throw it in 11 labs and have a really good human voice? And from what I hear, some of them are appropriately compensated. I’m still looking into that as to how true that is.
Mookie
Yes. Just one quick question. Can you do multiple voices for characters with 11 lamps?
Greg
I hear that you can if you get the right product, I guess. And so how much does that cost to get that? Yeah.
Mookie
Right, right, right, right. So then you might as well hire real talent.
Greg
I guess it depends. Yeah, I haven’t quite gone fully down that path yet. But like you were saying, Miki, I kind of wonder with my books, because I don’t think that GPT came out until my second or third book was out. And so most of my characters are, I mean, the official name of them are MEC and AI. And they’re sentient robots with AI chips. And I write them.
Mookie
Right.
Greg
Like humans, have emotional matrices that are in them that help them have emotions, but they have varying levels. Some are more robotic and some are very, very human. But I wonder what the thing would be like if I started over, not that I’m going to do that, but with an LLM to question how would an AI respond to these type of scenarios? I mean, it’s kind of would be kind of silly to write about. You know sentient AIs without consulting an AI. I haven’t, but you know, so it’s just me, but I don’t know, just something to ponder, you know. Yeah.
Mookie
Yeah, it’s helpful. It could be helpful. And one ancillary question real quick. How do you guys feel about your content being ripped by the LLMs? So I’ve been tweeting my book in reverse from Johnny at Johnny Fasulion X. Okay. So I set up the CSV file and I got on Publer and it automatically tweets on the hour. It choked the other day, but I got to fix it. So I’m okay with just letting my novel out there because I figured they’re gonna rip it anyway. And then I created a project in ChatGPT called LGI 1, know, Lovers Guide 1, that’s the first in my series. And I literally took the PDF and I uploaded it into ChatGPT. And the reason I did this was I’m creating essays and reviews of my own book. So in lieu of having a New York Times bestseller, and having people review my book and, and academicians write about it. I have the LLM pursuing themes of love and war and discrimination and misogyny in the LLM. And I’m putting them up on Facebook and I’m sharing it with my friends and I’m putting it up on medium as blog posts. And, you know, we’re saying by chat GPT, because I’m just missing the opportunity for people to comment on my book. I want feedback. So chat GPT is my best critic. Now the price I paid for that is Johnny Fasulina, the Transfinite Reality Engine is now in the LLM. So if somebody goes, write a story about a hustler who creates an advanced science fiction gadget that is the time machine or thing, my ideas are going right into that response. It’s going to pull directly from my book. And I gave it to them for free. in exchange for them doing what I just described. Sarah Silverman, dozens of comics and content creators have actively sued Anthropic and OpenAI and XAI for ripping their content indiscriminately. And there’ve been lawsuits, right? There was a very recent one where they’ve got to pay authors like, what was it? Like, what was it like?
Greg
$20,000 per verified.
Mookie
Like $3,000 Mac, Anthropic has to pay all these authors that they ripped $3,000 per book for ripping their book. Right. And that was like getting off cheap. So how do you guys feel as writers? How do you guys feel as writers with the inevitability of all of our hard work getting ripped pretty much for free? I gave my shit up. So I can’t, I can’t be too, too, too wrathful about it, but how do you guys feel about.
Greg
This one of the stipulations, one of the stipulations to that.
Mookie
People prompting bots and your stories, your characters, your ideas being part of those responses.
Greg
Do want to go first, Ingrid?
Mookie
Hahaha!
Ingrid
No. Why don’t you guys save the stipulation real fast?
Greg
I was going say one of the stipulations to that lawsuit is, and this is where India authors are going to get heard on it, is they had to be copyrighted with the copyright office, the US government copyright office. A lot of times, and you both have probably heard the same thing, is your work is copyrighted as soon as you write it. You don’t have to copyright it at the copyright office. Well, that’s true to a point, except unless you want to win something in a lawsuit, then you need to show. So even if you
Mookie
Right, right.
Greg
Work was stolen and used to train the LLMs unless you can prove you have copyrights. Yeah, see, I did not do that. So that’s something I’m going to have to look into.
Mookie
Yeah, Johnny is copyrighted
Ingrid
I did not either.
Mookie
Because this is Johnny’s, Johnny’s my baby. Even though I gave Johnny up to open AI, Johnny’s my baby and here’s the.
Greg
Yeah. So.
Ingrid
Well, these are our babies too. Yeah. I hand out, I hand out free books, right? Once in a while. I just don’t expect people to go open those free books and then start stealing things out of it, right? Like I’m to make my own book that’s based on these characters. Well, honestly, if you want to make fan fiction of my books, how am I going to say no? But, but I don’t, you know, it’s training the AIs with stuff that I don’t consider like, okay, donated it essentially. So
Greg
We could be.
Mookie
That’s another fact, right?
Ingrid
I just, you not everybody feels that way about their art. So it’s hard. It’s hard to know.
Greg
Yeah, I mean, I do free, I do free promotions once a quarter, twice a year with Amazon thing. And so, so my books are definitely out there for free, but I mean, anybody could buy them for 499, 599 and get a copy of them anyways. So it’s out there. I mean, the way I understand LLMs and then my knowledge is limited is that they’re not pulling directly from your source. They’re kind of mishmashing it all together with all the other sources out there.
Mookie
Yeah, they chop it up in the tokens.
Greg
Yeah, so
Mookie
They chop it up in the tokens.
Ingrid
It’s predictive language. it’s pre it just predicts what word needs to come next. Right. And so it doesn’t necessarily know that the word it’s pulling maybe came from your book. Like it doesn’t know what it’s from. It’s just here’s, I think you want to hear this word. So we’re to put these string, these words together based on how I predict that you want an answer. So
Greg
Yeah. Yeah.
Mookie
No, doesn’t give a shit. It does not care. Yeah.
Greg
It’s really spooky how accurate it is sometimes.
Mookie
Yeah. Yeah. It does. It does slice and dice. It’s in the blender, your book. So, and it’s completely anonymized, but there will be tendrils of your soul and your creativity.
Greg
But yeah. But I do think it’s better that we get more human content into it before it starts regurgitating its own content because that’s just gonna become a mess.
Mookie
Yeah. I wrote a blog post about cats, chihuahuas and chat GPT that, I had an opportunity, I had cats and I had an opportunity to get chihuahuas. So I felt that it could be a self-perpetuating ecosystem where they eat each other’s doo-doo and I don’t have to feed either one. And that’s kind of like when you do the graph by 2000, what is it by 2032, there’ll be more bot content and human content. And it’ll be eating its own LLM shit.
Ingrid
Kind of want that to happen.
Greg
You
Mookie
So at this rate. So that’s our job folks as writers. And I think that’s a great way to sign off, which is we’re creators. We love going out there and talking to real people. We’re real people writing real books. We use technology to assist us and help us along. But at the end of the day, we have a passion and that passion is A storytelling and B sharing our stories with other people to bring them joy, at least as much joy as we have writing it.
Greg
Okay.
Mookie
For them to consume it. And we’ve shared a bunch of best practices for doing that at a big event like LA Comic-Con. And it’s been fun as hell to do. And I had one best practice I want to cap with, which is very, very tactical. And I learned this from Ingrid. Print QR codes and business cards. I mean, it seems so damn obvious. We’ve kind of come full circle from, you know, from practical to deeply philosophical and now very practical.
Ingrid
You
Mookie
But you need, you need a, not only a touch point, but a call to action and people are flowing by your booth by the thousands, encourage them to take pictures of your stuff for future reference, but have something printed. And Ingrid did such a great job. She had bookmarks with a QR code and her email address and her newsletter sign up, you know, and then I was encouraged to make like signage, you know, with a big QR code. did Venmo and PayPal, but a link to the damn Amazon site to buy the book. link to the website. You know, everyone should leave with something. Don’t just remember you smiling and waving.
Ingrid
Think the audiobooks had the most, yeah. Yeah.
Greg
Yep, bookmarks I like to give out. I try to only give those to qualified leads. That’s just kind of my thing. They’re 25 cents each or 10, 15 cents each, depending on how many you buy. So I like to give those to qualified leads. I do also have a cards with each book cover and it has a QR code on the back, which takes you to the Amazon page for that particular book. So that’s especially for the people that prefer eBooks instead.
Mookie
Right.
Greg
So yeah.
Mookie
Alright.
Ingrid
Yeah, all my QR codes go to the sell page, which have everywhere you can possibly buy it, including my direct sales, which I always prefer. yeah.
Mookie
Awesome sauce. So thank you so much for making time on this Sunday to talk about LA Comic Con, our work, our passion, and like, comment, share. I’ll put in links to both the authors and their oeuvre and their resources in the description. And there’s also a little link, folks, if you want to contact me directly. And then by way of me, you can contact both authors. and see if we can answer your questions. Encourage your own creativity. And if you go to the next Comic-Con or whatever, your neighborhood PTA club, you set up a little folding table and you’re selling your grandma’s memoir, then these best practices will help you out too. And thanks so much for your time, Ingrid and Greg. And any final words for our bald, ambivalent listeners?
Ingrid
Thank you. Glad to be here.
Greg
Thank you.
Mookie
We’re good. Right on. All right. Thanks so much, folks. And let’s catch up at our next con. Let’s see what we learn.
Ingrid
Just get out there and have some fun, I guess.
Greg
Thank you both.
More to come as the author’s are planning more book barking in 2026… #staytuned
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