With the new book Tyrannia coming out very very soon, I have a few events coming up. First off, last week I read and sat in some classes at Minnesota State-Moorhead and had a great time. I read “Walking Stick Fires”, mainly because I wanted to read a story from the collection that had a (mostly?) happy ending. So there’s that. Fargo-Moorhead is actually an interesting area, kind of a crossroads of the old frontier mentality and new world of oil money. It was a vibrant downtown with a lot going on. Moorhead proper still looked like it still was figuring out how to move forward and claim some sort of identity, for what it was worth. But on the way home I drove back the long way, through Detroit Lakes and came across a neat little bookshop in Wadena. Wadena was a weird mix of empty storefronts and some really interesting experiments in pavement culture (a teen cybercafe, for example).
Anyway…the big launching event for the book is the Twin Cities Book Festival! I’m really excited to launch this book here since I’ve been to nearly every Book Fest since it first launched and have volunteered in some capacity or another at most of them. This year I’m tying in a reading/presentation/cyber-thing with my interactive “game novella” (made in Twine) that I released a few months ago, We Are the Firewall. I definitely have seen that as a digital ancillary to the stories in the book, so it should be a fun pairing and very participatory. I’m also hoping to rope in social media without making it seem too, well, “new for the sake of the new.”
That will be Saturday October 12, and I will be there ALL DAY. In some capacity. Fried or not. But it will be awesome. Tricks up sleeve, etc. etc.
I’m also doing a reading with David Schwartz and Kat Howard at Dreamhaven for the Glitter & Mayhem anthology. My story “Unable to Reach You” has appeared in that fine anthology. This will be Tuesday, October 15th at 6:30pm.
Finally, I’ll be reading at Subtext Books in St. Paul (the old Common Good, underneath Nina’s), which will be the evening of Nov. 13
All these events are in my appearances tab. Hope to see you around soon!