Bit of a different post today: I recently joined Toastmasters and it’s time for my Icebreaker speech.
Toastmasters currently organizes things into “Pathways“… mostly these have the same projects but a different mix of required vs optional, etc. Long story short, I figured the best pathway for my purposes (getting more used to talking about my projects with an eye to doing press and promotion, starting with Noah here) would be one called Visionary Communication.
With that in mind, my Icebreaker was pretty much an introduction to Noah and how I developed the webcomic, but I figured I should have a couple “visual aids”, therefore I whipped up a couple of large illustrations of Noah and his family on 16×20″ illustration boards using a variety of colored inks:
I put both of these on a lightweight floor easel, with the family portrait in behind and Noah in front, then draped them with a purple batik from my quilting fabric stash and whipped the fabric off at the proper moment about halfway through my speech. Then pulled Noah off to reveal the family portrait about a minute later.
All in all, the speech went pretty well and will serve as a basis for the introduction for the first Noah’s Archipelago anthology, which I hope to have done later this year.
And these two illustrations will also get repurposed: once said anthology is out, I plan to sell it at local art fairs as well as on Amazon, and if there’s one thing I learned from helping sell copies of my local writers’ group anthology this past fall, it’s that you really need some vertical visuals to help draw attention to your table at such events. Stacks of the book on the table don’t look like anything from across the room and people will tend to ignore your table. (I mean, we did not bad, all in all, and considering that we has pretty much zero press, but still…)
So ya gotta have a visual hook and I think putting these two illustrations on table top easels on either end of the table with the obligatory stacks of books but also having the book on a little easel so people can see the cover from a distance will really help.
Anyway, more on all that when the book is done.
