Hot Off the Press Party with Dragon Moon Press and EDGE

Last night was the Fall Release Book Launch for the new titles from Tesseracts/EDGE/Dragon Moon Press. It was at Calgary's Historic Fire Hall #6 (currently called The Outdoor Resource Centre) in the hip Kensington area. It's a nice brick structure with the former fire truck bays converted into meeting rooms -- the party was held in one of these.


This is where the fire trucks used to drive out of --->





The evening started off with some munchies and live music, then we heard readings from Randy McCharles and Susan Forest, both of whom have their work published in Tesseracts Eleven, which was clearly one of the best selling titles. I picked one up myself and got it signed. Randy's story was a humorous piece called "Vampires of the Rockies", which he did not read to completion, leaving us wondering how it would end, and Susan read her short called "Tomorrow and Tomorrow", which was a near future examination of being practical in the face of adversity. The ending was a real gut-kicker.

I read last, opting for an abridged version of Chapter 5 from The Longevity Thesis, and managed not to screw it up. I tried to incorporate advice given to me from my last reading, keeping it light, short, not too much intro, starting off with a bio of myself so people knew who they were listening to and trying to work the "tease factor". As Randy explained to me, the whole point of doing a reading is not to explain what you wrote, but to get people to wonder what the rest of the story is, so that they go looking to read the book. I think I got it right. At least I extracted a few laughs from the crowd during the intro.

There were a couple of big names there, including Robert Sawyer and his imprint editor/publisher Kirsten Morrell, as well as Dr. Rebbecca Bradley and the man himself, Brian Hades. I also got to hang out with some friends, my kick-boxing buddy Laura, editor/publisher buddy Tim Reynolds (who finally introduced me to his partner Sue!), Ron from IFWA, who I'd met at ConVersion this year, Brian's vivacious wife Anita, Janice Shoults also from EDGE, and of course Justyn Perry, who was the organiser of this shindig. Nerves aside, I had a pretty good time.

Robert Sawyer and the lovely Kirsten Morrell.~~~~~I get to sign a book for Susan Forest!