The last round of the Artsy Games Incubator was really good — we had a longer run (meeting weekly for six weeks) than the first round, and we all ended up making videogames worth showing. So we’re doing an open house at the Mobile Experience Lab at 52 McCaul St. (3rd floor) on Wed. April 23rd at 7pm, where there’ll be short presentations of the games we made using accessible tools. It’s a great time to find out more about future rounds of the AGI, and we’re also inviting people in the indie games community at large to bring their games-in-progress to demo — and no, you don’t have to identify as an artist. Admission: a game-in-progress, or a snack for the snack table. For a taste of what’s to come, check out some of the screenshots below.
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Both critical raves and good sales? Eerie.

Therefore Repent! got a starred review in last month’s issue of Quill and Quire, made the Best of 2007 list in this month’s issue, and actually squeaked into the bestseller list for Canadian graphic novels last week.

Salgood Sam has booked the Montreal TR! launch at the newly opened Librairie Drawn & Quarterly Bookstore (211 Bernard Ouest) on Saturday, December 8, 7-9pm. As I’ve been in the baby zone, he’s been taking point lately with an audio ad and tabling at Expozine.

All this and it hasn’t even come out in the US yet! It’s due to hit the stores down south in January via Diamond (# NOV073660) and the US publisher IDW has printed up a great looking 30 page sampler to promote it: drop a line if you want some for your store or your pals. UPDATE: Salgood has a nice interview here, and the Montreal Mirror did an article as well.

The first third of Therefore Repent! — 60 pages — is now available for your browsing pleasure. And not only is it free to read, it’s also free to use: we’re licencing the jpg versions of these as remixable under this Creative Commons licence. So, if you’ve ever wondered what’d it’d be like to be the writer of a comic book and work with as talented an artist as Salgood Sam, now you can. Open a page up in photoshop or Gimp and replace my words with more interesting ones. Colour the pictures. Use the images as graphics for your non-commercial projects. Send the results to us and we’ll put ‘em up on the site: even better, we’ll send the three most inspiring remixes a free book.

I’ll be doing a Therefore Repent! launch in Vancouver on Friday, Sept. 28th with the creators of True Loves (Jason Turner & Manien Bothma), Jobgoblin (Brian Fukushima), and Hatesong (Fred Grisholm). It’s at Lucky’s Comics, 7-10pm, Free. Then I’m back in Toronto on the 30th for Word on the Street — I’ll be signing books at my table in Fringe Beat between doing a presentation called Be Your Own Boss In The World Of Publishing and a panel with Willow Dawson and Ray Fawkes called “I Have A Great Idea For A Story, But I Need An Artist!” Come say hi!

The Vancouver International Digital Festival, with the intriguing catchline of “reminiscing about the future,” is hosting the Canadian premiere of Infest Wisely at Vancity Theatre (1181 Seymour, 4pm, $10) on Sunday, September 23rd. I’ll be presenting it and also participating in a Vidfest panel on Monday called “The Wisdom of Crowds: Web 2.0 Democracy or Mob Mentality?” that should be pretty spirited: I already know I completely disagree with one of the panelists.

I’ve also just confirmed that there’ll be a free sneak preview screening as well in Montreal on Friday, Sept 21 8-11pm in Dare-Dare, a gallery situated in a park with no name. Myself and Craig will be there to present it and there’ll also be vids by two other excellent community moviemaking projects, The Assembly and VideoHymn. Click through to see Rickie’s sweet bilingual trippple films flyer. Update: Warren Frey did a videoblog interview of me in Vancouver.

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Therefore Repent!, my post-Rapture graphic novel, is launching on Thursday August 16th to kick off the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. It’s a co-launch with another comic about the end of the world — my pal Claudia Dávila has written a thoughtful and ultimately hopeful story about what happens when the world runs out of oil. As well as the books being on sale, Salgood Sam will be bringing down the original Therefore Repent! art from Montreal for folks to ogle — crazy ass shit like this. Keep reading to see the neato flyer for the event. Read the rest of this post »

A couple years back they started having Canzine at the rather amazing Gladstone Hotel, a flophouse-turned-artspace in the heart of Parkdale. It was already a huge, eclectic zine fair, and now, if you had an idea for something beyond tabling your zine that needed a bigger canvas, you could get a room — and lots of interesting stuff ensued. This year, to mark the fifth anniversary of No Media Kings, I’m checking into Room 214.

And boy, do I have plans for this room! I’ll be launching my DVDzine Novel Amusements #5: The Games and Shames Issue with microscreenings; I’m hosting three very casual themed meetups for people into self-publishing books, touring, or videogame-making to chit-chat; and I’ll be moderating two more formal discussions, an indie distribution thinktank and a panel on collaboration: Are You Too D.I.Y.?

It’s all happening Oct. 30th at 1214 Queen St. W. in Toronto, check the schedule below for exact times. Everything’s free.

UPDATE: I recorded the collaboration panel: pics and MP3s now available.
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I knew it was going to be a good visit when Dmytri gave me a gift when we arrived. It was a patch with the No Media Kings logo that he’d bought off some local punk girls at a flea market in Berlin.

It’s always a kick to see people steal my logo, but this really floored me.

And the show in Berlin was indeed really fun…

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A lot of science fiction writers grow up going to conventions, but I was writing SF seriously for over a decade before I went to my first one. (Why pay $50 to go to a hotel in the suburbs when I could go to a punk show downtown for $5? went my thinking.) But Emily was so enthusiastic about WisCon that I decided to go… anything that billed itself as the World’s Only Feminist Science Fiction Conference had be be interesting, at least.

Who knew that feminism and SF would be two great tastes that go great together?
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The Vancouver Public Library has been kind enough to fly me out to do a reading a week today (Fri. March 4th, 7:30pm, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia St., free). I was in the city launching An Opening Act of Unspeakable Evil just this November but it’ll nice to get together with friends and not have the “catching up” portion consume the entire time together–I usually visit annually if I’m lucky. And as we’re into the slush season here I’ll be happy to be able to stroll without sloshing. While I’m out west I’ll also be going to the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, cheering for N to win the Indie Games Festival.

At the Vancouver show I’ll be showing some of my latest vids, reading my contribution to the recently published Gamers anthology, telling the embarrassing story of how I left Vancouver, and enacting some rituals of the urban occult. Y’know, like worshipping the false god Ramen. I did the latter when I was last in town at the Butchershop, click through to see a little video clip from that show.

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I gave the best talk of my life to a hall of over 500 programmers this summer. I was the dinner speaker for the Linux Symposium, which is described thusly: “With attendees coming from over 30 different countries, the Symposium is probably the single most comprehensive collection of Linux experts in the world.” What the hell could I have to say to them? Well, Linux programmers created a community-built alternative that rivaled the best that a company can produce–not unlike what’s happening in the indie arts community. In do-it-yourself communities all over, really, often spurred on corporate consolidation. So I was able to share my adventures in the creative commons and many people found it interesting and relevant.

It was the inspiration I needed to do something I’ve wanted to for a while–switch to a Linux desktop. I started keeping a diary of my migration, which I’ll be adding to…
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I did a seminar at Canzine, a zine fair in Toronto. It focused on the paradoxical notion that if you want to live without bosses, you have to be self-disciplined. I attribute my productivity to being well organized and hopefully I passed on a few pointers to fellow anti-authoritarian types, complete with absurd graphs and diagrams.

I’m happy to do it again, so get in touch if you’re having an event that you think it might be useful for. I’ve put my notes and images online — feel free to add your own tips and problems in the comments.
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