Ad Astra and Beyond

The con is over, and Post Fandom Depression has set in. Or rather it did, back when I started writing this bit. Better late than never, I say. And I say it a lot.

I've since returned to the real world, where Violet and I must do our taxes, and I'm back in the wonderful world of temping.

But back to Ad Astra. The last day was memorable. There was the Mental Health and Fandom panel, which was reasonably well attended. All of us had a lot to say, in a compassionate and healing environment. I will always be grateful to this panel and its participants.

Violet wanted me to get a picture or action figure of one of her fangirl crushes, like Hugh Jackman as Wolverine or Chris Evans as Captain America. Preferably shirtless. I was unable to find exactly what she was looking for, so I got her this action figure. I have no idea who the character is, but he's shirtless and ripped, and he's got a sword. Violet very nearly liked him. Ah, well. Next convention, my Love!

The last panel I attended before setting off home was about Star Trek; I sat in attendance, and my friend and fellow author Sarah Water Raven was on the panel. I have to say, it went much better than my Star Trek panel back at Reversed Polarity (though not as good as the one I did at GenreCon). No Uber-Nerds, for one thing. And some interesting ideas were put forth. Well worth my time!

After that, it was time to say goodbye to a few stragglers before catching the VIVA buses back home. I sat across from a dude who had a bag of barbecue-flavoured sunflower seeds, and the area all around him was littered with shells. He taught me how to eat sunflower seeds, which apparently I'd been doing wrong all these years. You don't eat the shells - you suck the flavour out of the shell, crack them and eat the seed within, then spit the shells away. Good to know. Too bad he didn't feel like cleaning up after himself.

Monday, April 7th, involved a ridiculous amount of telephone tag with my temp agency to get me accepted into a mailroom job. It worked out in the end, though, and I was working as early as Wednesday. I've been sticking labels onto envelopes, stuffing envelopes, and lifting heavy boxes full of papers that will eventually end up in envelopes. Not the most challenging of jobs, but work is work. They are a good bunch, which certainly helps. Plus, my contact at the temp agency took me out to lunch last week! That's never happened to me before! Wow.

I've managed to get back into my novel Zombie Jesus Day, about which I am ecstatic. At the same time, my enthusiasm for my Doctor Who fanfic Bane of the Doctor has cooled a bit. I've got two more episodes still to post, so I'm not particularly worried yet. BTW, the latest installment can be found here.

Finally, I got back the processed German tax forms from Revenue Canada. I sent them off by Xpress Post on Thursday - did you know it costs $61 to send something from Canada to Germany via Xpress Post? Well, it does. It will be worth it, however, when they pay me the option fee for Evil. Woo-hoo!

Ad Astra 2014, So Far

Well, I've been having a great time! Friends everywhere, good panel discussions, and that wonderful feeling of acceptance and home. Lucky, lucky me.

My panels on self publishing and never-ending stories went very well, and sparked some good discussions among panelists and audience. I didn't say as much as I wanted to, and feel I'm not as assertive as I could be. Still, I made a few good points, and I'm pretty happy with the way the conversations went.

The book-signing period was a dismal failure in terms of book sales, but a roaring success in others. I autographed one of my The Five Demons You Meet In Hell flyers for a fan friend, and chatted with three of my closest friends. One of them, Sarah Water Raven, sold me a lovely painting she'd done (image to be uploaded soon, I promise), and we discussed plans for the cover of my next book, Apoca-Lynn. Another friend posed for a photo to be used in that cover - a lovely bit of serendipity or convenient happenstance that we were all in the right place at the right time to make that happen!

My reading was moderately attended, but everyone who was there wanted to be there and had a good time. I read from 5 Demons and gave a preview of Apoca-Lynn, and got a good reaction to both. I also had tea with a couple of friends and discussed writing, and the conversation turned to call centres. All of us had horror/hilarious stories to tell!

I ended the night at the launch party for Suzanne Church's latest novel, and had further good conversations with friends. I was sad to leave but had VIVA buses to catch, and got home just after midnight.

Today I have the Mental Health and Fandom panel. I'm looking forward to it. Off I go!

Ad Astra, Revised

Sadly, my 10:00 AM panel on Canadian YA has been cancelled. Tomorrow morning I shall be forced to sleep in. Darn!

Here is my revised panel/reading/signing schedule:

Saturday
Author Signings – Richmond A – 2:00 PM
Advantages and Disadvantages in the Self-Publishing Game – Markham A – 3:00 PM
Never Ending Stories – Markham A – 7:00 PM
Reading – Oakridges – 9:30 PM

Sunday
Fandom Mental Health Forum – Richmond B – 1:00 PM

Yep, only 3 panels now. I shall endeavor to make the most of them.

What shall I read from? I need to keep plugging The Cupid War and The Five Demons You Meet In Hell, hopefully encourage a few sales. I'm also working on getting a new novel ready for a Smashwords publication - I could read a bit from that project, too. Again, I open the floor to suggestions/requests.

I'll figure it out. Looking forward to seeing lots of you tomorrow!

Ad Astra 2014 This Weekend

Well, I’m off to Ad Astra again this weekend. How many times have I been now? Almost every year since before my first book came out, so... a lot. Yes, definitely a lot. I'll be there Saturday and Sunday (April 5 & 6) with copies of Section K to sell and flyers of The Five Demons You Meet In Hell to hand out, four panels to speak on, one reading, and a signing, too. Haven't decided what to read from, yet. Requests?

They’ve moved again; I’d just got used to the last location, and loved that it was TTC accessible. Not so much the new location, I’m afraid, but that’s ok – it’s the Sheraton Parkway North, the same location Polaris has been in for the last several years. True, it will require the use of VIVA buses and the extra fare that goes with that, but it is a great hotel for a convention! Lots of space for the dealer’s room, plenty of rooms to host panels and readings... I have many happy memories of times spent in and around that hotel, although none of those memories involved actually staying there! One day, perhaps... when money is no longer an issue.

Here is my panel/reading/signing schedule for the convention:

Saturday
YA Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Canadian Style – Aurora – 10:00 AM
Author Signings – Richmond A – 2:00 PM
Advantages and Disadvantages in the Self-Publishing Game – Markham A – 3:00 PM
Never Ending Stories – Markham A – 7:00 PM
Reading – Oakridges – 9:30 PM

Sunday
Fandom Mental Health Forum – Richmond B – 1:00 PM

I'll be busy, but hopefully not too busy to spend quality time with my fandom friends. I look forward to seeing many of you at the con this weekend!

Bane of the Doctor - An Adventure in Fanfiction

In my last post, I discussed the status of my writing life and how things hadn't exactly gone according to plan. My main novel projects are stalled - I've been trying to write Chapter 16 of my Cupid War spinoff I, Suicide for the last three weeks - and blog posts such as this one have been few and far between (not that that's anything new, I'm afraid).

The only thing I've made any kind of progress on is a Doctor Who fanfic story. That has actually been going really well. And it's pretty much the only thing I've got to show for myself for the last seven months. I call it Bane of the Doctor, and it's a multi-part saga filled with references and popular characters, and a villain of my own creation.

I'm publishing the story on Archive of our Own. Here is a link to a prelude story, and this link will take you to the first chapter. I also chose to re-publish my first Doctor Who fanfic story, Happy Landings, found here.

The second chapter of this epic will be posted very soon. I'm hoping to release an episode every month.

Stay tuned, fellow Whovians!

New Business, Part 2

That business plan I was all fired up about last year? Not really working out. I finished a book in my new shared universe and started another, Zombie Jesus Day (ZJD), with plans to keep going while putting other projects aside.

Instead, I’ve spent the last several months working on I, Suicide (a spinoff novel from The Cupid War) and a Doctor Who fanfiction story. I, Suicide will be a hard sell, and I can’t make any money at all from fanfiction! What happened to the great plan?

What the hell went wrong?

Basically, I kept giving priority to other projects. A lot of those projects were articles for Toronto.com. Those had to take priority because they had deadlines. And they paid. In money. There was also a short story I wrote for an anthology (they rejected it). Each time one of those came up, ZJD had to be put on hold.

Then, when I was typing up what I had of ZJD, I had to have another project to work on during the day (see this post here for more details). I picked up I, Suicide again, and discovered I had a passion for that story once more. And when I was typing up the new chapters of I, Suicide, I tried to get back into ZJD. Only I couldn’t. I’d lost the mojo for it. I ended up doing an I, Suicide short story instead, and picked up the thread of a Section K story (the one with the chocolate zombies, mentioned in my last post), and got into the afore-mentioned fanfic.

So, what’s the plan now? Finish I, Suicide and the Section K story, then see about picking ZJD back up once more. Then start a new novel in the ZJD world.

Unless... you know, stuff happens.

Chocolate Zombies in the Wild, Wild West

There comes a time in any storyteller’s career where he/she will ask him/herself, does this project I’m working on make sense? Is it going anywhere? Am I writing myself into a corner from which I cannot hope to escape?

I’m currently working on a Section K short story where Agent Johnny Tall and a mysterious woman known as the Witch must defeat a horde of zombies made entirely out of chocolate. Why are these zombies made out of chocolate? There is a reason, of course. I’m just afraid it isn’t a very good one.

The chocolate zombies have an objective. I haven’t entirely worked out what that is, yet. Various scenarios have gone through my mind, and concepts are coming together. The thing I keep running into, however, is this: is this objective best brought about with the use of chocolate zombies?

Did any of you see The Wild, Wild West? That Will Smith movie from 1999 that featured a giant steam-powered tarantula? The villain, Loveless, had created this metal monster in order to kidnap the President and force him to surrender the country, or something. One critic wrote in his review, ‘wasn’t there an easier way?’ By which I'm sure he meant, was kidnapping the President an objective that necessitated the construction and deployment of a giant metal steam-powered spider?

And don’t get me started on the anti-aircraft gun atop the metal spider. Put there, no doubt, in case someone invented a flying machine several decades before the Wright Brothers. Lucky thing, too, because without it Loveless would not have been able to shoot down the heroes in a flying machine invented several decades before the Wright Brothers first flight. Because you can never be too careful, I suppose.

But I digress. The point I was taking the scenic route to is, am I writing a giant steam-powered tarantula into my story, in the shape of chocolate zombies?

I sure hope not. However, even if the concept still doesn’t work by the time I reach the story’s end, not to worry – that is what rewrites are for. It might seem preferable to plot each bit of the story out first, but where’s the fun in that? I trust my creative process. If it says chocolate zombies are the way to go, who am I to argue? I’m just the author, man. I just work here. ;)