Good morning, Readers.
So sorry I didn't post at all yesterday. The weird cold cough thing I've been fighting for days on end got the better of me yesterday. I awoke with my alarm at the usual time and realised I just couldn't. I couldn't do life yesterday. So I fired an email off to work and collapsed back into bed. It was 2:00pm when I next woke. Yup. I was one exhausted gal.
Excuses aside, I intend to continue with the awesomeness that was Can Con 2014.
Right.
The second day of the convention saw the Amazing Flatmate and I there early enough to get breakfast and coffee and still beat the opening of the dealer's room. It was then I realised that I had a panel first thing n the morning, and immediately following that, I had a reading. All of my books were inside the dealer's room. And I had yet to select the passage I wanted to read.
I'm very organised like that.
Luckily, a member of the hotel staff with a key was by and he very kindly opened the door for me. I ducked in, grabbed by book and flipped through, hoping to find something entertaining to read to an audience. Since there was time, I read some of it to the Amazing Flatmate as a sort of approval-getting-plus-practice-because-I-didn't-really-have-time-to-select-a-different-passage-if-there-was-no-approval-forthcoming thing. The approval did come, but I think that's just because the Amazing Flatmate is kind.
In any case, I was as prepared as I could possibly hope to be and so I left to head to the first panel of the day:
The Economics of Self-Publishing, expertly moderated by Kevin Johns. I was seated once again in the middle, between Mark Leslie Lefebvre and Tim Carter. Tim and I had met before at Can Con two years ago. He's a lovely guy who writes very funny young adult books. This was the first time I've ever met Kevin Johns or Mark Lefebvre. Mr. Johns is a self-published author and podcast creator. Mr. Lefebvre is the Director of Self-Publishing & Author Relations with Kobo and is an author himself. It was a great panel, with really interesting stuff. We all agreed that self-publishing was awesome, but if you're in it for the money, you're screwed! It was vaguely depressing, really.
Immediately after that panel, I ducked out of the room and sprinted to the next, worried I'd be late for my reading. I, thankfully, wasn't. I shared the hour in the room with the very talented Maaja Wentz, who is not only a fantastic writer and poet, but a genuinely wonderful person as well. The reading went well... ish. I stumbled over a few words and accidentally called one of my characters by a friend's name. In my defence, Bull and Bill are very similar, and I had just looked up to see Bill at the moment I was attempting to say Bull. Anyway, a few of the funnier passages got a little chuckle from the audience. The best part was, I made it in time. The reading took 20 minutes, giving Maaja plenty of time to get ready for hers. She read beautifully.
I had the rest of the afternoon to hang out in the dealer's room. And so I did. It is always nice to be able to relax a little bit at conventions, and my table was pretty much my safe haven. Since I was unwell, I don't really remember much except being dog tired. I had two more panels to attend, however, so I sucked it up and did my best to appear cheerful.
That panel was at 6:00pm and was on Multimedia Fandom. None of us were too sure what was meant by that, but we ended up having a great discussion all the same. This panel was moderated by Rebecca Simkin, of The Sunburst Award. She was a great moderator. Joining me on the panel was the cosplayer Alice Black, Gina Frietag of the new Cellar Door Film Festival, the best in Ottawa speculative fiction film and the wonderful Jay Odjick, who was the media guest of honour at Can Con this year. Jay is the talent behind Kagagi the Raven, a graphic novel turned serial animated television show about an indigenous superhero. I met Jay for the first time at the panel. He is genuinely one of the nicest, funniest guys I have ever had the pleasure of meeting, and he came up with some wonderful (and not a little terrifying) stories of fans at this panel. The first episode of Kagagi aired Sunday morning at the con, and it looks really amazing. Do me a favour, go like their Facebook Page, would you?
Immediately after that panel, I rushed away to another panel, also moderated by Rebecca Simkin. The panel was called Email Spam: Can a Narrative be Created? It was a great deal of fun. I sat with authors Tim Carter, Max Turner, and Geoff Gander. We were given bags of cut up sections of spam, paper and tape and told to go to town. There were no rules. Having no idea what I was doing, I used the scraps of spam to create a story, writing in bits and pieces to flesh it out. My first story worked really well. My second story less so. I would like to include them in this post, but it's already a ridiculously long post, so I'll just include them HERE and HERE. Needless to say, it was actually a tonne of fun and my fellow panellists churned out some really awesome stuff!
I was intending to go home immeidately following that panel, but the laughter that panel created gave me an unexpected second wind, so I headed over to Marie Bilodeau's Paper Aeroplane contest instead. I was a judge in this contest and had a lot of fun adding and detracting points based on the contestant's performances. It was great fun. Still feeling good, I headed up to the ChiZine Publications party, but quickly plummeted into exhausted as all frak, territory. So, not long after I arrived, I went home.
Sleep was blissful that night!
Tomorrow I'll talk about the final day on Can Con 2014. I think I've babbled on quite long enough, don't you?
Ciao!
So sorry I didn't post at all yesterday. The weird cold cough thing I've been fighting for days on end got the better of me yesterday. I awoke with my alarm at the usual time and realised I just couldn't. I couldn't do life yesterday. So I fired an email off to work and collapsed back into bed. It was 2:00pm when I next woke. Yup. I was one exhausted gal.
Excuses aside, I intend to continue with the awesomeness that was Can Con 2014.
Right.
The second day of the convention saw the Amazing Flatmate and I there early enough to get breakfast and coffee and still beat the opening of the dealer's room. It was then I realised that I had a panel first thing n the morning, and immediately following that, I had a reading. All of my books were inside the dealer's room. And I had yet to select the passage I wanted to read.
I'm very organised like that.
Luckily, a member of the hotel staff with a key was by and he very kindly opened the door for me. I ducked in, grabbed by book and flipped through, hoping to find something entertaining to read to an audience. Since there was time, I read some of it to the Amazing Flatmate as a sort of approval-getting-plus-practice-because-I-didn't-really-have-time-to-select-a-different-passage-if-there-was-no-approval-forthcoming thing. The approval did come, but I think that's just because the Amazing Flatmate is kind.
In any case, I was as prepared as I could possibly hope to be and so I left to head to the first panel of the day:
The Economics of Self-Publishing, expertly moderated by Kevin Johns. I was seated once again in the middle, between Mark Leslie Lefebvre and Tim Carter. Tim and I had met before at Can Con two years ago. He's a lovely guy who writes very funny young adult books. This was the first time I've ever met Kevin Johns or Mark Lefebvre. Mr. Johns is a self-published author and podcast creator. Mr. Lefebvre is the Director of Self-Publishing & Author Relations with Kobo and is an author himself. It was a great panel, with really interesting stuff. We all agreed that self-publishing was awesome, but if you're in it for the money, you're screwed! It was vaguely depressing, really.
Immediately after that panel, I ducked out of the room and sprinted to the next, worried I'd be late for my reading. I, thankfully, wasn't. I shared the hour in the room with the very talented Maaja Wentz, who is not only a fantastic writer and poet, but a genuinely wonderful person as well. The reading went well... ish. I stumbled over a few words and accidentally called one of my characters by a friend's name. In my defence, Bull and Bill are very similar, and I had just looked up to see Bill at the moment I was attempting to say Bull. Anyway, a few of the funnier passages got a little chuckle from the audience. The best part was, I made it in time. The reading took 20 minutes, giving Maaja plenty of time to get ready for hers. She read beautifully.
I had the rest of the afternoon to hang out in the dealer's room. And so I did. It is always nice to be able to relax a little bit at conventions, and my table was pretty much my safe haven. Since I was unwell, I don't really remember much except being dog tired. I had two more panels to attend, however, so I sucked it up and did my best to appear cheerful.
That panel was at 6:00pm and was on Multimedia Fandom. None of us were too sure what was meant by that, but we ended up having a great discussion all the same. This panel was moderated by Rebecca Simkin, of The Sunburst Award. She was a great moderator. Joining me on the panel was the cosplayer Alice Black, Gina Frietag of the new Cellar Door Film Festival, the best in Ottawa speculative fiction film and the wonderful Jay Odjick, who was the media guest of honour at Can Con this year. Jay is the talent behind Kagagi the Raven, a graphic novel turned serial animated television show about an indigenous superhero. I met Jay for the first time at the panel. He is genuinely one of the nicest, funniest guys I have ever had the pleasure of meeting, and he came up with some wonderful (and not a little terrifying) stories of fans at this panel. The first episode of Kagagi aired Sunday morning at the con, and it looks really amazing. Do me a favour, go like their Facebook Page, would you?
Immediately after that panel, I rushed away to another panel, also moderated by Rebecca Simkin. The panel was called Email Spam: Can a Narrative be Created? It was a great deal of fun. I sat with authors Tim Carter, Max Turner, and Geoff Gander. We were given bags of cut up sections of spam, paper and tape and told to go to town. There were no rules. Having no idea what I was doing, I used the scraps of spam to create a story, writing in bits and pieces to flesh it out. My first story worked really well. My second story less so. I would like to include them in this post, but it's already a ridiculously long post, so I'll just include them HERE and HERE. Needless to say, it was actually a tonne of fun and my fellow panellists churned out some really awesome stuff!
I was intending to go home immeidately following that panel, but the laughter that panel created gave me an unexpected second wind, so I headed over to Marie Bilodeau's Paper Aeroplane contest instead. I was a judge in this contest and had a lot of fun adding and detracting points based on the contestant's performances. It was great fun. Still feeling good, I headed up to the ChiZine Publications party, but quickly plummeted into exhausted as all frak, territory. So, not long after I arrived, I went home.
Sleep was blissful that night!
Tomorrow I'll talk about the final day on Can Con 2014. I think I've babbled on quite long enough, don't you?
Ciao!
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