Yesterday began here in Toronto with scavenging breakfast in the well-appointed Ad Astra Green Room. Who doesn’t want to start the day with homemade scones? Then, after schmoozing for awhile with the usual gang of idiots friends, it was off to my first program item of the day—my shared Guest of Honor interview with Kathryn Cramer.

Kathryn had been a Guest of Honor in 1996, and I’d been one in 2000, and since there were so many of us there—this being the 30th Ad Astra, the committee attempted to get as many possible previous GOHs to return as possible—we were paired up in twos and threes and asked to interview each other. Kathryn and I have known each other for so long I no longer remember how long, so it was a pleasant hour chatting.

I recorded the full hour, and may someday, when I’m not living on con brain, post longer selections from it, but meanwhile, here’s a taste—a few minutes during which I explain why I chose to pursue writing over acting, when at one time I was equally involved in both.

As soon as our talk ended, I rushed off to my noon panel on the TV series The Walking Dead, which proved to be livelier than expected, as the panelists had extremely different reactions to the show. For example, our moderator, Colleen Hillerup, hates zombies but loves the show anyway because of the people and the series’ soap opera aspects, while co-panelist Mandy Slater loves zombies (she’d better, considering we’re in the book Zombie Apocalypse together), but is irritated by the people, and jokingly calls the show The Talking Dead because there’s more yammering than zombies. Meanwhile, Ian Keeling and I occupied the middle ground and stayed in less controversial territory.

Once the programming was over, it was back to the Green Room to root for the makings of lunch, after which I wandered the dealers room and happened to pass by the launch party for the book Chilling Tales just as Claude Lalumière was about to read his short story “Dead.” The venue was quite atmospheric, which also meant that it was quite dark, but I think the mood fits the tale, as you’ll see below.

Then it was off to the mass autograph session, to which I brought copies of my two collections. As usual, my zombie book What Will Come After outsold my science fiction book What We Still Talk About 5-1. Of course, the praise Steve Jones gave it during the previous day’s zombie panel helped.

Then off to dinner with Rodger Turner, Mandy Slater, Stephen Jones, Robert Shearman and others. The eight of us ended up at a Toronto restaurant named The Pickle Barrel, which has good food but the most nightmare-inducing company mascot I’ve seen in my life. Recoil in horror!

After much publishing gossip, and rowdiness—after all, it was Robert Shearman’s birthday (or at least we claimed it was)—it was back to the hotel for further schmoozing at the ChiZine party and con suite, photos of which can be seen at my updated flickr set. I partied as late as I could, then crashed, and now it’s Sunday morning, and I’m only here in Toronto until early evening.

But first—two items of programming you can still get to if you’re here at Ad Astra. First, at 11:00 a.m., “Why Professionalism Matters,” during which I imagine I’ll get into the reasons I gave my WorldCon talk “How to Respond to a Critique of Your Writing,” and then at noon, a reading, where I’ll be sharing an hour with Matthew Johnson. Come see us if you can!