Mob scene at the Forest of Reading.

Last week, as part of the Ontario Library Association’s Forest of Reading tour – think of a U.S.O. tour, but with children’s authors and only within Ontario – I travelled to Parry Sound and North Bay with a team of great writers (and one excellent OLA staff member, Meredith). The experience was both surreal and inspiring. Over three days in two towns, my fellow Silver Birch and Red Maple nominees and I spoke to over a thousand kids in hockey arenas about our books and reading and writing.

There were nine of us up in Ontario’s ‘near North’: Natalie Hyde (I Owe You One), Wesley King (The Vindico), Steve Pitt (Running to Extremes), Marsha Skrypuch (Making Bombs for Hitler), Bill Swan (Real Justice: Fourteen and Sentenced to Death), Brit and Kari Trogen (Margaret and the Moth Tree) and Janet Wilson (Shannen and the Dream for a School). The events, organized by the tireless and astounding team of the Near North Librarians, incorporated hundreds of kids from dozens of schools, as well as author workshops, games and community groups like the fire and police departments.  At each stop, we authors were led into the arenas in a procession (to the Star Wars theme song) each with one student hoisting the banners of our book covers high, and another student, who would later introduce us to the assembled crowd, trailing behind.

Terrifying, right?

In Parry Sound, the Forest of Reading Festival was held at the Bobby Orr Community Arena. (Apparently everything in Parry Sound is named after Bobby Orr.) About 500 kids came out to cheer us on, then break up into smaller groups to talk about our individual books. When not talking about books, the kids were playing a variety of games, like beanbag toss and lollipop pull. Most distressingly, the librarians had made puzzles out of the authors’ headshots, which the students then had to assemble. Clearly serial-killer-type behavior. (Just kidding, librarians. You were very nice.)

Following that, we did two days in North Bay, for over 700 and 800 students at the West Ferris Centennial Community Arena (the birthplace of ringette!). These events were massive! The best part was that, following the big introductory ceremony, our smaller breakout workshops were conducted in sweaty locker rooms. That said, some of the students met with me, while others get to meet a therapy dog. (There’s no competing with a border collie.) During my talks, I also realized that in addition to the birthplace of ringette, North Bay was also the birthplace of the Dionne quintuplets. Since a fictional quintuplet family (the LaFlammes) feature in The Dead Kid Detective Agency, I became fairly obsessed with visiting the Dionne Quintuplet Museum in North Bay. (Tragically, it doesn’t open until Victoria Day Weekend.) I even had an opportunity to talk to North Bay CTV News, who ran a segment with me and one of my biggest fans.

Walking on sacred ground.

One of the best parts of these tours – aside from discovering various tidbits of local history and spending time with my charming fellow authors – is meeting the fans who are reading the book. Is it wrong that I was so heartened to find all the weird and quiet kids liked The Dead Kid Detective Agency the most? But many of the schools had ‘top ten’ badges for kids who had read 10 of the various Forest of Reading nominees. So, so many kids had top ten badges! As a writer and someone who works in books publishing, it was heartening to witness.

This Wednesday and Thursday, the big Festival of Trees hits Toronto, with a monster event at Harbourfront Centre. Apparently, thousands of kids from the Greater Toronto Area attend. (I’m slightly terrified.) On Thursday, they’ll also announce the winners of the Silver Birch Express, Silver Birch Nonfiction and Silver Birch Fiction Awards. I’m certain I don’t have the slightest chance in the world, but it will be nice to be up there on the stage with people like Kevin Sylvester and Janet McNaughton. And more importantly, to know that the audience is filled with thousands of kids really excited about reading.

One of four Valentine's Day cards on display at the OLA Superconference!

This coming week, the Ontario Library Association’s Super Conference 2013 hits Toronto’s Metro Convention Centre (255 Front Street West), and this year, I’ll be there as an author! The Ontario Library Association is Canada’s largest library organization and OLA’s Super Conference is Canada’s largest education event in librarianship. The conference includes a trade show, countless informational panels and sessions and author signings.

I’ll be doing a few different things in support of my Silver Birch nomination for The Dead Kid Detective Agency and the forthcoming publication of Dial ‘M’ for Morna. I’ll be part of the Forest of Reading breakfast at the Super Conference on Thursday, January 31, in which the 2013 nominees and 2012 winners eat with librarians from across the province. (Watch me drink coffee with Kevin Sylvester! Sweet deal!)

Following that, I’ll be part of the Authors’ Booking Service’s session, Guess Who’s Coming to Visit (in Room # 326), in which the service will explain how to book authors to teachers and librarians. They’ll show the audience members how to contact their authors (of which I’m one), as well as give hints on subsidies and take the mystery out of the entire booking process. And for the rest of the conference, I’ll be signing books and excellent new Dead Kid Valentine’s Day cards that the good people at ECW Press produced (see above). Check the schedule below; I’ll be signing at both the Whitehots booth (511), as well as the Follett booth (713/715) at different times.

If you’re a librarian (or somehow library-adjacent), I hope to see you there!

Thursday, January 31

7:45 a.m. – Forest of Reading Breakfast – by invitation only

9:05 – 10:40 a.m. – Authors Booking Service presents Guess Who’s Coming to Visit (# 326) – MTCC 202CD

3:00 – 4:00 p.m. – Signing at Follett Booth – Booth #713/715

Friday, February 1

1:00 – 2:00 p.m. – Signing at Whitehots Booth – Booth #511

Over 50 authors will be reading in beautiful sites around the village. Bring a blanket or folding chair, and a sun hat or rain gear. The festival takes place rain or shine! Great author line-up: Michael Ondaatje, Ami McKay (The Birth House), Lilian Nattel (Web of Angels), Eva Stachniak (The Winter Palace), Carmen Aguirre (Something Fierce, 2012 Canada Reads), Trevor Cole (Practical Jean, 2011 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour), Tanis Rideout (Above all Things, just released & getting great reviews!), Donna Morrissey, Nora Young, Michele Landsberg, poets Roo Borson, Don McKay, Tim Lilburn, George Elliot Clarke and more!  Children’s Authors site and two reading sets for teens. Book signing, food vendors, licensed patio.  Visit edenmillswritersfestival.ca for the complete author list.

Tickets: $15 adults, $10 students, children under 14 free. Available at the gate, The Bookshelf or online at Ticketpro.com.

I’ll be one of the invited young adult authors, which includes such far-better creators as Alan Stratton (The Grave Robber’s Apprentice), Mariko Tamaki (Skim, (You )Set Me on Fire), Teresa Toten (The Taming) and Julie Wilson (Seen Reading). The following day (Monday, September 17), I’ll be leading high school writing workshops all day at Camp Edgewood. Contact Adrian Hoad-Reddick at hoad@hoadworks.com if you or a student you know would be interested in taking part.

Visual approximation of blogger's artistic frustration.

The other week I attended Fan Expo Canada, and while I sat on a great panel about writing the supernatural for young readers with Kelley Armstrong and Max Turner, then signed at my publisher, ECW’s, booth, it was the first year I wasn’t sitting behind a table (or ‘tabling’) at Fan Expo.

For the past ten years or so, I’ve always had some comic or illustrated product to sell, whether it was my zine versions of The Amazing Challengers of Unknown Mystery, the slightly slicker versions of that comic, Quarter-Life Crisis, The Dead Kid Detective Agency or my calendars of supervillain erotica.

Though I booked part of a table with my SketchKrieg! illustration crew, a month prior to Fan Expo I realized that I would have absolutely nothing new to display. I have become very sheepish about the whole thing; I feel like slowly but surely I’m sliding away from becoming a comic illustrator. Between work and writing The Dead Kid Detective Agency (which is actually going  pretty well) and countless workshops, I have almost no time to work on the second book of Quarter-Life Crisis, as desperately as I want to. I feel less and less like a guy who makes comics and more and more like a guy who takes up table space at Fan Expo with the same old junk. Additionally, it’s hard facing those few people who are actually looking for the second book and admitting I still don’t have it completed.

Panel at Fan Expo. (Photo by Crissy Calhoun.)

So, I didn’t table at Fan Expo this year, and it was relatively pleasant. I didn’t have to arrive at 8:30 in the morning. I could sit in on panels. I spent a good half-hour going through dollar bins and finding some sweet Alan Davis issues of Batman and the Outsiders. But I didn’t feel much like a comic creator.

The sad part was that comic creators as a species seemed few and far between in Artist Alley at Fan Expo. Most of Artist Alley was T-shirts and prints based on other people’s properties: humorous Dr. Who T-shirts or prints of Harley Quinn. That stuff is great. But it would have been great to see more original new comic books there. (Maybe they’ve all abandoned Fan Expo for TCAF. It would make sense.)

I’m hoping I can get back on the horse soon with Quarter-Life Crisis, because I miss it, but with the fall publishing season and my rewrite of Dial ‘M’ for Morna due soon, I fear my post-apocalyptic Toronto comic book will never fall off the backburner. That would make me very sad. We’ll see.

That said, I’ll still be attending on Saturday, August 25. I am part of a panel at 4:00 p.m., entitled Stories for Little Monsters. Other authors and I will be talking about writing the supernatural for younger readers. (Tragically, this will not be a panel about the Fred Savage / Howie Mandel comedy of the same name, nor a discussion of Lady Gaga’s fanbase.)

Following the panel, I’ll be signing copies of The Dead Kid Detective Agency (and Little Monsters DVDs) at the ECW Press booth. (5 to 5:30 p.m.) Please drop by at either time to say ‘hello.’ And visit my friends at SketchKrieg! during the entire convention.

Just one of my many TCAF purchases.

Last weekend was the annual Toronto Comic Arts Festival, and what a weekend it was! For the uninitiated, TCAF is a free celebration of comics and graphic novels and their creators, which culminates in a two-day exhibition and vendor fair featuring hundreds of comics creators from around the world, held at Toronto Reference Library in Toronto, Canada. This year’s festival featured such luminaries as Jeff Smith, Kate Beaton, Konami Kanata, Bryan Lee O’Malley, Alison Bechdel and more. My fellow SketchKrieg! members and I were stationed on the second floor, selling books and meeting new people. If you’ve never been, you should really attend – it’s a wonderful festival!

The TCAF weekend was doubly exciting this year as two members of TCAF – Brian Hoang (Medicine) and Gillian Newland (A Chanukah Noel) – were married on the Saturday night! SketchKrieg! now features two married members. It’s only a matter of time before Jason Loo (Loo Harvest) and I announce our engagement.

TCAF was a truly amazing celebration of comics. Not only did I sell a surprising (to me) number of copies of Quarter-Life Crisis, The Dead Kid Detective Agency and the brand-new DOOM: Love Poems for Supervillains, I met a number of creators I really admire and discovered several new ones! Congratulations and major thanks to all the TCAF organizers and the army of volunteers. (TCAF is also one of the best run comic festivals ever – they’ve thought of everything!)

Books purchased at TCAF:

Sassy Mavericks by Brian Evinou
Hector Umbra by Uli Oesterle
Sparky O’Hare: Master Electrician by Mawil
Manta-Man by Chad Sell
Teen Boat by Dave Roman and John Green
Ultimate Kate or Die by Kate Leth

TCAF poster by Gabriel Ba and Fabian Moon

The Toronto Comic Arts Festival is a week long celebration of comics and graphic novels and their creators, which culminates in a two-day exhibition and vendor fair featuring hundreds of comics creators from around the world at the Toronto Reference Library (789 Yonge Street). Seriously, it’s the best thing ever to happen in Toronto and I feel forever indebted to the people at The Beguiling who make it happen every year.

I’ll be part of a table at the weekend exhibition with my fellow SketchKrieg! illustrators, so please come by and say ‘hello.’ I’ll be selling The Dead Kid Detective Agency, the brand-new DOOM: Love Poems for Supervillains, the also-brand-new  SketchKrieg! Paper Trail collaborative comic book and more. I’ll also be sheepishly apologizing for not having the new Quarter-Life Crisis book done yet. (My new joke: ‘By the time I’m done, I’ll have to change the name to Mid-Life Crisis.’)

Even if you don’t say ‘hello,’ just go to this. It’s an incredible comics event. More information can be found at torontocomics.com.

Just one of the amazing images gracing the male supervillain erotica calendar.

Yes, friends, I write this to you mid-FanExpo, when I should be resting up for Saturday. So far, so good. I’ve seen a variety of amazing costumes, and have convinced many unsuspecting people to buy calendars of supervillain erotica. My fellow illustrators in SketchKrieg! and I are keeping it locked down near the Real Steel booth. I even talked (and acted as impromptu moderator) on two author panels!

Thanks to my fellow panelists for talking with me today, and to all the excellent people who listened to the panels, then dropped by the table afterward. That was way too nice!

The bad news: no new book of Quarter-Life Crisis. There are a few disappointed fans of the Brothers Yung, and I apologize to them sincerely.

The good news: I have a dazzling new calendar of male supervillain erotica, and it’s going to brighten some office walls. Also, I’ll be signing my book, The Dead Kid Detective Agency, at the ECW Press Booth on Saturday at 2 p.m.

The weird news: someone was at FanExpo dressed in a Baseketball ‘Beers’ costume. Idiosyncratic, to be sure, but I’m not sure where that fits into the horror-comic-scifi-anime spectrum.

Two more days of FanExpo to go. To be continued …