The Conference Crasher (Aka, don't be this guy. Anywhere.)

To be fair, this guy didn't really crash the conference. He paid his way in, and his presence was valuable to anyone paying attention, because he's the guy you don't want to be. I attended a #Florida Writing Day Workshop a couple of weeks ago in #Orlando in order to meet with a couple of literary agents for my novel, Dear Chief. As I explained in one of my TikTok posts, literary agents are the gatekeepers to the "big" publishing houses. Big houses are the "conventional" world of book #publishing, and each has a staff full of editors, design gurus, and marketing experts. They make books, and they get them sold. Best of all--unlike self-publishing--nothing is coming out of the author's pocket to make all this happen; they pay you. Yes, there's a catch: it's very hard to get in this coveted door. Having an agent at least gets you in the crowd that's pushing to get their hand on the doorknob. Catch number 2: It's not easy to get an agent. Meeting one in person gives you a better shot, as opposed to being a faceless name in an email, so there I was--with a couple hundred other writers seeking agency representation--scheduling 10-minute "pitch sessions" with these agents to try and get them interested in my book. So, about the guy. I've been to about a dozen literary conferences over the last thirty years, and there's always at least one. He's nice, and he's going to tell you about his book. Oh, we all love to talk about our books, don't we? Because we love our books. Our books. We ask others what they write so that we can have a pleasant conversation and hope that they ask us about our books. But this guy, no. You don't want to ask him, but you don't know he's that guy. Meeting people at these events is like walking through a minefield. He's there somewhere, you just don't know who he is. You have to get to your destination, but one wrong step and BOOM. As we waited for one of the sessions to start, the woman sitting next to me asked this fellow, "what do you write?" That's when it happened. The man went head-long into an exhaustive recitation of the entire storyline, complete with quotes and names of characters (he would punctuate the telling of these scenes with a self-satisfied chuckle). There was time travel involved in this monstrous tale, and he insisted on providing us with minute details of people and their relationships to the point you felt panic in your throat. There was no way to disengage with him and his seemingly endless soliloquy without being rude. On it went, unsolicited, until the session finally (indeed, mercifully) began. Our tormenter was forced to turn around, face the presenter, and contain his boundless glee. I glanced at the woman next to me and saw that her eyes had the look of a bomb survivor. My head was spinning as well. Later that day, I passed a hallway and heard a familiar voice. There was Mr. Time Travel, with a new hostage, well into scenes and characters I recognized from the morning's gruesome and torturous bombardment. This poor lady smiled admirably as her defenses slowly withered, and he rambled on, smiling triumphantly. After all, another lucky conference goer got to hear about his amazing book. Mr. Time Travel gives a great opportunity to check ourselves when we are meeting new people, doesn't it? The networking experts I've read all say that when you meet someone new, show interest in them before you start going on about yourself. People like when you show interest in them, and they usually reciprocate. At the end of the conference I was at the bar enjoying a cocktail and another writer on the adjacent stool said, "So, what do you write?" "Fiction," I said. "How about you?"