A Personal Renaissance

By Jamie DeBree 2026/06/15 Weekly News, Writing Notes

Last weekend, my husband and I went to the Montana Renaissance Festival here in town. We’ve gone on and off ever since it started on the grounds of our local zoo, we skipped the few years it was 20 minutes down the road in Red Lodge, and this year it moved back “home” to Billings at our fairgrounds.

It’s been interesting watching it grow and change, and walking through last weekend, I was taking notes on what some of the vendors – especially authors and book vendors – were doing, and what was working for them and what seemed to not be working. Reconnaissance for my own sales, as it were.

I was also thinking about what the original “renaissance” period was, and how appropriate it is both for the festival trajectory itself, and also in my personal life. A period of renewed interest in art and culture, a well as a period of profound change and growth – that sums up the stage of life I’m in pretty well, methinks.

It’s a transitionary period where I’m looking forward to and preparing for the next big shift, but it will be a long transition as well, so I’m working to manage my own expectations and keep myself from trying to move too fast.

Aside from writing and publishing more when I retire, I also think I’d like to do more crafting. Paper crafting, to be specific – cards and bookmarks containing short stories, special hand-bound versions of books, one-of-a-kind journals, that sort of thing. And while I’ll certainly sell some of that online, I also think I’d like to do craft shows, and sell them along with copies of my books in person. I think it would be a very satisfying endeavor (early set-up times notwithstanding).

As we walked the festival I also took note of the various tents used by vendors as well. I really needed some shade for my back patio, which faces West, and is incredibly hot in the summer. I wanted to be able to sit out and write with the dogs without baking in the sun, and while we’ve been planning to build a permanent canopy for years, it’s never happened.

So naturally, I bought a pop-up canopy tent. 10ft by 10ft, with windowed sidewalls for blocking the wind, if necessary. Today I put it up on my back patio, and as advertised, I easily set it up by myself, which was excellent. I got canopy weights for the feet, which seem to be holding it in place well even with the strong breeze today. I don’t have it as tall as it could be, but I wasn’t going to temp fate on the first day.

And I’m sitting here under it, writing this post on my reMarkable out of the sun, enjoying the breeze and waiting for my husband to get home for dinner. I might put the sidewalls up tonight just to see how they go, but I suspect they’ll be perfect, and now not only do I have a tent when I need one on the patio, I also have a craft fair tent, as well as another very useful Halloween prop (we’re actually going to get two more to use with the sidewalls as a “tunnel” over our front walk for the yard haunt this year).

I will be taking more days off from the day job this year, because I have them to take, and I need more time to write, edit and publish. I look forward to sitting right here under this canopy, and writing or dictating quite a few stories this summer. And when the time is right, I look forward to sitting under this canopy and presenting my wares to people the same way people have been selling their wares for centuries all over the world.

Perhaps I’ll even write a story about that, too.

Until next time,

Jamie

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Tagged on: Halloween, ideas, markets, renaissance, renaissance festival, sales, tents, vendors, writing