When I do appearances and travel, sometimes I’m just a guest author. Sometimes I fit right in.  The Rushcon folks are definitely my people.

I was invited to be a guest at Rushcon 14 in Toronto, August 22-24, so I could talk about CLOCKWORK ANGELS the novel and the new comic series being released by BOOM! Studios. It’s always good to have any excuse to go up to Toronto, and I gladly accepted the invitation.

I flew out a day early to spend time with Mark Leslie LeFebvre from Kobo Writing Life, since my WordFire Press does so much direct work with Kobo. Of course it was business-related, but since Mark is also a big microbrew fan (and Rush fan, too) we spent the previous evening together hitting (crawling) the local pubs, and I even had my obligatory poutine at a pub—which was far superior to any other one I’d had previously.

Mark Leslie LeFebvre, poutine, and beer: three essential items for a visit to Toronto

After spending the night in Mark’s guest bedroom, we headed out Friday morning to a meeting at the main offices of Wattpad, a vastly popular reading-sharing site, where we meet with the Wattpad people to talk about my experiences as an indie author and how WordFire Press could work with them. Wattpad is also a sponsor of next year’s Superstars Writing Seminar. We had a great brainstorming session with a lot of exciting ideas, and then Mark took me to check into my hotel for Rushcon—and then it was off to the main Kobo offices, where I met many of the staff then spent an hour behind closed doors with their development team to discuss how they could work more closely with WordFire Press, and we came up with some great ideas. After such productive talks with Wattpad and Kobo, someone remarked, “How many big traditional publishers would bring in one of their authors for meetings on how everybody could work better for the mutual benefit of all?”

Kobo held a reception, talk, and autographing for me. I gave a talk for about an hour, answered questions, signed autographs. Fans came from all around Toronto, and each attendee received Kobo copies of one of my books.  Kobo also gave me a high-end Kobo Aura eReader loaded with CLOCKWORK ANGELS and my story “Drumbeats” with Neil Peart as a door prize for Rushcon.

Then back to the Chelsea Eaton hotel to switch from my Author/Publisher persona to Rushcon Author persona—and the Rushcon VIP reception. I picked up my badge, program book, met up with the fabulous JILLIAN who is the goddess of Rushcon and a fine person, and hung out with a lot of other fans, with my table of Team Presto for a trivia game (which we didn’t win, despite my team’s outstanding performance). A good time was had by all…and we were just starting!

with Jillian Of Rushcon

As part of Team Presto, I also met Elaine Kosteva, who took the rest of the terrific photos—posted below with her permission, and my great thanks!

Saturday, I worked in the room that morning, editing BLOOD OF THE COSMOS, and then met up with friend and fan (and invaluable assistant) Jonathan Flamm, and we hauled my books over to the Rushcon venue, The Great Hall. We set up our table with many copies of CLOCKWORK ANGELS in both hardcover and trade paperback, RESURRECTION, INC (my first novel, also inspired by a Rush album), the BOOM! comic issues, and other Rush ephemera, as well as some Dan Shamble books (which the Rush fans also love).  ECW Press had arranged to deliver copies of the books, and the publisher, David Caron, would come to hear my talk on Sunday.  Apart from a bit of frantic panic when we discovered that my Square credit card reader decided not to work in Canada, we had a great morning in the dealer’s room.

During the afternoon trivia game, I presented the Kobo Reader prize to one of the winners, and also made one of two promised “big announcements”—that I would be editing a new anthology, along with John McFetridge, of stories inspired by Rush songs, to be published by ECW Press…and that I am doing an original novella titled “2113.”  [A title sure to send a tingle through every Rush fan.]

 with Elaine

I had dinner with one of my former writing students, Stephen Kotowych, got back to the room and did a little more editing (I missed the concert by the Rush tribute band Lotus Land, alas). Next day, Sunday, was my big day.  I gave my hour-long talk on the main stage in front of the full crowd. Just before I started the speech, David Caron, the publisher of ECW, arrived (and I was glad, because I wanted him to hear my second surprise “big announcement.”)  I talked about my life growing up inspired by Rush, how I had gotten to know Neil Peart through my first novel RESURRECTION, INC., which ECW had just reissued, how that led to the wildly successful CLOCKWORK ANGELS novel and comics. And then I paused and delivered the news that I had kept a close secret all along—that Neil and I were working on a sequel, CLOCKWORK LIVES, and that we’re about 1/3 of the way finished. That was greeted with a nice long round of applause!

After the talk, we sold completely out of RESURRECTION, INC as well as most of the copies of CLOCKWORK ANGELS. My time was tight, and after a quick lunch with Jonatan Flamm and David Caron (who was quite happy to hear of a new CLOCKWORK novel), David took me off to the Toronto airport—YYZ, of course—and I flew home.  A headlong flight indeed, and I enjoyed myself a lot.

I just might have to come back next year, with two new Rush-related books under my belt!

A REMINDER:  Right now, we have a big Cyberpunk Storybundle running—13 cutting-edge science fiction novels, including RESURRECTION, INC.  Name your own price to get the whole batch.  Go to Storybundle.com, or read my previous blog entry for full details.