Blog Post No. 589
Last year the only convention I went to was The CKExpo in Chatham in April. It was the first one I’d been to since 2019. Back before then, I tried to do one event a month whether it was a convention or local book reading, or even a street market. This year, the first event (and for now only) event on my agenda is the Sarnia Pop Culture Show, which happened last Sunday.
The SPCS has always been good to me. This past trip was, I believe, the fourth time I’d been there and at the risk of ruining the suspense, I sold a lot more than I expected. The first time I went was shortly after No Light Tomorrow came out. I’m pretty sure it was among the first conventions I ever went to. Continue reading “The Sarnia Pop Culture Show 2024”
Last year I went to my first event since 2019. It was the
The value of a strong artist community is hard to calculate. Having people actively look for and take part in activities and share information positively impacts the artists, venues, audience, and city. I don’t want to overstate things, but the city where I live has and has had a pretty good local musician community. They supported each other, work together, and shared opportunities. Of course there are some smaller sub-groups and not everyone takes part, but as the saying goes, a rising tide lifts all ships.
Last year I reached the milestone of ten years of weekly posts. It felt a little weighty in a personal, not very important achievement kind of way. For some reason, eleven years feels a little like a new beginning. That’s not a bad thing, but it’s a little daunting. The stakes of my weekly posts are very low and if I ever miss one or stop posting so often, very little in my life would change. It’s not even that big of a challenge to write a post (that I hope is interesting and worth your small investment of time). The hardest part is coming up with the topics every week. I somehow managed it for eleven years.
Traditionally, the place where I work is closed for the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day. Since one of the larger tenants is going to be closed for that time, too, we’ll be doing the same thing this year. Technically, I’m scheduled, so I don’t get that time off. I have some lieu days that have added up over the last eight months. It’s been an experience learning how to properly use them, but the way it’s currently worked out, I can still get most of next week off.
My birthday happened over the weekend and because of the new job, I had the day off. Not that one of the perks is that I get my birthday off. I just get the same days off every week and my birthday happened to fall on one of those days. I didn’t do anything special that day. It’s just a nice little coincidence. In fact, I got up early to meet with Christian and get some writing done. Now that I’m on a bit of a roll with that, I don’t want to slip up for something as unimportant as a birthday. (I need all the meeting days I can get to keep me moving forward).
It’s actually happening and as I write this, I don’t know how I feel about it. This Saturday, I’m going to be in Chatham at the 
Before I sat down to write this week’s post, I wasn’t 100% sure what I was going to write about. I had a few half-thought-out ideas, but nothing that felt strong enough for a post. Then, I went through some old posts to determine exactly when I started the Invasion Novel (because I’m not done talking about that thing, yet and won’t be for some time). Turns out, the first post where I talk about actually starting the novel was in 
I’m not going to lie. The title of this post is a bit of a bait-and-switch. To be completely upfront, there is only one book planned for this year and even it’s only in the planning stages. I’ve started writing my part of it, though, so I want to talk a little about it. I briefly mentioned a potential 
Ben Van Dongen 