Many people dream of making independent movies. I know I did. Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s I was so inspired by Spike Lee that I read all of his “making of” books and in 1995 wrote a screenplay called The Coyote Kings for which I actually shot some test scenes with a group of friends in 1997. Of course, it didn’t go anywhere. 

But some people don’t stop at obstacles the way I did. They go around them or climb over them. Angie Zimaro is an Edmonton-based filmmaker went to film school at NAIT, the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology. She wrote and produced the post-apocalyptic indie film Dr. Plague.

Shot on location in Sherwood Park, Alberta and directed by her film school classmate Nathaniel Goselwitz, the film stars Edmonton Oilers and Montreal Canadiens legend Georges Laraque, and it won a Bronze Remi at WorldFest-Houston International Film & Video Festival 2018. Quite an achievement for a debut film!

On June 15 I met sat with Zimaro at the Simply Done Café in Edmonton’s gallery district to talk about making an award-winning debut short film. We also discussed: 

• How to save money while making an indie film
• Why creating a story can be fast while creating a script can be extremely slow
• The career path to entering filmmaking later in life
• How to finance entry fees for film festivals, and
• How to snag a celebrity to star in your independent movie

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While it’s known by a range of names, Africentric science fiction and fantasy imagines Africans exploring and changing the universe with technology, science, and mystical means in the past, present, and future. Artists employing Africentric science fiction and fantasy, or what I call Afritopianism, work in literature, film, music, comics, fashion, video games, and more.

Recently in the US, two academics, Reynaldo Anderson and John Jennings, convened convention/art shows called the Black Speculative Arts Movement. Their only non-American participant at any early event was my guest today, the African-Canadian visual artist Quentin Babatunde Vercetty.

The Montreal-based VerCetty is an award winning visual storyteller, art educator, and graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design University; his Afritopian work engages immigration, decolonization, and “the lack of what he calls PDAA (Public display of Appreciation for Africa(ns).” His work has thrilled viewers around the world, including in places such as Mexico, Haiti, Peru, Australia, the United Arab Emirates, and Germany. He’s the founder of the Canadian chapter of the Black Speculative Arts Movement, and he’s been working to bring BSAM shows across the country.

VerCetty spoke with me by web video on May 7, 2018. We discussed:

• Why Afritopian work appeals to so many African readers, listeners, and viewers, even though Eurocentric science fiction and fantasy ignored our existence for generations
• His favourite Afritopian artists in music and visual arts
• Why he isn’t focused on selling his work, and what he is focused on doing with it
• The indispensable technique that none of his art school teachers knew how to teach him
• How and why he uses QR codes as part of his art, and
• What a Zulu priest in South Africa influenced him to do with his work

We began by discussing his own strong identification with the African continent and its civilisations, and how that identification directly relates to his Afritopianism.

Quentin VerCetty Made It Studios

Quentin VerCetty on Instagram

BSAM-art.com

BSAM Canada Facebook

Africentric SFF musicians Chronixx, Kabaka Pyramid, Morgan Heritage, Janelle Monae, Jay Cole

Africentric SFF visual artists Komi Olaf, Kalkidan Assefa, Malicious, Paul Louis-Julie

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There is an infinite number of ways not to have a successful writing career, but not that many ways to have one. You can write your own original novels and if you’re in the luckiest one percent, you’ll find editors who understand and love what you’re doing, and who work with publicists who know how to promote your work with opinion-leaders who’ll also love your work. Your publisher will work with distributors who’ll get your books into the bookstores where staff hand-sell your work. If you’re less lucky, you’ll end up like 98 percent of writers, whose books get a sliver of shelf-space for three months and die in the discount bin or get pulped.

But there’s another lucky one percent. And when I say lucky, I don’t mean they’re not hard-working, because as you’re about to hear from today’s guest, hard-working in this case could mean writing six books in one year, and one book in eleven days. And by lucky, I also don’t mean devoid of skill and artistry, because today’s guest has won numerous awards proving he has the respect of fans and his peers.

No, by lucky, I mean getting asked to enter the world of writing other people’s characters from movies, comics, or video games in new novels, or existing comics, video games, or table top games. Insiders call it licensed writing; some refer to IPs or intellectual property. For decades fans simply called these works tie-ins. And today’s guest is a master of them.

I met Alex Irvine at San Diego Comic Con 2004 when Del Rey was launching my first novel, The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad, and his new book One King, One Soldier had just come out. We hit it off right away. Irvine has worked as a reporter at the Portland Phoenix and as an English professor at the Universities of Denver and Maine.

But he’s written far, far more than I have. If you include trade-paperback collected editions and all his original and tie-in books, he’s released more than thirty. He’s written novels based on Batman, Transformers, Pacific Rim, Supernatural, Tin Tin, Dungeons and Dragons, and Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot, and has written comics for Marvel featuring Iron Man, Damien Hellstrom, and Daredevil. He’s written Alternate Reality Games including The Beast and I Love Bees, and the Facebook game Marvel: Avengers Alliance. His original novels include One King, One Soldier, The Narrows, and the Locus and Crawford-winning A Scattering of Jades.

Alex Irvine spoke with me by web video on May 25, 2018 from his home in Maine. We discussed: 

• How and why he got started in the tie-in business, and why he’s stayed in it so long
• The rewards of writing in so many different fields
• Why he wishes he could write more slowly
• The surprising flexibility of some tie-in publishers and a major Hollywood director, and the predictable rigidity of one, and
• What you need to request in order to avoid getting exploited by publishers

AlexIrvine.blogspot.ca

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One of my favourite new TV series is the re-imagining of Lost in Space. It’s a great family show with rich characters and relationships, exciting adventures, and amazing depictions of future science discoveries. Plus, it’s got a great spaceship and a mysterious hulking robot. I’m hooked!

So imagine my delight when I’m watching the show and there onscreen is a friend from my old days at CJSR FM-88.5 campus-community radio at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. It’s Veenu Sandhu!

I’d always thought Sandhu was from Edmonton, but it turns out she’s from Dawson Creek, British Columbia. I also had no idea until recently that she’s a longtime fan-girl herself who knows more about Star Trek: Voyager than anyone I’ve ever met. She’s been on the superhero show Arrow, the science-fantasy series Fringe, the ABC dramas Somewhere Between and The Whispers, and in the movies Cop and a Half: New Recruit with Lou Diamond Phillips, and A Dog’s Way Home.

And now on Netflix’s Lost in Space, she plays astronaut Prisha Dhar, mother of young astronaut Vijay and wife of astronaut leader Victor. Once I saw Sandhu on Lost in Space, I knew I’d have to have her on the show. So on May 2, 2018 she spoke with me from her Vancouver home by internet video. We discussed:

• The hustle and grind of being a working actor
• Getting hired on Arrow and Fringe
• The attitude and effort required to make it in the Vancouver film and television sector
• And how close working on Lost in Space came to being her dream job

Veenu Sandhu also runs workshops for actors seeking to beat audition anxiety. Her next one is in Vancouver on June 13, 2018. The cost is $50. To register, email [email protected].

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All humans face fear and sadness at times, especially when facing the stresses that are common to the human experience: potential job loss, alienation, illness, the death of loved ones, and more. But for some people, fear and sadness are present most or all of them time, and their power is overwhelming. Just five years ago, 3 million Canadians or almost twelve percent of us reported having a mood or anxiety disorder. About the same number will experience diagnosable depression at some point.

And yet for many, the stigma of mental illness is so strong that they can’t even use the phrase. They’ll say, “mental health issues” or “mental health challenges.” Among many new Canadian communities, the shame may be even greater, resulting in denial being number one coping strategy. But denial is no cure, and often makes people worse.

To discuss such problems and the strategies to help them, I recently spoke with Edmonton financial adviser, speaker, and author Odion Welch. She’s the author of Breakthrough: A Courageous True Story of Overcoming Depression and Anxiety. Each chapter of the book addresses a specific mental illness stressor such as familial and romantic relationships, careers, body image, and grief. We met at the Simply Done café in Edmonton’s gallery district on May 4, 2018. We discussed:

• The real reasons that people abuse alcohol and drugs
• How to counter the constant terror of making mountains out of molecules
• The various causes of depression, especially among immigrant families, and why immigrant parents need to let their children discover and even fail
• Therapies that work for some and not others
• The psychological importance of being touched, and the many reasons so many people are starved for physical contact

OdionWelch.com

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Humanity needs books. I don’t mean that everybody loves reading, because clearly that’s not true. But it is true that many of us do love books, not only for the remarkable ideas they make us consider, but for how they lift our morale above the mundanity and the cruelty of the world, and inspire our souls and our intellects to transform our societies for the better.

No genre is more devoted to such inspiration and transformation than science fiction. And that’s why the refusal of the science fiction publishing industry, for generations, to offer a racial, cultural, and gender palette that reflects the true range of humanity has been so galling. It has deprived the majority of the human race the comfort and provocation we seek, and deprived our species of the ingenuity that we would have unleashed had we been so inspired.

Fortunately, the last two decades in particular have seen the beginning of a change, with the rise of African writers winning major sales and the top prizes for science fiction and fantasy writing, and the emergence of my guest’s company, the multiracial SFF publishing house Rosarium.

Based in Washington DC, Rosarium publishes novels, graphic novels, and comics, beginning with the seminal anthology Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond. The house’s writers include Pan Morigan, Nisi Shawl, Sheree Renee Thomas, Maurice Broaddus, Damian Duffy, Jaymee Goh, Ed Hall, and John Jennings, among many others. If you check the MF GALAXY archive, you’ll hear my conversation with one of one of Rosarium’s authors, Eileen Kaur Alden, the writer of the Super Sikh comic.

Bill Campbell spoke with me online on March 03, 2018. We discussed:

• How he fell in love with SFF
• The significance of authors Samuel Delaney and Octavia Butler to his work and life
• The racist obstacles he faced as a novelist from publishing industry gatekeepers who told him his work wasn’t “ghetto” enough
• How he founded Rosarium Publishing
• Why it’s so difficult to racially integrate the shelves of comic book stores, and
• How the gigantic success of the Black Panther movie will affect Africentric science fiction and fantasy publishing

Along the way, Campbell mentions “POD,” meaning “print-on-demand,” a system in which writers can get single copies of their books made for as little as a few dollars each, rather than having to pay to print, ship, and store hundreds of books at a time. Campbell also discusses his anthology Mothership and co-editor Ed Hall. In full disclosure, one of my stories is in that anthology.

Rosarium Publishing

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Whether you hear this podcast the day it went live—April 30, 2018—or any other day, you’ll have some mass-shooting in the United States that makes this discussion timely. According to AOL.com, in 2017 the United States endured 345 mass shootings. The Atlantic reported in 2016 that the US, with less than five percent of the world’s population, holds 35 – 40 percent of the world’s guns. The Gun Violence Archive reports that in 2017, Americans used guns to kill 15,000 Americans; more than 3000 of them were teens; police shot or killed more than 2000; and more than 2000 shootings were unintentional.

According to stereotypes, US Republicans love guns and US Democrats hate them, and since African-Americans are overwhelmingly Democrats, according to the transitive principle, most African-Americans must hate guns, too, right? After all, a lethal triad of street criminals, police criminals, and Whitesupremacist criminals use guns to terrorise African-Americans.

But it’s not that simple, as history demonstrates, and as my guest today will show.

Chad Glover is a writer and software developer from Philadelphia. According to his bio, he “grew up in a household where guns were commonplace,” but he “didn’t explore firearms as a skill and legacy until he moved to Stone Mountain Georgia,” which he calls “the spiritual home of the KKK.” That led him to write “about the forgotten ways that firearm ownership shaped the struggle for African liberation,” a tradition that includes the Deacons for Defense and the Black Panther Party. He describes himself as “a liberal gun owner,” and an active part of a continually-growing African-American gun community. You can find his essays on his African gun ownership at his blog, Daddys-gun.com.

Chad Glover spoke with me by digital video on March 23, 2018, from his home in Atlanta. We discussed:

• The understandable motivations for gun control advocacy, but what those motives ignore
• How Euro-American massacres against African-American communities demonstrate the importance of African gun ownership
• The effective response to racist so-called open-carry marchers
• Why the Trojan Horse gun control strategy of getting African- and Muslim-Americans to join NRA will not work, and
• What the discussion of gun control would need to include for him to take the movement seriously

Hip hop began almost 50 years ago, and it’s changed more and encompassed more than any musical or lyrical aesthetic in that time that I can think of. Careers rise and fall, styles change and grow, but one thing remains the same: a great voice, clear delivery, a range of subjects, and intelligent insight as a package will almost guarantee immortality.

For years I hosted a radio show called Asiko Phantom Pyramid: Global African Musics Led by Headcharge of Hip Hop, and when it came to hip hop acts I’d play again and again, the list always include Public Enemy, KRS-One, Paris, and my guest today, the Boston-based rapper Akrobatik, and his partnership with the superb Mr. Lif in the crew called The Perceptionists. Akrobatik grabbed my imagination with 2003’s Balance, his first album, and proved he was no flash-in-the-pan with the 2005 Perceptionists album Black Dialogue. His music has appeared on HBO’s The Wire, in films such as Date Movie, and in video games such as Need for Speed: Most Wanted.

As a result of a ruptured heart valve, Akrobatik has also transformed himself physically, determined as he is to stay alive for his family, and to offer his gifts to the world. Those gifts include albums such as Absolute Value, Built to Last, and Resolution.

Akrobatik spoke with me by Skype on April 10, 2018 from his home in Boston. We discussed:

• The influence on his life of his favourite teacher
• The discipline required to keep creating entertaining and insightful lyrics
• Whose hip hop skills and careers he would like emulate
• How he came to teach at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, and how he balances that with his music career

For ages, inside and outside fan circles, the stereotype was that Africans and Indigenous people don’t like science fiction. That’s a bizarre myth. After all, because both science fiction and fantasy offer the spirit and the intellect the chance to remake the world. For peoples who remember the historical destruction of their own worlds and live under oppression, escape stories offer indispensable hope—the dream that deliverance is possible. And when they offer the intellect the means to plan utopia, or at least a new-topia, they’re even more powerful.

That yearning helps explain the extraordinary success of Black Panther, and the promise offered by award-winning science fiction filmmakers such as my guest today, Danis Goulet. She’s a Cree-Metis filmmaker from LaRonge, Saskatchewan. She’s an alumna of the National Screen Institute's Drama Prize Program in Canada and the TIFF Talent lab. Her social realist and science fiction films and virtual reality work have gone to the Toronto International Film Festival, Sundance, and imagineNATIVE. Her VR includes The Hunt, and her films include the dramas Barefoot and Wapawekka, and the post-apocalyptic Wakening. That stunning 2013 short film imagines a future Toronto crushed under an unknown hypertechnological occupation. And engaging their ancient conflict at doomsday are two titans of Cree mythology: Weesagichak, the genderless shapeshifter from the stars, and Weetigo, the ruthless cannibal spirit of insatiable hunger.

On March 15, 2018, Danis Goulet spoke with me by Skype from her home in Toronto. We discussed: 

• Her early history as a fan girl and a young filmmaker
• Her move into art house cinema and then into global Indigenous film
• Why science fiction matters so much, especially to oppressed and occupied people
• The political significance of the immortals Weesagichak and Weetigo
• How she made her stunning film Wakening,
• And how on a budget of $100,000, she made it look like millions

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I am a pernsnicketty cat—some would say difficult—and I have been known to argue at length that no one should ever use the expression “laughed out loud” because all laughter is out loud, by definition. So that means if I can overcome my boundless rage enough to invite the host of a national radio programme called Laugh Out Loud, I must really be impressed. And I am.

But Ali Hassan actually grabbed my attention not by MCing that showcase for Canadian comedians, but rather for his excellent work as an interviewer and guest host on CBC Radio’s q. I liked his voice, I liked his rapport with guests, and I liked his questions—but what totally floored me was that he easily and accurately dropped a reference to KRS-One during an interview without explaining it. I thought, I have got to contact this dude. So I did, and that’s what led to today’s conversation about the art, craft, and business of stand-up comedy and interviewing.

Hassan is a Pakistani-Canadian comedian, actor, and chef from Montreal. He’s toured Canada and performed at Just for Laughs and the Winnipeg Comedy Festival; he’s performed across the US and the Middle East, and took his one-man show Muslim, Interrupted to Scotland for the planet’s biggest comedy festival, the Edinburgh Fringe. He’s been in the movies Breakaway, French Immersion, and Goon!, and on TV he’s on Odd Squad, Man Seeking Woman, Game On, Cardinal, Designated Survivor, and FUBAR: Age of Computer.

Hassan spoke with me by Skype on February 2, 2018. We discussed:

• How the ethics and personalities of stand-up are so different from those of improv comedy
• The bizarre array of careers he attempted and what he learned from them that prepared him for comedy
• How hosting Canada Reads was the ideal training ground to host CBC q
• When a comedy MC should purposefully tank his own performance
• How to teach inexperienced journalists the most important quality for their job, and
• When you should leave interviewing permanently

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