This all happened by accident. A dear friend of mine wanted to compete in a costume competition at the Montreal ComicCon a few years ago. She was too shy to go on stage by herself but she knew I also liked The Mortal Instruments book series by Cassandra Claire. So she asked me if I would come cosplay with her in the competition. I said "Okay!"

All we needed were some items of motorcycle type gear, high-quality black body paint for the angelic runes, a couple steles, a couple witch-lights, and ... oh ... crystal clear swords. Oh boy. How?! I searched around for solutions and stumbled across 25mm thick acrylic plastic sheets sold by a local commercial sign and window manufacturer. I asked if they could sell me some off-cuts from their other orders for cheap and they did, happy to have a little less plastic in the garbage.

Cutting it out on the band-saw was a challenge. I borrowed a very generous friend's workshop for that and used their bench-sander to shape it. A very long, difficult process. And then spent even longer sanding the darned things. But at the end of it I had four beautiful crystal clear swords that looked like they were formed entirely from ice.

We ended up winning Best Weapons category in the competition. This was a rarity since neither of us had ever competed before, and nobody ever wins anything on their first try. So I plopped some pictures on my blog and talked about how pleased I was with the result.

Suddenly, my inbox was full of people asking to buy them. What? You ... want to buy them? Oh ... um ... okay? I had no idea how much to charge so I asked yet another friend who was a professional costume maker. She said: "Custom cosplay weapon? Oh, 500 bucks at least. Each."

Understandably, my jaw dropped. Previously, I had been working as a fantasy novel writer full time and I'm used to getting a dollar for my ebook or 15 dollars for my paperback. I was not used to getting very much at all for my work.

After I sold three of the four swords (I kept the fourth for myself) I got requests for more. But I didn't have any more to sell! So I went back to the plastics manufacturer and bought some more off-cuts. The orders kept piling up far faster than I could make the swords.

My wife got a job offer in Finland so we moved. I still had outstanding orders to fill so I set up shop in the back room of my apartment. I thought the walls were thick enough to avoid annoying my neighbours with my power tools. I was wrong. Oops.

So I had to rent a workshop. However, in Finland, nobody wanted to rent me a workshop unless I had a business. Weird. So, in order to make those swords that my super patient customers were waiting for, I had to go to the licensing bureau, start a company, and go rent a workshop to work in. And I also have to pay business taxes because I have a business. Yay. All the while protesting: "But I'm a writer! Why do I have to go through all this for a side-gig?!"

So now that I have a workshop, I have to pay rent for it. So ... I have to keep making products to sell so that I can afford the rent. I have to keep buying materials to make the products to sell so I can afford the rent. I had to switch from carving out of solid acrylic to casting with urethane resin because I could not carve the swords fast enough to sell enough per month to afford the workshop and the materials ...

And that's how my hobby completely ate my career.