Today, something shifted.
Not dramatically, not like lightning striking the Anaheim Convention Center and turning my booth into a cathedral of commerce. No, it was quieter than that. Smoother. Like a gear finally catching after grinding for miles.
Today I made record-breaking, personal best sales at WonderCon.
And the strange part? It didn’t feel like chasing sales. It felt like working. Real work. The kind where time bends, conversations flow, and before you know it, your table isn’t just a table anymore. It’s a small theater. And I’m not performing… I’m connecting.
Even more surprising, I hardly thought about having a cigarette.
That right there might be the real headline.
Twelve days smoke-free, standing in a high-stress, high-energy environment, surrounded by crowds, noise, and opportunity… and my mind didn’t run back to old habits. It stayed right where it needed to be, in the moment, talking to people, sharing stories, selling art. That’s not just progress. That’s transformation wearing a badge and working a booth.
Of course, in the quieter spaces between customers, my mind drifted somewhere else.
Home.
To Whiskey Kitty.
There’s something grounding about knowing there’s a small tuxedo creature waiting for you, probably plotting her next sneak attack on a shoelace or calculating the physics of knocking something off a table. After a good day of what I now confidently call work, I wanted to go home, sit down, and exist in that simple, honest space where success isn’t measured in sales… but in purrs.
But back at the booth, the question of the day kept coming from other vendors:
“What’s your secret?”
Now that’s a dangerous question, because people expect a magic trick. A silver bullet. Some kind of mystical sales sorcery.
But the truth is less glamorous and more interesting.
It’s a script.
Not a written script. Not something memorized like a bad infomercial at 2 a.m. This is a living script. A shape-shifting dialogue built from experience. Years of it.
Telemarketing. Door-to-door sales. Selling art on boardwalk of Venice Beach where rejection isn’t occasional, it’s part of the scenery. Every “no” chisels something into you. Every “yes” teaches you what worked. Over time, patterns emerge like footprints in wet cement.
Here’s the twist though.
You can’t plan the script in advance.
You don’t know who’s walking up to the table.
You don’t know what they’ll look at.
You don’t know what mood they’re in.
You don’t know if they’re curious, skeptical, broke, inspired, or just killing time between panels.
So you don’t memorize lines.
You build instincts.
And over the course of a day, something fascinating happens. You start to see what people respond to. You adjust. You refine. You try a phrase here, a joke there, a different way of explaining a book, a slightly altered tone. By the end of the day, it’s like tuning an instrument.
By the end of the convention… you’re playing music.
And by the end of a sale, if you’ve been paying attention, you almost know exactly what to say.
Not to manipulate.
But to connect.
Because the real “secret” isn’t charisma. It’s not fast talking. It’s not pressure.
It’s listening.
It’s watching.
It’s learning people in real time.
And when you do that well, the sale becomes a natural conclusion instead of a forced transaction.
There’s also something else happening beneath all of this. Something bigger than numbers.
Every conversation about mental health.
Every person who opens up just a little.
Every shared story at the booth.
That’s the real work.
The books, the art, the sales… they’re the vehicle. The connection is the destination.
And today, that vehicle was running like a finely tuned machine.
So here I am.
Day 2 in the books.
Record sales.
Stronger connections.
Twelve days smoke-free.
And for once, instead of questioning whether I can do this…
I already know the answer.
Once again,
I got this.
by Dan and Bonkers
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