WOTS 2008 Postmortem

Although they were calling for overcast skies and drizzle throughout the day, the weather was stunning for Word on the Street 2008 in Toronto.

Some of Sèphera's fun decorations for the booth

After a delightful ride into town on the GO Train, I met Sèphera Girón at about 9:30 at the Horror Writers Association booth in the Writer's Block. She had already unloaded her vehicle of all the supplies, etc and I helped her finish putting up the decorations.

Slated to begin at 11 AM, the crowds actually started before that. How could book lovers resist? It was a gorgeous Sunday morning, after all, and no shortage of great booths to check out.

Sèphera Girón at the HWA booth just before it all began

I was only there until about 1 PM, but in that time had a chance to meet several old friends and colleagues as well as meet some other folks who are members of HWA.

I also managed to hand out 100 copies of a chapbook style booklet featuring a free copy of my short story "Being Needed" which was originally published in the anthology Bluffs in 2006. "Being Needed" is a subtle ghost story that seems to easily cross the boundary between horror and straight literary fiction. (At least in my mind anyway -- perhaps there's too much of an actual plot and focus on characters with a "goal" to properly enter the literary world. Hmm, can you tell that I'm a bit of a "snob" and like my stories straightforward and with an actual purpose and plot? That's right, give me a nice solid horror tale any day over a navel-gazing meandering exercise in slapping prose on a page just for the sake of doing so.)

Nancy Kilpatrick, Joel Sutherland and Sèphera Girón

In any case the day was a success. If it hadn't been for appointments and chores that needed doing back in Hamilton, I would have spent the whole day there. Ah well, at least I was able to be there for the morning and the opening rush -- and I had a chance to chat with lots and lots of people interested in writing and interested in horror.

James Roy Daley and Peter Halasz

And one really cool thing about the day was that because I took the train I was able to write on my way in to and back from Toronto. I got 2000 words written on A Canadian Werewolf in New York, a novel I've been, sadly, ignoring to other shorter writing projects since the beginning of the summer.

The booth near 1 PM -- busy, but you can still see Seph through the crowd

I'm thinking I might want to take the train into Toronto every once in a while just to keep working on the novel. 1000 words each way. Not bad at all.