Good morning, Readers!

As many of you know, I'm indulging my gaming geek side and live streaming a game regularly Wednesday nights on my Twitch channel.

​Those live streams are filled with fails, deaths and me swearing a whole lot.  They're genuinely meant to be humorous (it's funny watching someone fail a lot... particularly when gaming!), and just a couple of hours of silliness, even when I'm playing super serious games.

Anyway, Twitch only keeps the videos up for a fortnight, so those who've missed the stream have ample time to catch up before the next one.  As that is the case, I decided to collect all the deaths, fails, and times when I was flippin' awesome into highlight reels.

I was so far behind after preparing for Ottawa ComicCon in this department that I didn't think I would ever manage to catch up.  I finished the previous game The Last of Us and it's DLC Left Behind three weeks ago, for example.  I've only just managed to finish editing together the last of the highlights reel.  But it's all done!

Instead of being six videos behind, I'm now only one video behind, and that's the first highlight reel of the new game, Assassin's Creed: Unity.  As I'm writing this, I'm searching for royalty free music that would suit the game to use in my highlight reel.

My project for today is to get that done just in time for the second live stream of the game happening tonight.  That's the idea, anyway.  That way I can do the second highlight reel tomorrow and be entirely caught up.

Once I'm all caught up there, I can relax a little and read a book that I've been meaning to finish forever.

Then, if all the stars align, I can get back to writing.  That's what I'm supposed to be, after all.  A writer.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to find my way through a bunch of music to find the right fit.

Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

The ballot for the Aurora Awards this year have been released, and while there are categories I'm not decided on yet, as the decision is not well informed, I do have a few picks I'm voting for already.

You can review the ballot yourself here if you like, and let me know if you have any favourites you'd like to see win in each category.

I will be revisiting the vote when I can make a more informed decision on the nominees.  These are the categories I'm not deciding on yet:

• Best Novel
• Best Young Adult Novel
• Best Graphic Novel
• Best Related Work

I have a lot of reading to do before I can vote on those categories, but I do have my picks for the others.

Best Short Fiction
While I haven't read every story on this list (and will before I make a more definitive decision), I feel strongly that Seasons of Glass and Iron by Amal el-Mohtar, in The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales, from Saga Press will probably get my vote.  There is a lot about this story that I love, not least of all the beauty of the language used.  I'm a sucker for beautiful language.

Best Visual Presentation
This, for me, has to go to Dark Matter.  It's such an interesting show, and so well done.  I have a few other things to watch (I haven't, for example, watched Murdoch Mysteries), but I think that Dark Matter will still have my vote when all is said and done.  I am open to a mind change, if something really blows my mind.

Best Artist
Melissa Mary Duncan gets my vote.  Her artwork strikes a chord in me, and I really love it.

Best Fan Writing and Publications
I'm torn here, as there are two people vying for my vote.  Speculating Canada has been a winner in past years, and for damned good reason, but Nerd is the Word is also a great little magazine, and I am leaning more towards it for this category.

Best Fan Organizational 
This is no contest.  Derek Künsken and Marie Bilodeau, executive, Can*Con 2016, Ottawa will be getting my vote.  I have been to other conventions, and I always return to Can*Con so happy it exists.  Other conventions are great, don't get me wrong, but nothing has beaten Can*Con for me.  It's such a warm, friendly, uplifting convention, and Derek and Marie work bloody hard.  They really do deserve this award.

Best Fan Related Work
Speculating Canada is my favourite on this list.  Derek Newman-Stille does a fantastic job with it, and he really does deserve this award, in my opinion.

And the category and vote that I'm most excited about and that people who know me will be least surprised by:

Best of the Decade
From the Prix Aurora Award website:

Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson.

That's my pick.

I know, I know.  No surprise.  But this series is absolutely incredible!  The world is vast, varied and absorbing.  The characters... oh! The characters!  They are deep, and interesting and fully-formed.  And the language!  I told you I'm a sucker for beautiful language, and Erikson writes in such a way that pleases my linguistic aesthetic so wholly, I have literally gushed about his choice of words to more than one person more than once.

So, yeah.  That amazing series is by far and away the worthiest on that list, in my opinion.

So, these are my picks so far.  Who would you choose and why?  I'd love to hear from you.  For now, I have to dash.

Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

So... something happened last week that has left me reeling.  Let me give you a hint:

So... yeah.  I'm an Aurora Award nominee.

This isn't for my writing, however much I'd love for that to be the case.  It's actually for my little YouTube channel Silver Stag Studios.  

I'm still in shock over it.  I never expected us to get there ever, at all.  It didn't even cross my mind that such a thing would happen.  And, in truth, I'm really struggling with this nomination.  I am having an incredibly powerful case of imposter syndrome.

There are a whole host of reasons why.  The main one is that we're an incredibly small channel.  Even after four years on YouTube, we have fewer than fifty subscribers, and almost all of those are certainly not active.  We're lucky if one of our videos gets more than ten views.

Also, I'm the first to admit that our production quality is not great.  We're just a bunch of goofs in a friend's basement chatting about books and films, and playing video games.  The footage is rough, the sound is rougher.  I'm hoping to change that, saving up for a few lapel mics and a proper sound mixer.

And worse, I've had a lot of trouble keeping to a regular upload schedule for all the programmes, and I have had serious thoughts more than once of quitting the thing entirely.

So, you see, I'm struggling a lot with this nomination.  I should be thrilled, but I'm really not.  Looking at the list of fellow nominees, I feel fraudulent.  I don't belong on that list, in that company.  We're not there.  Not yet.

That's not saying that I think you shouldn't vote for us if you think we're genuinely deserving, but at the moment, I don't feel like I deserve to be up on this list.

That said, because we're so small, I highly doubt we'll be voted the best, so I can rest on that.  Still, I would like to take this opportunity to introduce you to what Silver Stag Studios is.

Silver Stag Studios is an extremely small YouTube channel run by myself, with the help of incredible volunteers.  We're just a bunch of geeks in the Ottawa area who love books, films and video games, and so we chat about books and films and play video games on the channel.

In truth, I would like to do more community stuff with the channel, but I'm limited by the fact that I must work several jobs, and don't really have the time to do more with the channel.  Those wonderful folk who volunteer with the channel also work regular jobs and have limited time, and aren't available to do more.  Nor would I want them to drop their lives to do more for this channel, especially without pay.

Our mainstay of the channel is a programme I've cheekily called Nights at the Round Table.  It's cheeky because it's not filmed or uploaded at night, nor is the table we sit at round.  BUT what it is, is a round table discussion of genre books and film.

I really enjoy doing this programme.  It's a lot of fun to sit with friends and talk about geeky things.

I'm also trying to get this as a podcast, but I'm having difficulties finding somewhere to host it that doesn't cost an arm and a leg (and currently everything costs and arm and a leg, no matter how inexpensive it is!).

So, that's us in a nutshell.  That's what we do.

You can check us out more at our website if you want.  If you feel like this is something you might like to watch or listen to, subscribe to our channel.

And lastly, go vote for the Aurora Awards.  There are some really amazing folk that have been nominated, and some really deserving works that could use your vote.

Tomorrow, I'll talk about who I'm voting for and why in each category.

Good morning, Readers!

As promised in yesterday's game review of The Last of Us, I have thoughts about the moral dilemma presented to us at the end of the game.  I've been trying to process them since I finished the game, but haven't yet managed to get it all sorted in my head.  Please forgive me if this blog post is all over the place.

Also, there are spoilers, duh.

The progression of images above is really important.  Without playing the game yourself, it helps you to get a better feel for Joel's character, what he's been through, and why he does what he does at the end of the game.

The game designers did a fantastic job of book-ending images together.  As you can see at the beginning and end of the film.  Ellie and Sarah are both in Joel's arms, helpless.  Earlier, there is a scene where Joel is trying to resuscitate Ellie after she drowns.  It is a mirror to the beginning of the game, where Joel is trying to stop his daughter's gunshot wound from bleeding out.

At the end of the game, Joel is given a choice.  Leave Ellie to die and perhaps maybe the Fireflies can find a vaccine and save humanity, or fuck humanity, save Ellie.  You, as the player, aren't given a choice.  Joel makes that decision, and you have no option but to see it through.

Joel decides to save Ellie.

It doesn't even register as a difficult decision for the character.  Ellie lives.  That's all that matters to him.

It's perfectly in keeping with Joel as a character.  He's done some horrible things to survive, and to ensure those he loves survived.  He's seen precisely what humanity is.  Joel loves Ellie.  He does not love humanity.

That decision has split players into two camps: Fuck yes, Joel! and Aw hell, no!

I have been thinking really hard about it, and I think I fall into the Fuck yes, Joel camp.  It's not done lightly, mind you.  Nor without any kind of trepidation.  But, if I'm honest with myself, were I actually in Joel's shoes, fuck yes, I'd save Ellie, and fuck humanity.

But let me explain both camps, so you can decide for yourself.

Do the deed, save humanity.  That's what heroes do, isn't it?

​That's what the heroes in every story do, right?

In deciding to save Ellie's life, Joel dooms humanity to suffer longer with the Cordyceps infection, possibly damning them entirely to a slow extinction.  His selfish decision to spare himself the grief of one more death of a loved one, thousands of innocent people will suffer.

He's by no means a hero.

Marlene, however, who made the difficult decision to sacrifice Ellie, despite making a promise to the girl's mother to keep her safe, in the quest to find a vaccine, is a hero.  She loves Ellie, and still would sacrifice her in order to save humanity, in order to keep the flame of hope alive.

Sacrifice for the greater good, right?  Save humanity, right?

​Maybe.  Maybe not.

This goes far beyond Joel choosing selfishly to spare himself grief.  I doubt very much that he was thinking of himself much at all.  I doubt it went much beyond "Ellie lives" for Joel.

There's still a lot behind that decision, whether it was taken into account by the character in the moment or not.

The first is that humanity in this game is literally the worst! Joel himself is not a good person, something that he admits to.  Whatever awful things Joel has done, there are people out there doing worse.  All throughout the game, you encounter military willingly shooting at unarmed civilians—including children, "hunters" who literally hunt people down and kill them for supplies, or people who kill just for the fun of it.  Then there's the paedophile cannibal, David, and his town full of people-eaters.  Humanity is far from being worth saving in this game.

I freely admit that I'm a bit of a misanthrope myself, and if given a choice between all of humanity and the few friends I have, I will create mountains of bodies to save the ones I love.

Luckily for you, I won't have to make that decision (fingers crossed, in these times!).  Also luckily for you, I'm wildly inept, and will probably be stopped relatively quickly in my quest to save my friends.  So, there's that.

Medical ethics also plays a part in my falling on Joel's side.

Ellie expects to be waking up after her mission is complete.  She promises Joel that he could teach her how to swim after the whole thing is over.

It might well have been different if Marlene had explained to Ellie what was involved, and that she would die as a result.  It might have been that Ellie would have accepted that, willingly sacrificing herself to save humanity.  In fact, given Ellie's personality, I'd say the chances would be high of her doing just that.

But Marlene lied.  She lied to Ellie's mother about keeping the girl safe.  She lied to Ellie about what was expected of her.

AND you find out in game that the Firefly researchers have killed other immune kids in this quest to find a vaccine; something that has thus far proved impossible.  On one recording found, a researcher leaves a note that the whole affair is an exercise in futility.

The researchers have killed immune people in their research, for the express purposes of research.  Even today, when testing vaccines that could potentially save millions of lives, there is a lot of ethical oversight.  And for good reason!

Would letting Ellie die actually produce a vaccine?  What if it doesn't?  Are you alright with murdering a child on something that isn't a guarantee?  I'm sure as hell not.

AND, with Ellie not being the only immune kid running around, maybe not finding a vaccine won't actually damn humanity.  I mean, if they could just stop killing immune kids to satisfy their curiosity, and if humanity could stop killing each other for no fucking reason, the species might actually have a fighting chance.

Was it the heroic thing to do to save Ellie's life?

Maybe not.

Was it the right thing to do?

I think so.  But I get why people wouldn't.  What do you think?  Would you do what Joel did?  Would you not?  Why?  I'm really interested in your thoughts behind this.  Leave them in the comments!

Naughty Dog, you are quickly turning me into a fan girl.  Like Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, this game was absolutely captivating.  It was less goofy, action fun and much more heartbreak, gritty terror.  I have absolutely no shame in saying I cried during that opening sequence of game play.

​This game is stunning.  Everything about it stunning.

Not going to lie, I'm kinda in love with Joel and I absolutely adore Ellie.  Good job with the protagonists, writers!

You next meet Joel some twenty years later.  He's been through shit since Sarah's death.  You get the impression that he's done some terrible stuff to survive, something that is confirmed as you play the game.  Joel is hard, cynical and dangerous.

As the game progresses, you see him oh so slowly soften, and Ellie, who was once just a package to be delivered worms her way into his heart, to the point where he would damn all of humanity, including himself, to save her.  He is no less hard or dangerous, but he is softer, at least where Ellie is concerned.

By the end of the game, it seems that Joel has healed from his past trauma, talking openly and easily with Ellie about the daughter he previously tried so hard to forget.

This character arc for Joel was masterfully handled by the game.  Mad props to the writers, the actors and the animators on this one.  Holy shit.

As with Uncharted, Joel's design is fantastic.  Again, he's not over-muscled.  He looks like a real dude.  He's not especially tall, it seems, nor is he the "Hollywood ideal."  He looks on the boxy side, and he looks strong without being a parody of strength as so many heroes of the masculine persuasion tend to be.

In short, Joel as a character is exactly the kind of man I'd want on my side if everything suddenly went to shit.

Ellie, on the other hand, is an open book.  She's a fourteen year old kid with ample sass and a really foul mouth.  She's me when I'm gaming, basically.

Unlike Joel, Ellie doesn't really have a character arc.  She remains her feisty self throughout the game without changing all that much except, perhaps, in her levels of affection towards Joel.

Ellie is the kid I wished I could have been.  There is a lot to admire about her, most notably in how well she stands up for herself when Joel is being a colossal arsehole... which is pretty often, let's be real.  The number of times I said, "You tell him, Ellie" in game is a little ludicrous.

One of the things I like best about Ellie is that, sure she's a knife-wielding, foul-mouthed badass, she's a kid.  And they made her look like a kid.

Ellie is believably fourteen here, not just in her behaviour, but also in her appearance and the way she moves on screen.

They got it right, and that is nice to see.  There is a danger, after all, of her design and character being a patronising account of what an adult might think a teenager to be. She's not that.  They got her right.

Supporting characters, too, were masterfully done.  They were whole characters.

Joel's little brother, Tommy, is vastly different from his brother in personality; a hopeful man who is trying to rebuilt humanity the right way.  What his brother did to survive in the early days of the outbreak weighs more heavily on his shoulders, and he cannot so easily justify them as Joel does.

In the end, it turns out Tommy's way was better.

Marlene is the leader of the Fireflies, a freedom-fighting group opposed to the military rule that resulted from the outbreak, and dedicated to finding a vaccine for the fungus turning everyone into zombies.

Sounds noble, right?  Well, not so much, given her methods.  Once again, a full character.  She's not evil, making the events at the end of the game difficult to play through, but she's not good, either.  More on that in another post.

Tess, the woman who is Joel's smuggling partner when the game proper starts.  She's not a nice woman.  Like Joel, she does what she believes necessary to survive.  That includes murder and torture, really.

It's unclear whether Tess and Joel are intimate parnters as well, though it seems likely given some of the dialogue and the fact that Joel faces the dangerous cross-country journey to bring Ellie to the Fireflies because Tess asked him to.  Surely he felt something for her.

The supporting character treatment that most impressed me was Bill.

Bill is a recluse living away from the quarantine zone where Joel and Tess operate.  He's ornery, odd, and it's heavily implied that he's gay (if the dirty magazines that Ellie stole from him are any indication).

What impressed me is that the game developers did with Bill's sexuality what storytellers everywhere should do.  It was there, but it was not omnipresent.  It was not the reason Bill as a character existed.  It was merely an aspect of his character.  What was important was that he was grumpy and a recluse and owed Joel a favour.

I was also impressed with how they wrote Joel while dealing with Bill.  Joel didn't care about Bill's sexual preferences.  He warned Ellie that he was a grump and a little unpredictable, but that he was basically a good guy.  That was it.

Thank you, Naughty Dog, for that.  It wasn't a huge part of the game, but it was surely worth a mention.

Holy shit, Naughty Dog (I said exactly the same thing about Uncharted, and it bears repeating here).  This story is designed to break your heart over and over.  It is a beautiful piece of storytelling, with some aspects that I found really fucking triggering and difficult to process.

David.  That bit with David.  I've never come so close to throwing up while gaming, watching or reading before.  It was tough to deal with; quite triggering.

This game made me cry.  Twice.  I also screamed a bit, and swore a lot at the studio.  A common refrain during my live streams of this game was, "Fuck you, Naughty Dog."

The story was so brilliantly laid out, and the scenes so wonderfully brought to life, I am in absolute awe of the writers at Naughty Dog.

They also managed to make me sit back and think—genuinely think—once the game was done.  It was brilliant.  They made me think so damned hard that I am planning a whole other blog post about these thoughts.

Once again, Naughty Dog delivers on believable, well written women.

While Ellie is the main female of the game, there are other supporting characters who happen to be women, who are all brilliantly written and fully realised.  Once again, Naughty Dog has evaded the trap of one-dimensional women, or terrible tropes involving women in the game.

Sure, Ellie is more of a side-kick to the main dude, but damn if she isn't the most capable, awesome chick to have around.  I have been saved by Ellie and her knife more times than I can count while playing.

All the women in the game are capable, even if they're not all good.  Tess is so capable that her mere presence opens doors for Joel.  She arrives on scene and everyone is immediately well behaved... except the goons hired to protect someone who has crossed her.  And, well, they get what's theirs, I guess.

Marlene, leader of the Fireflies, is a commander and a fighter.  She's put into a very tough situation when she learns Ellie is immune, and makes a very difficult decision.  Is it a decision all of us would have come ti?  I don't know.  More on that in another blog post.

Tommy's wife Maria is a tough lady, but also one who clearly cares for the people under her command.  She runs the town Tommy is part of rebuilding, and by all accounts, seems damned good at it.  Clearly, she has the respect of the men working beneath her.  But she is not without emotion, either, being very upset when Tommy tells her that he's going to do what his brother asks of him.

So, once again, well done, Naughty Dog.  You manage with ease something that other developers somehow have failed to even grasp.

Holy tension, Batman!

This game is fantastic at creating awful, terrifying, tense moments.  From the scarcity of much needed supplies, to the erratic nature of the infected enemy, to the cold calculation and utter lack of humanity in the human enemies, this game had me on the edge of my seat practically the whole ride.

I was irritated by the weapons sway, I have to say, particularly coming from Joel, who, it is assumed, should know his way around a variety of weapons and be able to hold the fuckers still, goddammit.

But honestly, my frustrations with the game play are wholly and fully the result of my own ineptitude, which I have in spades.

There is so, so much to talk about here that I'm saving it all for another blog post on another day.  Seriously.  There is so much to go through and process.

This game isn't the awesome goofy action fun of Uncharted, so I can't really call it fun in the same way.  It was, however, an incredible experience.  This is the kind of game that sits with you a while.

While I'm less keen to return to the world of The Last of Us and play again, as I am with Uncharted 4, this game holds a special place with me, and I cannot wait for the sequel.

​Goddamn, Naughty Dog.  Just... Goddamn.

Good morning, Readers!

So, Sunday was a day spent with my dad, as I sometimes do.  We went to the movies together and watched King Arthur: Legend of the Sword.  Naturally, now I must review it.

Fair warning, I am a Celtic Studies student, so I'm coming at this movie from a different perspective from your average Jane. There might be a rant.  We'll see how it goes.

There is so much to love about this film. The acting is stellar, the story is wonderful, and the inclusions of elements from the original Celtic stories made me smile.  Alas, making Arthur English is, to me, unforgivable, particularly for the film's setting, and how much it draws on the original Celtic stories.  It does so without giving them the respect of a British King Arthur (I'm distinguishing between British and English here).

Don't get me wrong, I genuinely really like the film and anyone who isn't all that familiar with the history and mythology of King Arthur that predates the 13th/14th century stories—which turned him into an English king—will likely have a blast.

This is, make no mistake, a Guy Ritchie film; filled with the sarcastic, mouthy characters and sharp, witty editing you would expect in a film by Guy Ritchie.  The dialogue is excellent, with clever cuts between scenes that get the story moving in surprisingly effective, if a little surreal ways.  There is a great deal of humour, and I giggled more than once.  The action is great, though, and this is a problem with many films, the quick cuts in the scenes made it a little tricky to figure out what was going on.  The characters were extremely likeable, and even the villain of the piece, played by Jude Law, was extremely sympathetic.

Can I just say, Djimon Hounsou as Bedivere (in the original Welsh, Bedwyr) was masterful.  And before anyone gets their knickers in a twist about there being black people in Britain at this time, there are graves in Britain holding the remains of Africans dating back to the Bronze Age.  Don't get me started on how wrong you are about this whole "there were no black people in Britain in this era" bullshit.  It's utter bullshit.  Ahem.

I'm less certain of the inclusion of East Asians, but I had no issue with it.

I loved, loved, loved, the inclusion of Vortigern's tower in this film.  Of course, it is wildly different from the actual Celtic story of Vortigern's Tower, but it's inclusion made me smile so, so much.  Too bad that that they turned Vortigern into an Englishman as well.

For those of you who are unaware, Vortigern was a British king (again, distinct from English), who is widely considered to have betrayed the British by inviting Horsa and Hengest, leaders of a Germanic, which is to say, Jutish or Anglish, which is to say, English, tribe (you understand why I made the distinction now) to Britain.  He offered them land enough to establish themselves in exchange for help dealing with the raiders from northern Britain (above Hadrian's Wall) and the Irish raiders coming over and causing havoc.  This was written as being a heinous act against all of Britain, and no doubt served to cement Vortigern as an enemy of the British people, despite his actions being done in their defence.  After all, the English gained a foothold in Ceint (modern-day Kent) because of Vortigern.  It's even listed in the Welsh Triads as one of the Three Unfortunate Counsels of the Island of Britain.

This is alluded to in the film, as Vortigern is in negotiations with a foreign power, threateningly hovering off the coast of Britain.  Except, in this film, rather than have the enemy be the founding tribes that would later become the English, it's the Vikings.

THIS ANNOYED ME SO MUCH!

I know, I know.  It's just a story.  But they included the British king Vortigern.  They included his tower.  But they took away the Britishness and replaced it with Englishness; the very people the historical King Arthur (if he did indeed exist) would have fought against.

Side note: in the original British myth of Vortigern's Tower, Vortigern was building a tower, only to find it reduced to rubble after each night.  Finally, he called for the young Emrys (which is the Welsh version of Ambrosius, so it could possibly be a young King Arthur... or Merlin.  It gets particularly muddy if you dig deep into the place where myth and history meet), who tells the king to dig up the foundations.  That achieved, two dragons, one white and one red, who had been sleeping beneath the foundations awaken and begin to battle.  The red dragon defeats the white dragon, and the young Emrys predicts that it symbolises the British people (the red dragon) will be victorious over the Anglish (the white dragon).  That is why, incidentally, the Welsh flag has a red dragon on it.

Anyway....

I mean, I can kind of understand why they made Arthur and his men English, rather than British.  Most people are still, despite the mountain of academia on the subject, familiar with Arthur as an English king.  And, you know, there are a couple of jokes in the film that wouldn't work if the main characters were not English, but goddamn turning Arthur English really pissed me off.

Whatever later romance writers said, Arthur was and is a British legend, not an English one.  I, as a Celtophile, am aching for that to be recognised properly in the media.  The fact that the 2004 film King Arthur actually gave Arthur his proper place as a Romano-British ruler existing in the tumultuous time of Rome's retreat and the invasion of the Anglo-Saxon tribes into Britain, makes it one of my favourite Arthurian films.

This film, had they given the British their due, would have surpassed it.  It's beautifully filmed, clever, funny, and full of all the things I love about the King Arthur myths - magic, action, and more magic (seriously, though, the magic in this was done so well).

Arthur: Legend of the Sword was a stunning film.  It was sincerely beautiful, funny, full of action, great acting... it honestly has everything going for it.  I'm really only bothered by the replacing of the Britishness with Englishness because I am so familiar with the mythology and history surrounding the Arthurian myths.  Ordinary folk probably won't be annoyed by it in the slightest.

In short, go see this film.  It is stunning, and so wittily filmed, edited and acted.

Good morning, Readers!

First of all, let me apologise for the lack of blogging this week.  I fell so, so ill following ComicCon.  I was bedridden for two days and didn't have the energy or wherewithal to even blog.  I had some seriously awesome posts planned.  Oh well.  I'll post them next week, I guess!

The one thing I did want to mention this week was Ottawa ComicCon.

It was genuinely a wonderful time, as it always is, despite a rocky start.

What rocky start?  Well, first of all, UPS failed to deliver the books I required for the convention, despite my leaving the cheque with a signed consent to leave the package at my door as instructed on the delivery notice.  This presented a huge problem, as I don't have a car, and it was impossible for me to pick up the package at the depot.  The package, incidentally, was a box of books.  That's right.  It was stock that I needed for ComicCon.  You can probably understand how stressful that might have been.

Friends to the rescue.

After a long, difficult phone call with their customer service, it was decided that the best thing I could do was leave the parcel at the depot and hope that I had friends free first thing Friday morning to drive me to pick it up.  Luckily, I did.  Many, in fact, offered their aid and it was SO NICE.  I've mentioned it before, but I honestly have the best friends anyone could ask for.

My friend Bill picked me up first thing Friday morning, drove me to the depot, and then drove me to the EY Centre so I could actually set up my books and be ready for the convention.

I also had to put on my brave face.  I was exhausted from the stress of the day before, and experiencing that weird dullness you get when you've been hyper-stressed and the stress is removed.  I call it a stress hangover.  You know what I'm talking about, right?  Anyway, I had a stress hangover.

Despite my feeling awful, the first day went exceptionally well.  There were a large number of readers that dropped by the table.  And someone who watched my live streams dropped by for a chat!  That was a highlight, as I didn't expect it at all.

I'm so sorry, mate, I forgot to ask your name.  I was really out of it.  But I hope you know how much I appreciated you dropping by to say hello.  Hopefully I'll have a chance to talk to you again.  Hopefully I won't be quite so out of it, next time!

I sold well on day one.  So well, in fact, that I was worried I'd run out of stock before the convention end.  In all honesty, it doesn't say all that much, as I didn't have that much stock to begin with (it's a balancing act, being not the wealthiest and trying to have enough stock).  But still, the worry was there.

It's a great problem to have, really.

The Amazing Flatmate had a table at the convention, but was out of town on a shopping trip for a show she's working on, and so couldn't be there Friday.  I tried to do up her table as best I could, and manned both tables on Friday.  It was great.  She hand-paints shoes, and they are just the cutest things.  I was very proud to stand behind that table, let me tell you.

Saturday, I was all over the place.  I teach women's kickboxing and self-defence, and it was the first class of the term.  I couldn't miss it.  Thankfully, the Amazing Flatmate and our friend April continued to be amazing and watched my table for me while I taught (seriously, though. The best friends).  I was there earlier than anticipated, and took over during the lunch hour.

Again, it was a fantastic day, with return readers coming to the table.  Return readers, incidentally, are the best.  It's so nice to see people who have enjoyed your work previously come back for more.  It's incredibly flattering, and makes me feel like maybe it wasn't the worst decision of my life to attempt a career in fiction writing!

By mid-afternoon on day two, I was down to my last copy each of the two Seraphimé Saga books.  Once again, a fantastic problem to have.

Day three was also wonderful!  I'm having issues remembering it, though the stress hangover was finally done, and I had a lot of energy.  It was a great day.  Right at the end, my kung fu brother showed up for a chat.  I hadn't seen him in a while and it was so good to catch up, even if only briefly.  By that time, I had sold out of four titles: Ethan Cadfael: The Battle Prince, The Summer Bird, The Winter Wolf, and Sky Road Walker.

Wow!

Thanks everyone for a fantastic ComicCon.  Thank  you to everyone who dropped by my table for a chat, or to pick up a book.  Thanks to my return readers (seriously, that's awesome of you), and to those who watch my live streams for stopping by.  Honestly, I had a blast, despite the harsh start.

I couldn't have asked for a better convention. Thanks everyone!

I will be back to my regular blogging schedule next week.  Thanks for bearing with me!  I have a lot of work to catch up on, so I must dash.

​Ciao!