The amazing TCAF is happening May 8-9th. Reasons to go, organized via flavours of nerds:

Comix nerds: It’s got an amazing array of international talent and all the local lights as well.
Book nerds: It’s at the newly renovated Toronto Reference Library, with new rooms and facilities to wonder at.
Game nerds: The Torontron will be there alongside the Hand Eye Society table.
No Media Kings nerds: Shannon and I will be there selling & signing Sword and chatting on panels
Cheap nerds: It’s free.

UPDATE: I am doing two panels on Saturday:

The Spirit of Indie: Where Comics Meet Video Games
Saturday, May 8th, 2:00 – 2:45pm, The Pilot

There’s more to the game industry than blockbuster, multi-system titles just as there’s more to comics than Batman. This panel
seeks to explore the ways in which independent comic artists and game developers have influenced each other and spurred each other on to explore the possibilities of their medium. Cartoonists/game contributors and creators Scott Campbell, Jamie McKelvie, Jim Munroe, and Miguel Sternberg will be interviewed by games journalist Matthew Kumar.

Tracers, Photoshoppers, Cut & Pasters: Cheaters or Revolutionaries
Saturday, May 8th, 3:30 – 4:15pm, Novella Room

Comic artistry has traditionally valued drawing things with nothing but a pen and raw illustrative talent. But people working from photoreferences, using digital tools and collaging techniques are producing some of the most innovative and beautiful work in the comic world. Does this diversify comic expression and represent an unshackling from the draftstable? Or is it just cheating? Four non-traditional comic artists discuss this and their approach to comic making. Featuring Shannon Gerard, Emily Horne, Sonja Ahlers, Ryan North, and moderator Jim Munroe.

We’re driving over to Detroit to launch the book in the city it’s set in on Saturday May 15 (7pm, Leopold’s Books, free) with Gayla Trail. If you are on Facebook you might like to check the event page or take advantage of Gerard’s crazy offer to draw your Face!

Our graphic novel, a stand-alone follow-up to Therefore Repent!, is launching as a part of the Toronto Comic Arts Festival on Thursday May 6th, 7pm, Tequila Bookworm (512 Queen Street West, upstairs), free. The artist, Shannon Gerard, will be displaying some original art from the book. If you are on Facebook you might like to check the event page or take advantage of Gerard’s crazy offer to draw your Face!

I’ll be doing a few panels at Ad Astra this Saturday April 10th:

11am Editing Your Own Work
Authors and editors share tips on how to spot the problems that are so easy to miss in your own work, how to add a bit more polish to your writing, and how to prepare your draft so that editing goes as smoothly as possible.

2pm Collaborations
Advantages (and disadvantages) of collaborating, especially in the digital world, with all the latest tools at our fingertips.

Due to a confluence of many factors (Boston is the ancestral home of Zork and MIT, an active IF community in the area, and the launch of the IF documentary GET LAMP) PAX East is looking to be the largest gathering of interactive fiction authors ever. I’ve organized this panel discussion:

No Hints Please: Adaptive Difficulty Strategies.
(Sunday, March 28th, 1:30pm-2:30pm, IF Suite)
We have different ways of collecting data on how “well” the player is doing and can shape the gameplay to suit, but not many people do it. Is the notorious difficulty of IF a design decision? Participants: Jim Munroe (Everybody Dies), Aaron Reed (Blue Lacuna), Dave Gilbert (Emerald City Confidential).

I’m super-flattered to have been asked to talk at the world’s most respected games conference.

Session title:
Creating And Nurturing Your Indie Game Community
Tuesday, March 9 (3:30pm — 4:00pm)
Description:
In two short, sweet mini-talks, notable independent game community organizers discuss how you can get involved in nurturing the indie community in your local area – or for your particular flavor of independent games. Firstly, SuperHappyDevHouse and TIGJam contributor Jeff Lindsay, who has set up Hacker Dojo in the Bay Area as a permanent base for the tech community, will explain what he’s learned from being involved in indie game site TIGSource and his other projects in the tech community. Next, Toronto-based independent creator Jim Munroe, the person behind local indie game-centric events like The Hand Eye Society and The Artsy Games Incubator, explains how the area has grown a strong indie community and how you can mobilize your area to flood “out of the basement and into the streets!”

I’ll be tabling at the excellent zine fair Expozine this weekend and sitting on a very promising sounding panel:

Printed Matter or Printed Doesn’t Matter?
Moderated by Jeff Miller (Ghost Pine fanzine)
Sat. Nov. 14th, 3pm

Expozine is Saturday, November 14 and Sunday, November 15, 2009, from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. at 5035 St-Dominique (Église Saint-Enfant Jésus, between St-Joseph and Laurier, near Laurier Métro). Free admission.

I’m also going to stick around for MIGS, the Montreal International Game Summit.

I’m producing another Artcade at Canzine on Nov. 1st with the Hand Eye Society. The last one went great, and the Canzine indie arts fair is a creative highlight for the city in a beautiful restored hotel.

This year we’ll be unveiling the indie arcade cabinet, having stations where people can draw their own videogame character which we’ll bring to life, inviting artists to sculpt in the 3D environment of a first person shooter, and more!

Sunday Nov 1st, Gladstone Hotel (1214 Queen St. West), 1-7pm, $5.

Me and Shannon will be at TCAF to debut the first issue of our Sword of My Mouth, the follow-up to my and Salgood’s Therefore Repent! graphic novel (which had an awesome debut at the last TCAF). It’s already gotten a couple nice reviews (here and here at minute 42 or so) so I’m looking forward to seeing what people think in person! Plus, Shannon will have some of the art from the book available for the event as silkscreened prints, and believe me, she knows a thing or two about silkscreening (google it if you doubt me). Need more incentive? TCAF is one of the best comic fests in the world, it’s free and it’s at a huge downtown library this year. Check it out!

I’ll be attending the amazing GDC next week. I’ve been commissioned to write a text game about my experiences for GameSetWatch, where I’ll be guest blogging during the conference.

The MacLaren Art Centre are showing My Trip to Liberty City as a part of a show called Game On! that starts Thursday, December 4, 7pm. I’ll be dropping by the reception for an hour or so, but I’ll have to leave early.

Going to Montreal to table at the fun-times zine fair Expozine & staying with my old pal, the excellent cartoonist Joe Ollmann.

Saturday, November 29 and Sunday, November 30, 2008, from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. at 5035 St-Dominique (Église Saint-Enfant Jésus, between St-Joseph and Laurier, near Laurier Métro). Free admission.

I’ll be selling $4 copies of Time Management for Anarchists and helping host the Artcade indie videogame room at Canzine:

Sunday, October 26, 2008
The Gladstone Hotel
1214 Queen St. West (Queen just East of Dufferin)
Toronto

I’ll be at a table 1pm – 5pm, and then hosting the presentations in the Artcade room from 5-7pm.

Community Building and Indie Gamemaking
Wednesday, November 5, 1-2pm
Future Play conference, Toronto

What’s the importance of community building in the world of indie gamemaking? McGinley and Munroe will discuss this as well as some of the challenges and rewards of running two grassroots projects, the Artsy Games Incubator and The Toronto Independent Game Development Jam.

I’ll be talking about ten ways to get your writing out there — and only one is being published by traditional means. It’s a part of the graphic novel programming at Word on the Street and Ramon Perez will be doing live sketching accompaniment, which should be more interesting than watching my jaw wag. I’ll also be tabling in the Fringe Beat section with Sidney handing out free smiles.

Me and Therefore Repent! illustrator Salgood Sam will be selling and signing our books at July 12 and 13 at Paradise Toronto Comicon.

Salgood has made a trailer for the graphic novel, check it out below.

I’ll be at my fave conference all weekend, mixing it up with some of the smartest weirdos around.

I’m doing a launch for Therefore Repent! in a party room on  Sunday with theculturalgutter.com, and doing these three back to back panels:

How I Did It All Wrong And Got Published Anyway
“Mom’s favorite aphorism was ‘Do as I say, not as I do.’ How you can learn from published authors’ mistakes (and unexpected successes) and tighten up that learning curve. ”
Saturday, 1:00-2:15 P.M.
Capitol B
M: Eileen Gunn, Kathy Steffen, Jim Munroe, Jeannie Bergmann

Here’s Where The Story Ends
“Maureen McHugh’s novels, some say, don’t have proper endings; others think that since life goes on past the end of the novel, the ending’s a matter of the author’s choice. We’ll discuss where to end a novel, how much denoument to give the characters, and other questions of wrapping things up.”
Saturday, 2:30-3:45 P.M.
Wisconsin
M: Jim Munroe, Ellen Kushner, Rachel Swirsky, Maureen McHugh, Paul Stevens

Does It Have to Get Boring Before it Gets Good?
Do you suffer from zombie fatigue? Are you getting superbored with superheroes? Excellent books like World War Z and Soon I Will Be Invincible seem to be the exception to the rule of endless zombie and superpowered crap being produced — but are they? Or does there have to be a pop culture saturation of a certain kind of genre–a laying of the groundwork–before we can get the kind of detailed and finessed dissection and resurrection of tropes that these books pull off?
Saturday, 4:00-5:15 P.M.
Assembly
M: Liz Gorinsky, Jim Munroe, David Schwartz, Nicole Bunge, Ellen Datlow

En route to my favourite SF convention Wiscon, I’m doing a launch/signing at my favourite zine store Thurs. May 22, 7pm: Quimby’s. Should be especially neat as Chicago is where the book is set. Jef Smith from Think Galactic will be doing a Q&A with me. Maybe we’ll go for a drink afterwards at the Rainbo, seeing as it was the inspiration for the bar in the book.

I’m moderating a panel on writing and publishing genre fiction at the library with Emily Pohl-Weary (Strange Times at Western High), Kristyn Dunnion (Big Big Sky) and Paul Hong (Your Love is Murder, or The Case of the Mangled Pie).

Eatonville Branch (430 Burnhamthorpe Rd., Toronto), 416-394-5270.
Tuesday, April 29, 7pm.
Free.