I’ll be attending Can*Con in Ottawa this week Oct 16-18 and promoting SuperCanucks.
I’m not on any panels this weekend, but am part of a group signing from 5-530 pm in the dealers room near the Bakka-Phoenix table. Bakka-Phoenix will have copies of SuperCanucks for sale and I will also be brining some copies of the anthology with me, in case they run out or you find me at the Con and don’t want to hit the vendors room.
I’m so proud of this collection of stories about small-town Canadian Superheroes. Around a year ago we started asking around for poeple to read the collection and give us their impression of the anthology so we could use their words to promote the book. Especially to book buyers and book stores.
We were fortunate enough to get blurbs from Stephen Kotowych the editor of Year’s Best Canadian SF and Fantasy, Kate Heartfield, and Mark Leslie.
Here’s what they had to say.
“SuperCanucks is a joy from start to finish—a sharp, funny, and heartfelt collection that reimagines resourceful, stubborn, and unmistakably Canadian superheroes. These small-town heroes save the day from both world-ending threats and quiet disasters. Clever, compassionate, and loaded with Canadiana, these stories remind us that saving the world often starts with saving your neighbours.”
—Stephen Kotowych, Aurora Award-winning editor of Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction
“Balancing sharp satire with genuine tenderness, these stories explore grief and transformation, solidarity and sacrifice, and the quiet heroism of ordinary people standing together. This delightfully Canadian collection of homegrown heroes powerfully celebrates our heart, soul, and diversity in a brilliant love letter to the places that, until now, never made it onto any superhero map.”
—Mark Leslie, author of the Canadian Werewolf series
“SuperCanucks is an anthology that paints in all the colours, showing us many ways to be a hero. This is a deeply Canadian group of stories by some of our best short fiction writers. I enjoyed it immensely.”
—Kate Heartfield, Aurora-award winning author of The Embroidered Book
I love the line “saving the world often starts with saving your neighbours” in Stephen’s write up. It so elegantly sums up what these stories have at their heart.
I want the world to discover the talent in these pages and connect with the hometown superheroes. I think its important for Canadians to tell uniquely Canadian stories and represent the communities they don’t always see in mainstream popular culture.
I am originally from the Sault and set my story “Cross Border Clash” there because even though I haven’t lived there fulltime in over 30 years, its part of my DNA both as a person and as a writer. My main character Darcy Shaw says about himself “No one in Hollywood was going to be directing movies about Captain Eh from the Soo anytime soon.” He’s commenting on how unsexy small town Canada can be when it comes to pop culture, but ironically that’s exactly why I felt its important to represent these cities, towns, and villages that aren’t on most people’s radar. The people, the places and the situations are real even if the superheroes aren’t. (Shhh don’t tell Darcy he’s fictional!). I envisioned Darcy as a working class hero who’s day job is working the beleaguered Algoma Steel (or whatever name they’re calling it this week) where I have family and friends who have spent their entire careers working there. And even though they tell you as a writer never write to the trend (for fear you will have missed the boat by the time you story comes out) I included the very real trade war and the threat of job losses (which happened the weekend the anthology launched – more than a year after I wrote the story). I wanted to be true to the people and the places I grew up in as did many of the other authors in the collection.
Thanks for reading this far and if I don’t see you in Ottawa this weekend, I hope to see you around!