Current Distractions, September 2015 Edition

Because it's after 9 p.m. as I prepare to post this, and I'm super tired, I'm going to focus on two main things from this month:

SaskExpo

Here's the website. I don't have a lot to report from this con other than that it had a lot of the problems I keep complaining about lately, i.e. lack of creators and fan panels. I ended up putting my money where my mouth is a bit more this time, though, and bought some actual comics. The first was the first volume of Shelter, by Ed Brisson and John Christmas. Both of them were at the show, although I saw the book on Christmas's table and bought it and got it signed by him. I have heard nothing about this book except what the artist told me, which was awesome. On the opposite end of the spectrum, I caved to the hype and bought the first volume of Rat Queens, by Kurtis J. Wiebe and Roc Upchurch.

Word on the Street Saskatoon

Here's the website. This basically solved all of the problems I had with SaskExpo. Authors! Everywhere! I only ended up buying two books. The first was Indian Ernie, a book by one of the first aboriginal police officers in my city, which I've really been wanting to read. The second was Horror Story and Other Horror Stories, mainly because of the title. I probably shouldn't've bought it because I'm only supposed to be buying books that are already on my list of stuff to read, but OH WELL. Better yet, I went to a panel on modern horror featuring Nick Cutter (aka Craig Davidson), Gemma Files, Derryl Murphy, and Rio Youers, hosted by Sandra Kasturi (I'm just name-dropping at this point). Best of all Wab Kinew was at the event too and I went to his talk, which was so good. I actually wanted to sit down and blog about it right away, and failed to do so, but basically he was a smart and funny dude and I've been thinking really hard lately about being a white person in Canada, and he made me think about it even harder.

If I were a good blogger I'd have photos of all of these books, but instead it's two weeks since I bought them, I'm a hundred miles from home as usual, and here we are.

Instead here's a picture of the tree outside my front window. All these gorgeous leaves dropped off at once over the course of the past week.