Ad Astra 2017 Wrap-Up

It's 11:30 at night on a Sunday. I have more caffeine in me than any reasonable person would have in them at this hour. There are no fewer than half a dozen things I could ostensibly be working on right now, and yet I'm opting to write this blog post instead.

Ad Astra is, without a doubt, my favourite convention. This year was my third year attending, and my second doing so not only as a vendor, but also as a panelist (more the latter than the former this time around, if I'm being honest, but I'll get to that later). I always refer to it as "the biggest little con in the GTA" whenever I describe it to people. For something that is fan-run out of a single hotel, it draws substantial attendance, and consistently top-notch guests. Frankly, the fact that they allow me to slum it up with the likes of Robert J. Sawyer, Guy Gavriel Kay, and Ed Greenwood is anybody's guess, but I'd be remiss to not jump at the opportunity and be insanely thankful that it exists. Never mind the fact that the top-billed guest of honour for this year was Brandon Sanderson. Sadly I wasn't on any panels with him this year, and thus missed my opportunity to introduce myself as "the Brandon you aren't here to see."

I'll have to save that for the next convention we happen to both be attending, whenever that happens to be.

I get ahead of myself, though. I suppose I ought to start with the traffic. Friday afternoon saw Deanna and I sitting in far more traffic than I anticipated on our way to the Sheraton Parkway in Markham, so much so that I was nearly late to my own book launch party; I was a little bit tense, to say the least.

To my surprise, I had a wonderful turnout for the launch of Collapse of Kingdoms, many of whom were ready and waiting before I was, old friends and new faces alike. Since the launch of Council last year I feel as though I've gotten stronger as an author doing live readings, and the passages I read from the book were, I think, pretty well done.

A particular note: Nicholas Eames, author of my most recent favourite read Kings of the Wyld was awesome enough to stop by the launch before his first panel that night. Nick and I crossed paths a few times that weekend, including a panel we were on with my friend Agnes Jankiewicz, and although I would have already encouraged all of you to buy Nick's book before the con, the fact that he was such a genuine, stand-up guy throughout the weekend means that I'm basically telling you all that Kings of the Wyld is a must-read.

Speaking of must-reads: Saturday saw me attending the launch of the follow-up to Agnes' portal fantasy/sci-fi YA joyride Q16 and the Eye to All Worlds, titled Q16 and the Lord of the Unfinished Tower. Scheduling made it difficult for me to attend the whole event, but I was lucky enough to catch Agnes' reading, and if any of you are fans of Roger Zelazny then believe me when I say that you are doing yourselves a disservice if you aren't reading Agnes' books.

Saturday also saw me at the pre-launch party for Brave New Girls Volume 2: Girls Who Science and Scheme. Again, due to some scheduling hiccups, I was only present for the first half, in which I read a passage from my contribution to the anthology, The Verne Shot, and was lucky enough to hear Agnes read from her story Skyris.

Lisa Tooheyalso had a reading at the event that I unfortunately missed, and so the next time we cross paths I totally owe her a drink.

Every panel I was on over the course of the weekend was a ton of fun, and resulted in my meeting some really great people. Perhaps the biggest surprise, however, was my reading on the Saturday. Last year saw authors grouped into panels of three or four for readings, but this year each of us was flying solo. To my surprise, I had a really great turnout for mine, including my good friends (and incredible authors in their own rights) Alyx Dellamonica and Kelly Robson. I was, after all was said and done, offered some great advice from Kelly, and when a Hugo-nominated author/colleague/friend offers you advice, you bloody well heed it!

Incidentally, both Deanna and I do regret not being able to hang out with the two of you more that night; we really need to do sushi or something.

Deanna and I tried our best to attend one another's panels, but as it was we maybe spent a total of eight combined hours at out dealers' room table the entire weekend. The panelist/vendor juggling act is a difficult one to manage, and come 2018 we may need to rethink our strategies for how we approach cons where we both have to wear both hats. That said, we had some very awesome people swing by our vendor table, and as always I cannot possibly be thankful enough for each and every individual who did so.

Sunday saw us in the gaming room, playing a session of the tabletop RPG Pugmire. The game plays like an even simpler version of 5e D&D, but in place of elves. dwarves. halflings, and the like, the PCs play different breeds of dogs. It was probably the most rules-light tabletop RPG I've ever run, and it may well have been one of the most fun games I've ever run, in part because of that. If you play RPGs and you haven't given this system I try, I highly recommend it. I think my GMing RPGs on the Sunday of the con might be forming into a tradition, and you can bet that 2018 will be no different.

Among the deluge of awesomeness that went down during the weekend was my opportunity to finally meet Darrell Drake in the flesh. The Toronto native, and author of the historical fantasy A Star Reckoner's Lot, was in the same block of vendor tables as Deanna and I, and much like literally everyone I encounter at Ad Astra, is a very down-to-earth, awesome individual. He is also one of the masterminds behind the Fools of Fantasy, a group of authors adjacent to the /r/Fantasy sub-forum of Reddit, a group to which I now proudly claim membership. (There is not a-one of these authors whom you should not be reading literally right now). Though the collective is somewhat nascent, expect awesome things in the future, possibly beyond the already fantastic library of genre-spanning works already being produced.

Alright, I've waxed poetic for an incredibly long time already about everything that happened last weekend, but not nearly enough about why exactly Ad Astra is great, and why it brings me back into its folds perennially.

If I'm being totally honest, Ad Astra is the one convention I've attended since I first decided to take a crack at this whole writing gig that has consistently left me feeling like I'm actually a capital A Author. At the end of each Ad Astra for the last three years I have felt like more than just someone who has been desperately trying to get people to read the goofy elves and magic books he's published. Rather, by 5 o'clock on the Sunday of each Ad Astra I have felt exponentially more like someone who has a reader base, who has fans, who is a colleague among other authors.

Impostor syndrome is a very real thing, and I am very much of the mind that, among authors who live in the Greater Toronto Area, there is no better cure than Ad Astra, even if the course of the cure is only three days long.

Thank you, truly and earnestly, to the organizers, attendees, and fellow vendors and guests of Ad Astra 2017. I hope to see you all next year.

Ad Astra 2017

Well hey everyone,

It's uh... been a minute or 197,280, hasn't it?

Well, if you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, which I hope you do, seeing as it's a much more efficient way to keep up with me than this seemingly biennial blog I "keep", then you know that this weekend Deanna and I will both be at Ad Astra in Toronto. If you're going, I'd love if you stopped by to say hi!

If you're looking for either of us, our schedules are as follows:

Me:

Friday:

6-8pm, Suite 1070 - Book Launch for Collapse of Kingdoms

Saturday:

11:30am-12pm, Markham B room - Reading

1-2pm, Oakridges Room - Transitional Media Techniques

2-3pm, Newmarket Room - Starting them Young: Fantasy and Sci-Fi Picture Books

5-6pm, Markham A&B room - Mass Autograph Signing

6-7pm, Suite 1070 - Pre-Launch Event: Brave New Girls vol. 2

7-8pm, Newmarket Room - What is This Play of Role of Which You Speak?

Sunday:

2-3pm, Oakridges Room - Fantasy from Trilogies to Television Series

Deanna:

Friday:

6-8pm, Suite 1070 - Book Launch for Collapse of Kingdoms

Saturday:

12-1pm, Richmond B Room - The YA Revolution: reinventing Sci-Fi/Fantasy for a new generation

2-3pm, Newmarket Room - Starting them Young: Fantasy and Sci-Fi Picture Books

7-8pm, Newmarket Room - What is This Play of Role of Which You Speak?

8-9pm, Newmarket Room - The Popularity of Board Gaming

A couple of notes:

Any time either Deanna or myself aren't in a panel, we'll be in the Dealers' Room, where you can come get books, bookmarks, or just say hi.

There is going to be some point on Sunday in which I'm going to be running a game of the Pugmire RPG - keep an eye out on Twitter or Facebook for that.

In general I'm going to remain pretty active on social media all weekend, so watch that to see where I'll be during any particular moment this coming weekend.

Hope to see you all there!

'WriMo Wrap-Up 2016 or My Brain is Fried Right Now, and I Can't Conceive of a Better Title

Okay you guys, I'm going to start off the top with this:

I GOT ENGAGED!

October 28th was mine and Deanna's seven-year anniversary, and we celebrated by taking the trip to Walt Disney World that we had been talking about taking for the last two years. Because Deanna is a lifelong Acolyte of the House of Mouse, the setup was perfect. We arrived at Magic Kingdom just after dawn, when the sun was only high enough that the stars couldn't be seen. I was insistent that we get a picture in front of Cinderella's Castle before the crowds show up.
The photographer on site snapped a few photos, and immediately after, with my heart threatening to burst out of my chest, I took the ring box from my pocket, got down on one knee, and asked Deanna to marry me.

There were lots of tears of joy. I still get giddy recounting it. If you really want, there are photos on mine and Deanna's various social media, and even a video Deanna posted to Facebook that was taken by a lovely stranger, who then emailed it to us.

BUT...

I know you all didn't click on this to hear me gush about that. You're here because of NaNoWriMo. It's December 1st, by my watch, and boy do I have a lot to talk about.

For the uninitiated: NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, is an annual even that takes place every November, wherein participants are challenged to write 50,000 words of a single fiction piece in thirty days.

I've mentioned on numerous occasions and in various interviews that The Summerlark Elf was a NaNo book. One, I should add, that I was successful in completing in the allotted time frame. That was three years ago, and between then and now, a lot has changed for me. A lot.

In 2014 and 2015, I forewent taking part in NaNo for a number of reasons. The most prominent of these reasons was that, following that first NaNo, I started working full-time consistently. As I spent the bulk of 2014 working on The Missing Thane's War, I found that the days when I was able to write 1500+ words (the daily NaNo goal is 1667) were fewer and fewer, and as any author will tell you, nothing cuts into your writing time quite like life.

Besides, by the time November 2014 came around I was getting ready to release Thane, and figured I'd have plenty of time to write The Council of Tymenthia, so why try to stress myself out more than I needed to?

2015 came and went in a whirlwind. My brother got engaged, Realmwalker happened, people were starting to take notice of my work. I spent nearly a year working diligently on Council, and I believe that it is the best thing I've written and published so far. I had a second draft out to my beta readers by that October, and was getting ready to work on Collapse of Kingdoms, the final book in the saga.

After a year of work, I had less than 40,000 words to show for it.

For any number of reasons, my work on Collapse was glacial, and by the end of the summer it was finally starting to irk me that it was taking so long. I was better than the person who was satisfied pecking out maybe 500 words and calling it a day. I lit a fire under myself in October, trying to get back into the habit of writing 1000 words per day. It's a good number, and when you maintain it you feel the progress.
Halfway through the month, I committed to doing NaNoWriMo 2016, if only for my own good. As of time of writing, December 1st, I wrote 33,000 words in the month of November.

I didn't win. I wasn't able to beat the challenge.

It wasn't for lack of trying, and if we're being perfectly honest, about 40 to 45 percent of the whole first draft for Collapse was written this month. I wrote an average of 1100 words per day (nearly 4000 of which were, admittedly, written in the last 24 hours). I'm proud of what I accomplished, even if it wasn't enough to get the job done 100%.

Among other things, NaNo 2016 was a fantastic opportunity to reflect on who I was when I wrote Summerlark vs. who I am now. So, I figured I'd list off some of the major then/now differences I've come across over the last 30 days:

1. I am so much busier!
   I think this is just part and parcel with myself and my siblings all being of the age where great life changes are happening. As I mentioned above, my younger brother got engaged in 2015, and was married this past June, shortly before my sister got engaged, which was just a few months before I got engaged. Weddings and the like can really affect your average day-to-day, you guys. Add this to my aforementioned full-time job, and you find that the finite number of hours you have in a given day begin to feel a lot more finite than you're used to.
    
2. Beginnings are easy. Endings, on the other hand...
   Summerlark was my first book, and the first in a series. I'm notoriously what a lot of writers like to refer to as a "pantser", or someone who tends not to outline a book before writing it. This works great for a first book, when you can write completely off-the-cuff. Collapse, however? This is the last one. I'm playing for all the beans, and story threads that I wantonly flung about three years ago need to come together. Like it or not, the further into a series you get, the more planning each new book requires, and that takes time, time that could be spent writing. This, however, also ties into my next point...
    
3. I have become much pickier about my own work.
   This is something that I feel I can take pride in. One of the key components in any writer's evolution is moving past the point when you can't tell if what you're writing is any good, to recognizing that what you are writing is not terrible, this sort of self-criticism state of nirvana, where you can both recognize your flaws without being crippled by them, and recognize your strengths without being blinded by them. The development of such self-arbitration, however, comes with the price of maybe being a bit more cautious with the keys in some circumstances.

Now, aside from the comparative realizations I've come across this past month, there were some discoveries I made that, in many ways, I needed NaNo 2016 to show me. The most pointed of these is also the reason I am probably most thankful I gave NaNo a whirl again this year:
I have the ability to write 1700, 2000, even 3700 words in a day, but it's okay if occasionally I don't.
More than anything else, I needed NaNo this year to get me back into good writing habits. I hate to admit it, but I spent a lot of this past year telling myself that I was too tired to write today, or that the words just weren't coming. Writing can be like rolling a boulder down a series of hills and valleys. Getting started can be an obscene amount of work, sometimes for a bit longer than you'd like, but unless you keep pushing, that boulder will never move.

Oh, and by the way, I should have the first draft of Collapse finished in the next couple of weeks now.

Ad Astra 2016

It has been a crazy week here at Dragahold, and we're only at Wednesday!

I have been crazy promoting the guest blogs I've been doing, which, if you're looking for an aggregate for them:

• Popcorn Magic c/o Charles McGarry
• All The Chicken at the Buffet c/o Chad Ballard
• Worldbuilding the Uncanny Valley c/o Mighty Thor JRS
• Living The Dream c/o Michael R. Fletcher

I want to once again offer my sincerest thanks to all those guys for offering up space for me to post on their sites and plug my books - it's a huge honour, and I recommend you go check out their work, too!

I've also been going nuts trying to get all my ducks in a row For Ad Astra this weekend, and I'm thankful that I can finally share my full schedule with you all!

Official Ad Astra 2016 schedule!

This is, of course, only the official programming schedule, and doesn't include the following:
 

• Deanna and I will both be at our table in the Dealers' Room all weekend whenever we aren't otherwise predisposed with panels etc. Copies of The Summerlark Elf, The Missing Thane's War, The Council of Tymenthia, and Dragon in the Doghouse will all be available, as well as copies of Wealthy Merchant (The official Four Kingdoms card game), Build Them! (Deanna's all-ages deck-building game), as well as several of Deanna's art prints will be on sale!
• After-hours, you can expect to find Deanna and I doing all sorts of social industry-type things. I'll keep everyone posted via Twitter or some such.
• Sunday morning at 10am, I'm going to be DMing a D&D game for Deanna, and our fellow Ad Astra guests Aaron Lenk, Agnes Jankiewicz, and Professor Morbius. Location is TBA for that, but keep an eye on Twitter and/or Facebook and Instagram, and drop by and say hello!

This is going to be, far and away, the biggest con, activity-wise, for both Deanna and myself to date, and we're both so looking forward to it. Please, if you see either of us there, don't hesitate to come up and say hi!

Grace Under Fire

It's been eight months. Sorry about that.

I had thought quite a bit about posting this, for some time now. In case you all hadn't noticed, I'm pretty awful about maintaining this blog. Tonight, however, I'm hot off the heels of sending out five guest blog posts I wrote for the Council of Tymenthia release blog tour. I've also got an hours-old cup of black coffee next to me, and I have the entire Ramones discography on shuffle right now, in celebration of the 40th anniversary of their titular debut album's release, so I suppose I'm in just the right mood.

I read once that adulthood, while often referenced as being an unending series of crises, one after the other, is in fact more like a ceaseless dog pile of crises, each one compounding the last. While I think that assessment might be a bit dire for my tastes, I definitely agree that sometimes life just loves to sling all the things at you at once.

My brother is getting married in just under two months. This past fall my sister got an adorable Tasmanian devil of a puppy. My parents have opted to downsize homes in light of much of our family undergoing so many life transitions. Amid all of this, I have been working diligently to assure that my third novel made it into Realmwalker Publishing Group with ample time to accommodate not only the May 3rd release date, but also to ensure I had author copies for the launch party being hosted by Ad Astra.

One month ago today, I got word that Realmwalker was closing its doors. It was a heck of a way to celebrate my 30th birthday (I also read Dragon in the Doghouse to Deanna's grade 1&2 class that day, too, and that was awesome). Just like that, I found myself one month away from a book release and a major convention without a publisher, leaving me scrambling to get back into the folds of self-publishing.

Now, naturally, when RPG dropped the bomb on its authors, people were upset. I'd be lying if I didn't say that I was upset. In truth, I was probably just as upset with myself as with RPG.  There had historically been problems, issues that I and other writers had to deal with that were, frankly, all very relevant red flags that the company was doomed. There were a handful of us who were with Realmwalker nearly from the company's outset, a merry band of pirates in search of the hidden treasures of genre authorship.

Problem was, we had a captain who eventually took on too big a crew, and who wasn't totally sure how to read the treasure map. When our little ship began to spring holes, however, our captain assured us she was still a seaworthy vessel. Some of the crew left at the next port, but several of us stayed on, despite the fact that the holes were so prominent that we could feel our shoes filling with water. I can't speak for anyone else, but I know that for me a slowly sinking ship still felt more reliable than the idea of the ramshackle rowboat I had been manning before.

Fast forward to March, when the crew is finally ordered to abandon ship. I've been expecting this, and I promptly gather my belongings and make for my lifeboat. Some of the other crew, however, opt for outright mutiny. I'm going to drop the nautical references now.

There was angry retribution - jilted authors who wanted blood. A part of me understood the frustration of feeling like you had been sold a false bill of goods, like the golden ticket you saw was just torn up in front of your eyes. What I saw over the following couple of weeks, however, was puerile, vitriolic. People were, and to a degree some still are, acting less like professional authors and more like petulant children. I know that for me it soured my opinion of a lot of people, and has made me more cautious of who I associate with professionally than the initial fall of RPG did.

It's a little ironic, really. Contemporary genre writers are so enamoured with the idea of moral greys, but the speed with which some people were ready to point and cry "villain" in this instance was staggering.

Ultimately, a lot of people were hurt by this, on both sides of the fence, and all I can do is hope that everyone can manage to find peace, and get their sea legs back. After all, being marooned on land does not a happy pirate make.

Okay, I'm done with the nautical references for real this time.

In Which I Actually Update My Blog

"I'll see you in March." I said.

"I figure I can update monthly." I said.

This is why you all have trust issues, I'm sure.

God, has it really been six months? Yes, yes it has. I kept telling myself I would update this blog when I had something worth writing a post about.

I didn't write a post about my reading at Whitchurch-Stoufeville Public library, which went really well.

I didn't write a post about Ad Astra or Atomic Lollipop, both of which which also went really well.

I didn't even write a post about the fact that Realmwalker liked my Legacy submission so much that it was accepted on the spot, coupled with an offer by them to publish the Four Kingdoms Saga, and Dragon in the Doghouse.

Incidentally, I'm now a traditionally published author. And I never blogged about it, surprising no one.

The transition has been kind of weird. I would go into it in detail, but frankly one of my fellow RPG authors, the incredibly talented Graham Austin-King did a perfect job describing it on his own blog, which he manages to actually update.

So, all that said, I guess I'll tell you guys about what's going on for FanExpo. This year, I've upgraded from piggybacking table space off friends, and have moved onto bigger and better things; sharing a smaller (read: less expensive) table with Deanna. We're going to be at booth A75 all four days, where you can get the shiny new RPG editions of The Summerlark Elf, and if you're early/eager enough, the last remaining self-published copies of The Missing Thane's War and Dragon in the Doghouse. Additionally, Deanna will be selling tons of really cool prints, from cubicle-friendly postcards to dorm-appropriate posters, and everything in-between. Long story short, booth A75 is where the coolest stuff is. (Except for everyone else's really cool stuff. Buy all that stuff, too.)

Now, of course, there's always more to these cons than just the dealers' rooms. The Thursday and Sunday nights will be pretty quiet for Deanna and I (unless something REALLY awesome comes up, that is), but Friday and Saturday are for PARTIES!

So to speak.

Friday night, come and join me, Deanna, game designer/writer/artist Corey Reid (Dino Pirates of Ninja Island, Reform School Ninja Girls), my brother Ryan, and whoever else we can drag along as I run them through the latest DnD 5e adventure Harried in Hillsfar. Spoilers: Deanna will play a halfling.

Further spoilers: that's not really a spoiler if you know Deanna at all.

Saturday night you'll be able to find Deanna and I at the RETRO CONSOLE GAMING AFTER PARTY! That's a thing that's actually happening! Specifically at the Loose Moose on Front St.

Alright, everyone, I'm pretty sure I've filled my blog quota for the next six months, I'll catch you all next February.

Just kidding, expect a recap post in a couple weeks.

.....

Maybe.

A Playdate in Someone Else's Sandbox

I was going to make some kind of glib comment about missing a post this month, but then I looked through my blog history and realized that the day I keep a regular blog schedule on this website is the day I'm replaced by a lizardman wearing my skin. As such, should you begin to see a consistent pattern emerge in this blog's schedule, dear readers, I humbly ask that you rise up and exact retribution in my name. Thanks in advance for that.

February has been a super eventful month, you guys. I did an interview with the local radio station of a township not far from me, which was a lot of fun. The interviewer, who hosts a weekly show called Shelf Life, was a librarian at the library I'll be visiting in May, and as soon as the radio station gets their website in ship-shape (it's currently under construction) I'll post a link to the interview over on the Interviews and Other Media page. Past that, I've been trying to get all my ducks in a row for my next Chapters signing next week, as well as Ad Astra in April.

Oh yeah, I guess I've been writing a bit, too.

In truth, I've been writing quite a bit this month. As I told you guys in my last post, I'm working on a submission for Realmwalker Publishing Group's Legacy anthology currently, and man have I been enjoying it. If I'm being honest, I don't think this project could have come at a better time. I certainly don't want you guys to think that I got burned out on Four Kingdoms book three or anything like that, but the fact of the matter is that I have, for roughly the last fourteen months or so, been spending the bulk of my free time working on this series. It has been an amazing, rewarding, enriching experience, to be sure, and I do not regret a single moment up to this point. That being said, it has also been incredibly exhausting.

Maybe it's just the way my brain works, but if I keep doing the same thing for a long period of time, especially something creative, I find my creative well begins to dry up. Motivation withers in favour of mechanization, and frankly I'm not the type who can just go through the motions and fix it up later. Looking back at my old blog Between Two Junkyards is a great example of how dangerous this can be for me as a writer, because as soon as I allowed myself to slip a little, the blog posts that I managed to update on a pretty frequent and consistent basis began to trickle, both in quantity and quality.

Creeping toward 2015, I found that almost every time I sat down to work on book three I was asking myself more questions than I was actually putting words on the page. It wasn't healthy for the progression of this series, and it certainly wasn't healthy for my creative process. I suppose taking a break from writing altogether to allow my batteries to recharge was a possibility, and I'm sure there are writers who are able to do that, but the metaphorical lightbulb that is my mind seems not to be powered by lithium ion, but by one of those kinetic-energy science fair projects that involves an exercise bike.

Enter Legacy. The anthology is pretty interesting in that, rather than having a group of authors write stories set in their own worlds that are all thematically related, those of us submitting stories are working within the world of one of the Realmwalker titles, each of us contributing a story that ties into the history of a prominent family therein. The best part is that, while the submission packet offered the various prompts and necessary rudimentary information, we were more-or-less given carte blanche otherwise. I don't know that I have felt this much raw inspiration while writing since I was working on the first draft of The Summerlark Elf. Though I'm still not cracking out the kind of word counts I was back then (I'd have finished this short story weeks ago if I were), what I am clocking on the page when I write is stuff that I always feel good about.

Best of all? Since working on this short story I have had ideas sprouting like mushrooms in a rainforest for book three. In a perfect world, I'd be juggling the two with ease, but the reality is that I only have so many hours in a given day, and while I'm on a deadline for Legacy, I only have the barest semblance of one for my own novels, giving the former precedence at the moment. Know, though, that once I send this story off to my betas I will be charging back headlong into Olhean with a vengeance.

With any luck, Legacy will open up some new opportunities to do more work like this in the future. I guess sometimes everyone needs a change of scenery. If not, maybe I'll try my hand at the odd Four Kingdoms short story here and there and post them here on the website.

What do you think, guys? Would you be up for the odd 10,000 word story in between novels? Let me know in the comments, and I'll see you all in March.

In Which I Discuss Projects, Writing and Otherwise

It just seems like a good day for a blog post, I suppose.

January has been a slower month than I would have liked. Maybe I can attribute that to a general post-holiday consumer dearth, I guess. Maybe people are too caught up with books received over said holidays. Having not had a prior January with which to compare book sales, it's difficult to say, and as such I can't exactly pay it that much mind, an author's journey being a marathon rather than a sprint, and all that.

If nothing else, January kind of seemed like a setup month for what is looking to be a pretty adventurous year. I updated the Upcoming Appearances Page a couple weeks back, which is confirmed events, and therefore excludes the signings at Chapters locations in Toronto, of which dates are being discussed, as well as cons I haven't yet confirmed (Anime North and FanExpo).

Further, I will be doing a radio interview with the awesome people at the Stouffville Public Library next week, and a Reddit AMA over at /r/Fantasy on the 18th. The interview will be pre-recorded, and I imagine will appear in a digital format that I will link to as soon as I'm able. All whilst working full-time and slowly chipping away at book three.

If this sounds like complaining, it isn't. I enjoy keeping busy. I recently had a conversation with my mom and my sister, musing about the fan-favourite hypothetical of winning the lottery, and when I had offered that I would just quit my job and write, my sister balked at the notion.

"You couldn't do it." she said, assuming that I had meant simply becoming an eccentric millionaire hermit who spent sixteen hours a day weaving tales. "You're the only person I know who does the dishes when he has the flu because he can't just relax."

She's right, of course. Sleeping in past (maybe) 10am, doing nothing all day, spending time in pajamas whilst not sleeping; these things all drive me kind of nuts. I can remember going to Cuba some years ago, and having a hard time coping with the idea of spending a week sitting by a pool. I am, by nature, a borderline frenetic individual. This is why I am looking forward to everything I have on my plate for 2015 so far, on top of taking on an additional writing project.

Yup, a small publisher called Realmwalker Publishing is releasing a multi-author short story anthology called Legacy. Unlike most fantasy anthologies, which have authors writing stories that are thematically similar only, this book centres around the timeline of a family of wizards within one of the Realmwalker series, each story serving as a snapshot of an important event in the family's history. I'll probably have to take a few weeks hiatus from working on the next Four Kingdoms book, but I have to admit that it's going to be interesting, even a little refreshing, to take a step back from Olhean for a while and play in someone else's world.

Oh, that reminds me. Olhean? That's the name of my world. There's actually a good deal more about the world that I plan on posting onto the site at some point. Let me know what you guys might like to see in the comments!

P.S. Don't everyone get excited and congratulate me on the Legacy thing yet - it's an open submission format, and they announce who they've chosen all the way in June. Sending me some positive mojo would be much appreciated, though.

New Year, New Fun, New Me

First off, points to whoever guesses what I'm paraphrasing above.

Hey everyone, it's 2015! I hope everyone had a safe and happy holiday season. I know I got to spend lots of time with friends and loved ones, ate entirely too much food, and generally basked in the joviality that is ever-present during the year's denouement. I even got a little bit of writing done, which was exciting. This time last year, I was waiting on my beta readers to finish their early drafts of The Summerlark Elf, so the thought of how the craziness of December might affect my writing time/energy just didn't occur to me. As it stands now, I'm about 14,000 words into book three, and decided last night to get into a head space where I hopefully won't be dragging my heels across the page for a little while. The momentum is nice, because it feels like something I haven't got a chance to really reach just yet with this book.

We'll see how long it takes before you guys read my next blog post, wherein I lament the fact that I feel like I'm just a hack who may as well be scrawling in crayon across old newspapers. You laugh, but you know it's coming.

Writers are weird, okay?

I had planned on this post being reflective and introspective, what with the whole "full year as a writer" milestone passed (admittedly it's been about fourteen months, but it's been a while since my last blog post, and New Years is always thematically apropos). I admit, it's odd looking back on where I was this time last year. I feel like I've progressed leaps and bounds, not only in my writing, but in everything in the periphery that, one year ago, I had no idea being an author entailed.

I think that, aside from the whole writing and publishing two novels and a picture book in one year thing, I'm most proud of what I'm starting to achieve in terms of networking, of finding opportunities to get my work out there. I've talked about the cons I worked, and of my bookstore appearance this past October, but plans are in motion right now for some projects that a) will be bigger and better than what I got up to last year, and b) are farther in scope than I could have possibly seen myself planning a year ago. I can't go into any details just yet, as everything is very much in its infancy, but rest assured that I will keep you all posted, dear readers, and that I will try my best not to disappoint.

Happy New Year, everyone!

On the Glamourous Life of Wordsmithery

So, I concede that I am terrible at keeping a regular blog. I'm sure that I've stated that before, but the fact remains, and the nice, big weeks-long gap between this and my last post made me feel like maybe I ought to point said fact once more. see, the thing is, whenever I sit down to write a blog post, I feel like I ought to have some kind of point I'm trying to get across, some amazing insight or humourous anecdote I can offer to make you, dear readers, feel like your visit to my website was worth your time. Maybe it stems from the days when I furiously blogged away at Between Two Junkyards, when I was trying to write good, print-worthy editorial prose, I'm not really sure.

Fact of the matter is this, guys: my life is, on a day-to-day basis, not terribly exciting, and as such is not often worth blogging about. In truth, October has been such a crazy month, I haven't had much time to think about anything poignant, insightful, or humourous that may have happened in the technicolour whirlwind that has been the last few weeks.

Although, maybe that's not why you read this blog, and maybe it's not the angle I ought to try writing it from. Maybe I should just tell you all what's up, what I have managed to capture within this technicolour whirlwind. Well, here it goes...

My signing at the Brampton Chapters happened. In many ways, it felt very similar to FanExpo, but in many ways it was different. I guess it was kind of like the first time The Ramones performed on a late night talk show... (just follow along with me here). The act of performing in front of an audience would have been nothing new, but David Letterman's studio set held a bit more of an air of mainstream legitimacy than the grimy stage of CBGB. Further, I gather much of Letterman's audience didn't get tickets expecting, never mind anticipating The Ramones, as opposed to CBGB, where the effort needed to get the audience on their side would have been substantially less.

Am I making any sense? I guess the takeaway is that the Chapters event was a really interesting experience, and I look forward to doing more of them, but I found out how much harder it is as a fantasy author to market yourself and your book to a crowd who isn't made up almost entirely of nerds. Not impossible, mind you, but harder.

After the fact, my family had a celebratory dinner, because they are supportive and awesome. There may or may not have been a cake that looked like the cover of The Summerlark Elf, and I may or may not have tweeted pictures of it.

Thanksgiving happened this past weekend here in Canada, and between my family and Deanna's, I spent the weekend more or less with a conveyor belt of food pointed directly at my willing maw. As was the nature of the holiday, I found myself thankful for all those close to me, who have loved and supported me, and would have done so (and did) before I ever got it in my head that I would try and tell stories for a living. I would also like to point out, dear readers, how thankful I am for all of you, as those stories would fall of deaf ears without the lot of you.

Speaking of stories, perhaps it's worth mentioning that Deanna has been burning the midnight oil lately making sure that Dragon in the Doghouse and Missing Thane's War are not only ready for their mid-November releases, but that they look so good my words will pale in comparison. We're hoping to have both sent into the printer for proof-approval this weekend, and we could not be more excited. The buzz we've been getting around both these projects has really been stoking our flames, and you'd better believe we're itching to let them out into the wild come SFContario.

I guess that's it, really. That's all I have to say for now about my crazy, non-stop life. No poignant quip to catchy bit of writing to end on, just a simple, porcine "That's All, Folks!" Maybe I'll loose another mundane update in a week or so - I think this one turned out pretty well.

...Oh, did I mention I started writing Book III?

FanExpo 2014 Recap

Not my most creative title, is it?

Well, FanExpo 2014 has come and gone. Man, it's already been over a week. There is so much that I could talk about, from the enormous beers at the Wayward launch party, to the runaround Jason and I had getting our badges, to casually greeting Neal Adams as I double-fisted slices of pizza on the last day of the con. I sold books, I made some new friends (and saw some old ones), and all in all I had an amazing experience, but of all the possible anecdotes I could share, the memory that will be most indelible to me will be the walk I took on the Saturday evening.

Saturday, for those of you who have never been to a nerd convention, is always the busiest day, and it showed in my end-of-day book sales, every one of which I worked fervently for. I was meeting some friends after the show at a pub about eight blocks or so uptown before we went to the Silver Snail's famous Moonlight Madness sale. I could have taken a ten minute walk to the subway and rode it for three stops, but I was feeling pretty good about myself, and I decided to walk.

No matter what direction you go when you leave the Metro Toronto Convention Centre on the Saturday of FanExpo, you become part of a massive march of the nerds. I may have looked slightly out-of-place with my sport jacket on amid all the cosplayers, but I had my Ninja Turtles t-shirt on underneath it, so maybe not. I listened to Anamanaguchi's latest album Endless Fantasy as I walked, and I was fed by the energy of the crowd, the energy of the music (which I've talked about waxing nostalgic on before), and my own energy from a great day.

It was after about two blocks or so that the crowd gradually dissipated, trickling ever so slowly until I could no longer tell if I was walking amid plainclothes conventioneers or simply everyday non-nerds. I turned onto Younge street and walked north, twilight painting a milky backdrop behind the towering Toronto skyline as music that reminded me of the carelessness daydreamer I was nearly half a lifetime ago provided the soundtrack.

When I was a teenager, I can remember writing little short stories, embarrassing pieces about my friends and I sharing some huge house as adults, and navigating life amid the worst shoujo anime tropes that I couldn't get enough of. They were indulgent and idealistic, and I am so glad that I did not have any ideas to post them online. It had never occurred to me in those silly little stories that I'd end up trying to make a career out of writing, which is ironic in hindsight, but I digress. As I walked up Younge that night, all the feelings I poured into those stories, that bygone sense of wish-fulfillment, all felt real. I was living the kind of dream I would have concocted for myself more than a decade ago, and it felt incredible.

I would go on that night to tell my friends, as I basked in my sense of success and sipped an IPA that was a poor decision the minute it rose a degree above its pouring temperature, that I felt like a king, and that the trip back to reality after the weekend concluded would doubtless be a difficult one. While the latter was certainly true, leaving my skin crawling in withdrawal until my next fix comes in the form of my Chapters signing, the former, not so much. The events of my very first FanExpo were sublime, and left me feeling a lot of things, but I wouldn't say I felt like a king. Rather, I felt like I had unlocked some kind of achievement, reached some kind of milestone. The work I put into my writing is, I would like to believe, very real, and FanExpo was my first real taste of what the payoff of that hard work was. Walking those twilit Toronto streets, I didn't feel like a king, I felt like an author, and that is a feeling I will forever relish.

P.S. Words cannot describe my gratitude to Jason Anarchy, for presenting me with more than just an opportunity, but inviting me to experience the whirlwind life of a professional creator by throwing me headlong into the fray. Everyone reading this (who is of legal drinking age) ought to go to www.drinkingquest.com right now and buy everything Jason has to offer, because I cannot think of anyone who better deserves to be rewarded for the fruits of his labour.

FanExpo 2014

In all honesty, I did not think FanExpo was on my radar, not for 2014.

I mean, Deanna and I talked about splitting the cost on a Small Press table, but opted to wait for 2015, so as to assure we'd both have a body of work to make the cost of a table worthwhile. I did not expect to receive an offer from Jason Anarchy like the one I did this past Anime North:

"So, I have a table for FanExpo this year, but I'm also doing some panels. I had a friend who was going to help me run the table, but he's got other obligations. If you give me a hand, I can give you some table space."

I still cannot believe it, doubly so because this isn't just a Small Press table. Jason is a featured Gaming guest, and as such, that is where the table is located. Let's just say I owe him a few pints, at least. This is FanExpo, the biggest con of the year in Canada.

There is a part of me that is sufficiently terrified.

I mean, I know it's just jitters. I know I'll be fine, have a great weekend, and hopefully sell some books, but it's surreal. On top of the con, Jason, Deanna, and myself are attending Jim Zub's launch party for his new comic tomorrow night, and the Cyanide and Happiness Banana Bar Crawl on Saturday. While on the more casual side, these are very much industry events, with industry people, and I will be commingling with them, as an industry person (sort of).

As it stands, I still have to pack (I will be at Deanna's during the con), but I did want to let you all know what my schedule was going to be like, and where you could find me, provided you'll be attending.

I'll be at the con all four days, so you needn't worry if you only plan on making it out for only one. I will be at table 563 (just a couple tables away from the LEGO booth). Keep an eye out for the big Drinking Quest banner. I will more than likely be there constantly over the four days, so come by and say hello, buy a copy of The Summerlark Elf, and a copy of Drinking Quest. If perchance I am not there, there is a good chance I'm attempting to find Ed Greenwood and give him a copy of the book, so you could likely find me there.

Anyway, I have clothes, books, cards, and DnD stuff to try and pack, so I will see you all later (hopefully at the con!)

Appearances

Hey everybody, time for another episode of "Inane Ramblings to Garner Website Traffic!"

In this episode, our hero embarks on a quest of self-discovery with far-reaching implications, questions the nature of humanity and its place in the universe, and waxes existential whilst enjoying a cup of herbal tea with a special guest (whom you may not expect)!

Just kidding... although that does sound like a really fun idea for a piece of short fiction...

Actually, I'm going to start off with the usual on this blog, that is to say I'm going to rifle off some news from the world of independently-published authorship, maybe talk a little bit about the non-authorial goings-on in my life, and end up on some tangential rant about this, that, or the other. Those of you who have read my editorial stuff (see the other sites posted on the "About" page) should have a good eye for this kind of formula by now. That being said, here's Brandon with the News!

My interview on "The Speculative Soapbox" went live about a week and a half ago. It was a lot of fun, the host, TJ Redig is a really affable guy, and I think that allowed me to act really natural during the interview. Truth be told, this was my first time ever being on the subject end of an interview (I did a couple of interview pieces with some pro skaters back on Between Two Junkyards that garnered mild attention), but from the feedback I've received people seem to think that I did well, which I think bodes well for another interview I have coming up next month, to which I'll post more information when I can.

This year, as in years passed, I'll be attending Anime North in Toronto, which is taking place May 23-25. Had I known when Deanna and I had bought our tickets that I would be in the position I'm currently in, I would have planned ahead and got a table, but hindsight is 20/20, so I'll only be attending as a regular conventioneer. It will be strange, though, in that I'm not going to see the con through such a lens. Rather, I'm probably going to spend more time trying to network with people, try and get my name and the book out there a little bit more. I'll have a load of business cards that I'm going to have on hand, and I know it sounds corny, but if on the off-chance you'll be attending, and you've bought a copy of the book, I wouldn't turn down a request to make it a signed copy. All my hobnobbery aside, though, there are still a number of "regular con-goer" things that I'm looking forward to, and are probably the best chances you'll have to track me down.

- Friday afternoon's Evil Laughter contest. I have a notoriously nefarious-sounding chuckle, so this seemed like a no-brainer.

- Anime Hell Friday night. Even in years when I didn't attend North for the full weekend, I made it out to this, because the only thing better than watching surreal and awful videos from across the globe is watching them in a convention hall with three-hundred other people and a delightfully droll narrator.

- Board Game tournaments all weekend. I figure I might as well try my hand at some competitive King of Tokyo or Takenoko. Last year I ran an impromptu pick-up 4e DnD game that drew in a bigger crowd than I thought, but I'm already planning on running my Neverwinter campaign that Sunday night, and lugging around enough supplies for two sessions would have been more trouble than I was willing to put in.

- Drinking Quest Punk-Rock Business, Saturday afternoon. Jason Anarchy is a friend of mine and Deanna's, a game designer, Deanna's occasional employer, and an all-around good guy. If you see his table in the dealer's room, buy a copy of his game. I imagine this panel is going to be informative and entertaining in equal measure, and I encourage people to check it out as well.

- Totally Lame Anime After Dark, Saturday night. Run by the same guy as Anime Hell, and admittedly with some bleed-over, this is equally as entertaining, if more anime-centric.

- The Mega Man panel, Sunday morning. I love Mega Man. So much. I missed this panel last year out of con fatigue and am not planning on making the same mistake this year.

There are plenty more events, but they simply aren't coming to me right now. End of the day, if you spot a guy looking like Wil Wheaton (beard, button-down short-sleeve shirt, and d20 fez), that's me, so come say hi! I'll probably end up giving you a business card, if only because I'm super proud of them, and because I think Deanna did an awesome job on them.

I was planning on going on a bit more about a few things, the audiobook of Erin M. Evans' Brimstone Angels, my budding Neverwinter campaign, how I'd die if I ever got the chance to write a Forgotten Realms novel, and why I feel like there aren't enough fantasy works with traditional fantasy races in them, but I feel like this post is getting pretty bogged down as it is, so take this little outro for what it is, and don't think that I won't probably end up expanding on these topics in later posts.

Everyone's Story

So let's start things off tonight with a couple good pieces of book news. Firstly, my hometown comic shop Stadium Comics (which, it's worth mentioning, is owned and operated by two of the nicest, most down-to-earth individuals I've had the pleasure of working with) is the latest to be added to the list of shops that carry The Summerlark Elf. If you live in Brampton, be sure to swing by pick a copy up, and pick up some comics while you're at it, because Kevin and Ricky are good guys.

Secondly, this Saturday, May 3rd, I'll be doing my first interview about TSE! I was put in contact a couple weeks back with TJ Redig, a fellow speculative fiction author, and host of the Speculative Soapbox Podcast, a short-form podcast wherein small-time fantasy, sci-fi, and other speculative fiction authors get a chance to promote their work. My interview will be live at 9pm EST, and will be available for streaming and download sometime thereafter.

I'm sure I've lain this point on a bit thick before, but I really enjoy Dungeons and Dragons. The game has been part of my consciousness in one form or another since I was a kid, when my dad bought my siblings and I the "New Easy-to-Master Dungeons and Dragons Game" from Toys 'r' Us back in the early '90s (this is a story outlined in greater detail on my tumblr page here, should you wish to read into the matter further). The thing about when I enjoy something, is that I become an absolute sponge about it, trying to mentally ingest anything and everything I can find on it. I could just as quickly tell you the last song on the UK cut The Clash's debut album (1977), as I could tell you who invented the frontside rock 'n roll (Eddie Elguera), and what were the original three playable character classes in the D&D White Box (Fighting Man, Cleric, and Magic User). As such, I also have a habit of scouring Youtube for whatever visual media I can find in an attempt to slake my unending thirst for trivia. This leads me to this video posted by author Ethan Gilsdorf.

It's an actual super-8 recording of a young Gilsdorf and his friends playing D&D. There was something heartwarming about the video because, though it lacks any audio, it shows one thing that makes tabletop RPGs so unique. Part of why I love D&D is because whether I'm playing or DMing (usually the latter), I'm creating. It starts when I build a character, or think of an interesting adventure hook for the players, but that certainly isn't where it stops. If I'm thrown into a situation where I'm being interrogated by the city guard, how do I react? Conversely, if my players don't take my hook, or find some other way to circumvent what I had planned, what do I do next? By their very nature, tabletop RPGs require you to try and think as creatively as you can for the duration of play. As a writer, there's no better way of keeping my creative mind as sharp as it can be. Don't get me wrong, writing every day is important to maintain motivation and momentum, but working on the same project constantly can easily lull a person into inanity, and something as visceral as a roleplaying game can oftentimes give your creativity a nice kick to make sure it isn't becoming sedentary.

That isn't the real reason this video is so great, though. What the video shows in spades is a bunch of friends getting together and enjoying an evening. Of all the positives I can think of to playing tabletop RPGs, what comes out on top is that it's an amazing social experience. You may wind up making new friends (I have), or seeing old ones in a new light (I also have). I enjoy writing because I get to tell my story, but I enjoy D&D because I get to be a part of telling everyone's story, and that kind of combination of creativity and camaraderie is something that I think everyone ought to experience at least once in their life.

Nostalgia and Book Updates

I'll start this post talking about the latter half of the title first, because I'm feeling flighty, I suppose. I had mentioned in the last blog post that I had a couple projects that I was working on, and I figure I might as well let everyone know what those were.

Firstly, and perhaps most obviously, is the second book in the Four Kingdoms Saga. As it stands, I'm about 20,000 words into the first draft, and I feel like I'm only just beginning to wrap up the first act. The Summerlark Elf was about 52,000 words when all was said and done, but I feel like book two is going to clock in at a substantially higher page count, it simply has to be longer in order for me to tell the story effectively. The book is also taking much longer to write. Now, I'm not talking George R.R. Martin or Pat Rothfuss long, but I started working on this book in January. There are a number of reasons attributed to this, most notably that a) full-time employment is not conducive to writing, and b) I'm building onto a framework that I laid out in book one, and that takes much more planning.

Secondly, I think I can safely talk about the project Deanna and I have been working on, as it's something that has really even predated the Summerlark Elf. Back in September, I got it in my head that I was going to write a children's book, so I cooked up a quick little poem all about a boy who wakes up to a house infested with goblins, kobolds, an owlbear, and a dragon, you know, typical kids' problems. I worked on fleshing it out, and soon enough I had a manuscript that I sent to Deanna to illustrate. Now, due to various artistic commitments, she was too tied up to dive full-on into this project, however she recently became freed up enough to tell me that I can start talking about the project, which is great, because I think its awesome. The book is called Dragon in the Doghouse, and with any luck, it will be available by the end of the summer. Deanna posted the tentative cover on her tumblr.

Finally, the Nostalgia portion of this post. For a sort of train-of-thought list of reasons, I've found myself listening to a couple old happy hardcore albums that I adored in my mid teenage years. For anyone who doesn't know, happy hardcore is a sub-genre of electronic music that sounds like a trance producer and a house producer got their hands on a circus organ and cranked the result up to a tempo of 160 beats per minute. It's a bit of an acquired taste, but I'm a sucker for a good melody and a frenetic back beat, and these old albums still hold up, even in light of the fact that by eighteen I was a raging punk rock kid.

Now, listening to these old albums, as is the case with anyone who listens to the music of their youth, reminds me of said youth. It reminds me of my old friends, how I fell out of touch with most of them, and how, in a big way, I wish I could reconnect.

I think back to my social group in high school, who were, all of us, a bunch of geeks who got together nearly every weekend and watched anime and played video games. Why we never played D&D at that age is pretty lost on me, to be honest. Matter of fact, there is a part of me, right now, listening to "Eyeopener" on Happy 2B Hardcore Chapter 3, who would give anything to be able to get all those people together for an all-weekend D&D session. This may just be the nostalgia talking, but I doubt it. I miss my old friends. Young ones reading this, heed me: keep in close touch with the people who matter to you, because you'd be surprised how quickly life will get in the way.

-Brandon

A Much Better Welcome Post, and Some Book News

Hey All,

For those of you who saw the site at its outset, you can see that it has already undergone some substantial aesthetic changes, and looks all the better for it. Huge thanks are in order for my girlfriend Deanna, who took care of all the lovely artwork, and all the lovely photographs (You should really check out her Tumblr Page for more of her lovely artwork).

Many a goings-on to report on the whole "me as an author" front (which, I expect, is why you are here). Book One of the Four Kingdoms Saga, The Summerlark Elf, has been available for just over two weeks through Amazon and CreateSpace, and as of Thursday this past week, readers in the Greater Toronto Area are now able to purchase a hard copy off the shelves of actual physical stores! For anyone on the lookout, you can snatch up a copy at Bakka Phoenix Books, the Silver Snail, and Hairy Tarantula. One hopes that this list will increase, and you can be sure that I will keep you, my lovely readers, informed.

In further authoring news, I am well into the thick of the first draft of Book Two of the series. I won't lie, it has been substantially slower-going than the first, for all manner of reasons, not least of which are less time to write, and a book whose scope is significantly larger. Fear not, though, dear readers, I am remaining diligent, and will keep you all abreast on my progress.

Finally, Deanna (my aforementioned girlfriend and lovely artist) and I are drawing ever closer to a project we have been working on for quite some time now. I am incredibly excited to get this project out there, and I think a lot of people will be very into it.

Well, fine readers, that's all for today. Until next time, I leave you all with a pointedly underwhelming closing.

- Brandon