The Imaginarium Convention
The Imaginarium Convention is a small writers' convention held each year in Louisville, Kentucky. It is run by Seven Stars Press, and has no connection whatsoever to the Imaginarium Agency that produces big conventions like Indiana Comic Con and Tampa Bay Comic Con. This year it was held over the weekend of October 11-13, 2019 at the Ramada Inn and Triple Crown Convention Center, where ConGlomeration had been held for so many years.
We found out about it almost by accident when doing a random online search. The description made it look like a good market for books, and since it was the weekend right after Archon, we'd be able to use the same merchandise, making it look like an even better deal.
However, since it was still an unknown, we decided not to go down there until Thursday morning, since load-in didn't start until Thursday evening and the drive from Indianapolis isn't that long. We also decided to use loyalty-program points to buy our hotel nights, so that we didn't have the expense. As a result, we had to split our stay, checking out of one hotel on Sunday morning, then going to the other hotel (from a different franchise) Sunday evening after load-out and staying just one night.
We hit the road right after breakfast on Thursday and actually made fairly good time going down, although the building at the second rest stop was unaccountably closed. I'm thinking they had some problem with their waste treatment facility, because they had a row of porta-potties set up right in front of the entrance to the building.
I was doing fairly well until we were going across Louisville on I-64 to avoid the toll bridge and get to our hotel. I was very glad to get to the hotel and be able to rest a little. However, the room wasn't going to be ready until 3PM, so I decided to head over to Sam's Club while my husband waited for the room to be ready.
When I came back, he had just finished checking in. I got a key and started carrying stuff into the room. We got it in fairly quickly and even had some time to sit around and relax before we needed to go over to the convention center to start loading in.
We went a little early, which gave me a chance to see just how badly the place had deteriorated since we were last there for ConGlomeration in 2016. They'd apparently lost their air conditioner, and had a makeshift one set up by removing one of the emergency doors, replacing it with a plywood panel with holes cut in it, and running hose from it to a unit set outside. Needless to say, it created a region that got the full blast of freezing air, and other areas would probably be hot.
There were also issues with the restrooms. Most notably, the soap and paper towel dispensers were never refilled, and while there was some liquid soap in bottles on the sinks, we were left entirely dependent upon the electric hand driers of questionable reliability. I heard the men's room was even worse, with the handicap-accessible stall out of order.
At 5PM we finally got our table assignments and were allowed to load in our merchandise. I'd managed to get the van in a parking spot right by the front doors, since they weren't letting us use the roll-up door (unlike ConGlomeration), so I probably had the closest possible trip short of parking under the awning. I tried to carry everything in as rapidly as possible, but even with them letting us run late, I still didn't have the big gridwall in when they finally let us know they needed to close things for the night.
So we headed back to our hotel to have supper and wind down before going to bed. I did some writing, and we called it a day.
On Friday we got up and had the hotel's complimentary breakfast. Then we headed back over to the convention center to finish hauling in the grid wall and get everything set up. I took a number of empty boxes back out to the van, since we had woefully inadequate backspace for them all. We actually managed to be pretty much set up when the doors opened to the general membership.
However, we had almost no foot traffic to speak of. I did see an old friend from ConGlomeration, who made our very first sale of the day. We talked about various things going on in the Louisville area, and how badly the place had gone downhill since ConGlomeration was held there.
After the doors closed for the evening, we headed back to the hotel and got a good soak in their hot tub. It was so steaming hot that I couldn't sit in it the whole time and ended up on the edge, soaking my feet.
Then we had supper and struggled with the hotel's Internet, which had suddenly turned flaky on us. We were pretty sure it was their gateway giving them problems, and nothing would be fixed until it was properly reset. I finally gave up and pulled out a novelette I'd originally written for an anthology since canceled and set to rewriting it for indie publication.
On Saturday we had the hotel's complimentary breakfast, this time with bacon, and headed back to the convention center. When we walked into the dealers' room, the place was like a walk-in refrigerator (and I know whereof I speak, having way too much experience retrieving stuff from walk-in refrigerators while working fast food). Apparently the makeshift air conditioner had been left running overnight, even as the cold front came through and the temperature dropped thirty degrees. Worse, it had no thermostatic control, so they had to send someone out to actually turn it off -- and it was being disagreeable about turning off until they completely cut the power. So I just left my coat on for most of the morning, and never did take off my sweatshirt to show off the t-shirt I was wearing.
I have a good reason to believe that the heat in the dealers' room wasn't working either, because it never really warmed up, even after the makeshift air conditioner was turned off and blocked off. Some heat filtered in from the atrium through the open doors, but it never really warmed the place up. I certainly would not have wanted to be in there in really cold weather.
I'd been told that sales would pick up on Saturday, and they did -- but that was only in comparison to the paltry performance of Friday. By mid-afternoon it was becoming increasingly obvious that this convention had been a big mistake and we'd be lucky to break even, and that with our expenses reduced to the bare minimum by spending points instead of money on our hotel stay. I had so little to do that I ended up finishing reading an e-book I'd promised to review, read two other, shorter e-books, and then began a longer one.
However, we did have one definite bright spot in the otherwise miserable day when Joe and Lisa Major dropped by. Joe and I talked some about our respective writing projects, which is always enjoyable, even if both of us have been struggling with difficulties that have slowed our progress on them. And I definitely have a motivation to get back to actually producing finished prose and getting it up on KDP again.
After the dealers room closed for the night, we headed back to the hotel and soaked in the hot tub. This time they'd turned the thermostat down a little, but it was still quite warm. After supper, I took some of our things out to the van in order to speed our departure in the morning. Then I turned on our hotspot and paid a couple of forgotten bills, before pulling out my novelette and getting back to the struggle of rewriting the beginning.
On Sunday we had the hotel's complimentary breakfast, then loaded out our remaining personal belongings and checked out. Then we headed back over to the convention center and immediately commenced the task of packing our merchandise. After the extremely poor sales we'd had on Saturday, we saw no reason to linger.
We stopped briefly before lunch, since we weren't really ready to bring in the boxes for the t-shirts. But after lunch I went out and collected them. We had a few last-minute sales, but nothing nearly big enough to close the gap to profitable. Once we got the t-shirts boxed and the big gridwall down, I started hauling merchandise out. I took the first trip over to where we'd parked the van, but it was an extremely awkward spot on a slope, so at the first opportunity I moved the van under the awning to shorten my trips. We weren't going to be coming back, so I really didn't care any more whether we were supposed to do that.
We had some help with the heaviest things, but even so, it was almost dark by the time we got the last items into the van and were ready to head off. I'd heard there was a mess in the women's restroom, so I decided to wait until we got to the other hotel to go to the restroom, which made the final loading a little less fun than I would have liked.
The drive up to the hotel proved longer than I'd expected, and I was very glad that this was a fancier hotel which had restrooms in the lobby. Once we were checked in, I got our critical belongings into our room and we settled in for the night. It was a really nice room, but the controls for the motorized roller blinds defeated us and we finally had to call the front desk and get help lowering the blackout curtain so we'd have darkness when we turned in for the night. It was a bit embarrassing, but he was really nice about it.
On Monday we got up and had the breakfast, which might not have been as fancy as one place where we've stayed, but was certainly very nice. Then it was time to carry our belongings back out and hit the road. Because I'd carried in only the absolute essentials, we were able to be on the road by 10AM, and we made good time on the road home. We did have an annoyance at one rest stop when an idiot in a giant motor home parked on the car side of the parking lot instead of with the trucks, but it was just an aggravation and we were soon on our way.
We ate lunch as we were approaching Indianapolis, and actually pulled into our driveway a little after 1PM. I was able to carry all our personal belongings into the house, and even made a start on putting things back in order before we took off for that evening's free community meal. On the whole, it was a disappointing convention, brightened by the happy reunions with old friends.
Copyright 2019 by Leigh Kimmel
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Last updated October 17, 2019.