Beth Wagner and Konn Lavery discuss self-publishing novels and comics

The first expo of 2017 started off with a bang. I was a part of two panels and four days of costumes, comics and pop culture! It was an opportunity to showcase the new edition of Mental Damnation: Reality and Seed Me. Both of these novels were not available at last year’s con.

The very first day was when Beth Wagner and I hosted a Journey to Self-Publishing talk, similar to the one we did at the Edmonton Comic Expo 2016. It was kept in a Q&A styled format, allowing the audience to ask any questions that they were seeking insight for.

Four Days of Calgary Comic Expo 2017

After the first panel on the first day, the rest of the convention was fairly busy compared to last year. The booth was kept on the second floor of the Big Four building, where they happened to also put Stan Lee and Tod McFarlane. This drew in a lot of traffic during the days that they were there.

The Saturday had the most costumes of the four days and I snagged as many photos as I could while chatting with people. Check out some of the costumes shared below.

Sunday was the second panel where I joined authors Adam Dreece and Ron S. Friedman in another freeform Q&A styled panel titled Want to Pursue Your Dreams of Writing. The panel was well received and it was a pleasure to catch up with audience after the panel to discuss more about writing.

Over the four days I was able to catch up with familiar faces such as horror author Matthew GIllies, who we shared a booth and a panel together last year. Reg of SANE Clothing, and Vince Seim / Chance Clark of the H3 trilogy, among many other artists, authors and vendors. The con is so large it was tough to try and find everyone, but hoping to catch up with more and meet new people at the Edmonton Comic Convention in the fall.

I’ve got many more stops throughout the spring and summer before then, so keep watch on the blog for more announcements!

Calgary Comic Con 2017 Costume Gallery

Beth Wagner and Myself Discuss Breaking into Self-Publishing

This year I had the opportunity to run a panel with fellow author and comic book artist Beth Wagner. Our focus for this panel was the introduction to self-publishing. It was an entry level discussion for those who were seeking knowledge of the production side of the whole process. We kept it open to discussion with the audience allowing for a Q&A styled session.

The Rest of the Edmonton Comic Expo

The Edmonton Comic and Entertainment Expo has come and gone. What an exciting weekend. As always there are a ton of great costumes. Trying to take photos of them all would be a lot of work but check out their Facebook page to see a lot of the great shots. I did get to see a Spawn costume though, personally I think there should be more Spawn in comic cons (bring the new movie into production Todd McFarlane!).

That aside, during the weekend I got to catch up with fellow authors Adam Dreece and Vince Seim, both of who have been guest authors of the month for this blog. Check out the links in their name to find out more about their work. Many other colleagues and friends were also at the expo again, considering it is in my home town it makes it easy to travel to in comparison to some of the other conventions.

The booth was focused entirely on Seed Me and the World Mother: Seed Me Novel Score since they are the shiny and new work. A lot of Mental Damnation readers were pleased to see me release something new, finally. Especially considering there has been no new material for anyone since the launch of Fusion back in the fall of 2014. Basically 2 years of conventions and signings without any new work.

There were some downtimes throughout the convention, pretty standard. People tend to move in waves depending on lunch time and what panelists/photo-ops are going on. During these times it makes catching up with friends a lot of fun – especially when we’re both rocking Seed Me and Mental Damnation T-Shirts by SANE Clothing!