I was lucky enough to represent the Aussie Speculative Fiction group at Melbourne’s 2019 Supanova, a fan convention focusing on science fiction and fantasy film and TV, comic books, anime, gaming and collectables.
Alongside my esteemed ASF colleagues Matthew P. Copping, V. E. Patton, Alanah Andrews and Rohsaan McInnes, I signed books, talked to a whole bunch of readers and writers, saw some amazing cosplay and managed to meet a couple of my favourite Aussie authors Astrid Scholte and Katya de Becerra (pictured).
That was two days ago, and I’m still both exhausted and elated by the experience. The Aussie Speculative Fiction group isn’t even a year old yet, and our reception in the Indie Press Zone was great. We had our stall set up featuring seventeen titles by ASF authors, including our BEGINNINGS anthology. It was a wonderful experience signing books and talking to people about not just my own stories, but that of our other talented authors.
There are a lot of things that we learned from the experience, like ensuring our website is correct on our flyers, for example.
Ultimately I feel it was a success for the Aussie Speculative Fiction group. It was great to get our books out there, to represent such a talented group of writers, to build relationships with other writers and artists, and to meet some really wonderful authors.
There were many highlights on a personal level as well, seeing old friends, some wonderful cosplay (Ikea Bag, Duckman, Coraline, the Steampunk Star Trek, and many heroes of the Star Wars universe). I’m not that bothered about meeting Movie or TV stars, but it was excellent to meet Alan Baxter, Astrid Scholte, Corey J. White, and it was probably the highlight of the whole thing when Katya de Becerra brought a copy of BEGINNINGS! De Becerra wrote WHAT THE WOODS KEEP which came out last year, and would have to be one of my favourite books of 2018 – click on the link to read my review!
Thankyou to everyone who attended Supanova and made it such an excellent event, especially those who came by our stall! And thank you for reading this.
- Originally published April 2019
Austin P. Sheehan 