Meeting Hunchback Chronicles author Arthur Slade

Margaret, Gerald, William at Christie's Bakery

We had a light breakfast at Christie's Bakery in Saskatoon this morning. It's one of Margaret's favorite places to coffee/snack. I found the chocolate croissants rather blase but the danishes were nice. Margaret headed back to Regina for a couple of art events she wanted to take in, leaving William with me for the second night of the Paved Core series screenings. The deciding factor in William staying with me today was the opportunity to meet Arthur Slade, the Saskatoon-based author of the steampunk Hunchback Chronicles series of novels. We forgot to bring a copy to sign, but have a nice photo. McNally and Robinson book store set up an interesting situation where they had a few authors just come to the store and hang around without all the pretentiousness of the signing table or formal reading. We were able to easily corner him and have a real conversation. He recommended a couple of books that William might enjoy. We also talked about his forthcoming graphic novel (which I sponsored through Kickstarter a month or two ago). Of course the text is written, but he said he's likely to do some rewriting once the artwork starts arriving. I bemoaned the comic writers to decide they want to be novelists and begin filling their pages with columns of text. As if reading my mind, he brought up the example of Cerebus the Aardvark which become quite boring when Dave Sim began philosophizing instead of storytelling.

William Bessai-Saul and Arthur Slade