Friday, April 12, 2013

Ottawa, Ad Astra, Aurora

Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin.

And so ends a month of pretending to be a real writer! First was my reading at the Toronto ChiSeries where I was proud to be part of a lineup including Peter Watts, Kari Maaren and Kate Story. I had a good time and for once I was able to stay late and hang out with people. Then came Ad Astra which started, for me, with a panel on The Walking Dead that led, somehow, to jokes about Game of Thrones, Downton Abbey and Venn Diagrams. (If there's a bad Venn Diagram joke, I haven't heard it.) Later the same night was my reading with Matt Moore. The room was nearly full and I got to read "Beyond the Fields You Know," a story from my upcoming collection which only one person in the room had seen before; Matt read his great story "Delta Pi".

About five seconds before I give up on my Kobo
The next morning I had panels on two different flavours of alternate history and then went to do my turn at the Bundoran table. This is the first time we've had a table at Ad Astra so it was as much about building awareness as selling books; fortunately we did sell more than a few books, and it was gratifying to have people come looking for my book after they'd seen me on panels. Saturday night was the launch of "The Salt and Iron Dialogues" as well as the e-book of "Blood and Water" so I got to read alongside Kate Heartfield, Derek Kunsken, Ryan McFadden and oh, yeah, Julie Czerneda!

Then with just a day to recover I got to help launch ChiSeries Ottawa. Matt Moore was once again to blame, though this time I wasn't reading with him but with Violette Malan and Charles de Lint. We couldn't have asked for a better turnout and the audience was great. (Thanks to Jonathan Crowe for taking the pictures you see here.)

Last up: There are three days left before Aurora nominations close. I haven't done any particular promotion of the two stories I have that are eligible, but on the off chance that you plan to nominate and haven't yet done so I'll just remind you about "The Last Islander" (Asimov's, September 2012) and "The Afflicted" (Fantasy & Science Fiction, July/August 2012).

Now back to reality!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Afflicted was a great story!
Derek