Category: Inspiring Creators

  • Seeding Utopias & Resisting Dystopias

    Credit: Annette Nedilenka

    After editing the sci-fi anthology Toronto 2033 for Spacing, the group of writers I’d brought together were interested in working on another project. We chose the name The Multiversity Collective and proposed a political sci-fi event series at the Toronto Public Library. A few days ago, we had our kickoff event that started a full season of workshops, talks, discussions and performances!

    On the cusp of 2020, more than a dozen science fiction creators will be germinating wild ideas with free weekly events at the Oakwood Village Library. Novelists, hardware hackers, game creators, and more will be inspiring those who believe in social change and a diverse future.
    Check out the schedule at multiversitycollective.net!

  • Kirby is a Remix


    Back when I knew him in Toronto, Kirby Ferguson was making dirty comedy shorts and directing a segment of my sci-fi flick Infest Wisely. Five years later, he’s doing Ted talks and raising 50K+ for his next video thinkpiece series. His Everything is a Remix series is to blame for his ascension from the gutter — it’s a terrific, much needed piece of populist cultural theory. Watch it for free here! Earlier today we sat down to talk reinvention, being of service, and the benefits of obscurity.

    You can download the newest episode in the No Media Kings Inspiring Creators podcast over here, subscribe to it via RSS2 or iTunes, or just click play below. Feedback welcome! I just got a new microphone, so hopefully it’s loud enough to listen to while you do the dishes.

  • The Lo-fi Sci-fi Salons

    I’m involved with the new Lo-fi Sci-fi 48 Hour Film Challenge that’s happening at the end of August. In my role as Creative Director I’ve programmed four Lo-fi Sci-fi Salons in the run-up to the Challenge.

    Each Salon will be hosted by a different local filmmaker who will be showing some inspiring fantastical shorts and then sharing some tips from their experience making science fiction movies. There’ll be lots of time before and after to meet & drink with other lo-fi sci-fi enthusiasts.

    • July 30: I will be chatting with Louis Savy, Programmer for SCI-FI-LONDON, over Skype. S-F-L is a big inspiration, and we’ll be watching some of the best shorts from its long-running 48 hr Film Challenge.
    • Aug. 6: Matthew Nayman (“Blind Spot“) will be talking quick and dirty visual effects
    • Aug. 13: David Fernandes (“Re-Wire“) will be sharing tips on props and sets on the cheap
    • Aug. 20: the folks behind the upcoming feature A Brand New You

    They’re happening Mondays at 7pm at the Monarch (12 Clinton St., Toronto). They’re free and open to the public — you don’t have to be signed up for the Challenge.

    But you totally should! It’s a great way to collaborate with new people, try something too weird and experimental for a feature, and get something small and achievable in the can. Hot tip: if you check out the first Salon you’ll get a sense of what it’s about and still have time to get the Early Bird rate ($50/team til Aug 1st).

  • David Malki ! and Ryan North Interview

    I’ve recently been inspired by the amazing long-form interview WTF podcast to revive the Inspiring Creators Series here on No Media Kings. The thing I love about Mark Maron’s style is that he is the opposite of the objective reporter — he’s a confessional, personal, self-obsessed egomaniac, and you end up loving him for it. I think when ever I was doing these interviews in the past I felt like the noble thing to do was to make it all about the person I was interviewing, when really I was most interested in having a open discussion with my peers and fellow cultural workers.

    But anyway: Machine of Death. A smart and funny crowdsourced science fiction anthology self-published by a bunch of webcomic creators becomes a #1 best seller on Amazon, is publicly denounced by right wing pundit Glenn Beck and generally flies in the face of every scrap of received wisdom about publishing. Rethinking publishing is something I know a thing or two about, and what’s even better is I know these guys, so I thought it’d be a good way to try out this whole conversational approach. David was in town for TCAF and he and Ryan nicely made their way out to my place overlooking the railway in the Junction. We chatted for about an hour and a half and I cut thirty minutes out.

    Machine of Death is available as a free e-book and in a print edition, and if you like it you should consider submitting a story (July 15th deadline!).

    No Flash? Download the MP3 here or here.

    If you dig this, you might want to subscribe to the Inspiring Creators podcast (RSS2 or itunes) or check out my other (older, more stilted) interviews with videogame maker Jon Mak, comics artist Carla Speed McNeil, or Wholphin DVD editor Brent Hoff.

  • Roundsdoctors and Hexslingers

    Two recent book trades that I felt I got the better deal of — A Dream on Two Wheels and A Book of Tongues.

    Wheels is a smart and whimsical cyclist alternate reality written by Sarah A. Chrisman, who not only handmakes her books but also a selection of hats you can wear while reading them. Lovely!

    Tongues is a baroque masterpiece. The worldbuilding is as dense and rich as China Miéville’s, and the cowboy sex smells of Jean Genet’s forbidden machismo. The fact that this outlaw confabulation has come from a debut novelist from Toronto and a Toronto publisher of excellent weird spec-fiction just makes me extra-excited.

  • Free Artsy Games Released

    Rosemary Mosco's AlbacrossThe second round of the Artsy Games Incubator went terrific: all five of us ended up with videogames you can download and play: check out Mouse Police, Bungee Fisher, Cupcake Challenge, Albacross, and my own Baby Runs This Mofo.

    It’s a good excuse to interview one of the founding sponsors of the AGI project, Jon Mak, a Toronto game designer who Newsweek dubbed a “wunderkind”. His abstract videogame Everyday Shooter came out for the PS3 and now it’s available on the PC — if you’d like a chance at winning a free copy, leave a comment in response to the MP3 interview I did with him below. In it Jon explains why Guitar Hero is fun despite being a sucky game, that he learns best through failing, how he made ES while working part-time for money thanks to context switch, & how the work gets better the more you take away.

    No Flash? Get the MP3 here.

  • Our New Twenty Year Collaborative Project

    sid-thumb.jpgAlthough we’ve been prepping for it for the better part of a year, Susan and I began the project in earnest a week ago today: her name is Sidney Amelia Bustos Munroe, and she weighed in at 7 pounds, 14 ounces.

    It’s been going great, it’s a totally engrossing and fascinating process. Susan and I have made a bunch of things together, but Sid’s by far the best. Imagine a human being, but an implausibly adorable one, and you’ll have an idea of what she’s like. And if you’ve having trouble picturing that, check out the pictures interspersed with some of my early observations. (more…)

  • How to Enjoy Conventions

    cons-thumb.jpgJust coming down from the high of the Toronto Comic Arts Festival where we not only found an excited audience for our new graphic novel (we sold 90 copies in two days!) but I got to sit beside my favourite comic maker at the convention, Carla Speed McNeil — who, incidentally, I first heard about through the first TCAF when we were on a self-publishing panel together. I did a quick 20 minute interview with her and we talked about why she creates anachronistic science fiction societies, how she gets around the fact that her work is complex and hard to promote, and the development of her sin-eating aboriginal bad-boy.

    Download the MP3 here.

    Keep reading to hear about the other amazing cons I went to this summer, as well as some tips for enjoying them! (more…)

  • How to Become a Famous Writer

    Ariel Gore gets the word out thereI’ve always prided myself on the fact that the DIY publishing articles on this site have a certain lack of, shall we say, bullshit. And normally, a book called How to Become a Famous Writer Before You’re Dead would smell a little funky to me. However, Ariel Gore, Hip Mama mag creator and indie culture maven wrote this book, and like all her books (I’m particularly fond of her memoir Atlas of the Human Heart) it is excellent. As well as sharing her own considerable experience, she interviews folks like Ursula K. Le Guin, Dave Eggers, and even me, and manages to pack more wisdom and practical advice than I’ve ever seen in a book of its ilk. (It had an extremely high nods-per-minute ratio.) She even gets the folks she interviews to give “assignments” at the end, making it a writing class unto itself. Plus it’s extremely readable — I intended to skim to find something to excerpt but I found myself sucked in and reading most of it. Below is one of my favourite sections in the book. (more…)

  • Expozine Exposes the Antisocial Homosocial

    Expozine 2006 posterartRevolver #2, which consists of an excerpt of Salgood Sam and my upcoming graphic novel Therefore Repent!, has been nominated for the Expozine Alternative Press Award for best comic. It’s an offshoot of the awesome Montreal zine fair, one of the more successfully bilingual events I’ve been to. This is the second time they’ve done the award and, although I have fairly ambiguous feelings about prizes and competitions, I think the attention it draws to underexposed artists is definitely a Good Thing.

    Case in point, a nominee in last year’s Expozine competition The Hero Book by Scott Waters.

    Scott’s a pal, and the book is great, but he’s a curmudgeon. Not likely to tour, or do readings, or talk to people, he’s not exactly a media magnet. But awards like the Expozine Award give a context in which to talk about him. Or, in this case, interview him. (more…)

  • Literary Laff Riot Set Free

    recommendations-thumb.jpgMark Slutsky is an old friend and longtime collaborator — we’ve written screenplays together and he’s acted in shorts of mine — and his studio, Automatic Vaudeville, has recently released a hilarious comedy under a Creative Commons licence for free download. The Recommendations is a 55 minute mockumentary about the horrible violence bubbling just under the genteel surface of Canadian literature. A showcase for their obvious goofball humour as well as their subtler cultural savvy, it’s my favourite of the Montreal movie studio’s almost fifty productions. To watch a trailer, read a short interview with Mark, and find out how to download it, keep reading. (more…)

  • Honouring Helen Hill

    Helen at her book launchOn the day I met Helen and Paul, we had just made the long train trip from Montreal to Halifax and I was trying to decide between showering and eating before my book launch — I figured it might be hard to find vegan food in a new city and I didn’t have time for both. Paul, who’d picked us up, ushered us into a cosy kitchen to meet Helen. She offered me some stew, and regretfully — both because I was hungry and because I always felt bad rejecting people’s hospitality — I told her that I was hard to feed: I was vegan.

    “We’re vegan too!” Helen exclaimed.

    This was a lovely introduction to the delightful paradox of Helen and Paul. (more…)