Table talk

Eagle-eyed readers will have noticed that When Words Collide is actually next weekend and not this weekend. Luckily I had the right date on my plane tickets and hotel reservations.

I also now have my schedule for signings at the Bundoran Press table in the dealers room; I'll be there from 3-4 to 6-7 on Friday and from 2 to 3 on Saturday. Stop by and get a free copy of "The Salt and Iron Dialogues" if you buy Fall From Earth, as well as my illegible signature.

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!

Back to the future

I thought I was done with Shi Jin.

Every now and then, in the years since Fall From Earth was published, people have asked me whether I was ever going to revisit its world and characters. (Whether that reflects a genuine interest in reading more about them or just an assumption that every SF/F novel is part of a series is an open question.) I've had the same question about a few of my short stories as well, and my answer has always been that I had told as much of that story as needed telling. I've also always been a believer in the "iceberg" theory of worldbuilding, which is that you only show the reader 10-20% of the setting details you've invented, and which might be undermined by going back to an established setting.

So why did I write "The Salt and Iron Dialogues"? Basically, it comes down to Shi Jin, the protagonist of Fall From Earth. When I first started work on that book, I wrote background pieces of varying lengths about the major characters. One these (Griffin's)wound up integrated mostly intact in the final text, while a few others had some bits included or referred to in dialogue. But Shi Jin's, which naturally was the longest, I wound up cutting because the only way to include it was as a prologue, and the conventional wisdom was that editors don't like manuscripts that start with prologues. So it survived only as a few elliptical references, and that was that...

Until about six months ago I was cleaning out my office and found an old computer that I thought had been thrown away several years ago, on which I found a version of Fall From Earth that still included the prologue. And it was a prologue, but when I re-read it I couldn't help feeling that there was more of Shi Jin's story that I wanted to tell: a story about a young woman learning to navigate between power, authority and heroism, which might be able to stand on its own for people who hadn't read Fall From Earth -- as well as providing an added dimension for those who had.When I finished (after junking and rewriting about 2/3 of the original text) I remembered just why it was that I had liked Shi Jin so much in the first place, and why I decided to write a novel about her.

"The Salt and Iron Dialogues" is launching Saturday night at Ad Astra and it'll be going up for sale on the Bundoran site shortly. If you've read Fall From Earth and liked it, I'm pretty sure you'll like this too: if you haven't, I think you'll enjoy meeting Shi Jin for the first time.

Ad Astra

Here's my schedule for this year's Ad Astra convention, which is being held April 5-7 at the Markham Holiday Inn & Suites in "Toronto":

Friday 7 pm Franklin Mainstream Zombies: the Walking Dead Panel with David Clink, Stephanie Bedwell-Grime, and Adam Blendick    

The television adaptation of The Walking Dead is arguably the most mainstream zombies have ever been – and they don’t even call them zombies! Whether the show measures up when compared to the classic image of the zombie, or even to its own source material, is the meat of the debate in this panel.  Also on the slab will be what makes zombies so popular, and just how original this story truly is.      

          

Friday 10pm Floor 2, Suite 2 - Reading: East Block Irregulars with Matt Moore. Matt's going to read his great story "Delta Pi" and I'll probably be reading an original story from my upcoming collection with CZP. 

Saturday 10 am Berczy A Alternate Canadian Histories with Neil Jamison-Williams and Eric Choi.

What if the Vikings had successfully settled Atlantic Canada? What if Louis XV had kept Quebec in the Treaty of Paris in 1763? What if the war of 1812 had a different outcome? Or if the Red River Rebellion had resulted in an independent republic of Assiniboia? What would our country look like today?  This panel examines the options.

                        

Saturday 11 am Ellsemere East Creating a Successful Alternate History with Derek Kunsken, Stephen Hunt, Neil Jamison-Williams and Ed Greenwood.

When we talk about alternate histories, Steampunk is an obvious standout, but there are countless ways of using the principles of alternate timelines in fantasy and science fiction. By combining thorough research with a few basic rules of thumb, we can re-examine our present by rewriting our past.

                                

Saturday 4 30 pm Berczy B - Autograph Session (to 6 pm)

Saturday 9 PM Suite 1410 Bundoran Press book launch! We'll be launching my new novella "The Salt and Iron Dialogues" along with new e-book editions of several other Bundoran books. I'm don't know yet how you do a launch for an e-book, but I'm sure Hayden has it all figured out!