Jean-Louis Trudel has been a mentor to me, and an ideal to strive for. Not only was he a productive writer, but a hard-SF with a lot of humanism in his stories. And he started very young, so his formidable production topped 200+ short-stories published in several languages.
I told on this blog that, had I not met JLT at a comic book launch in 1995, I would not have become a SF writer myself, counting 100 published short-stories, twenty novels in trad-pub, plus 45+ books in my own imprint Échofictions.
So I felt urgent to have a gathering of fans, readers and fellow writers, to mark his passing and share anecdotes (I have a few.) Jean-Louis was an immense author of French and English science fiction whose works impacted a lot of us.
The special gathering will be held on Sunday Oct. 18 at the Can*Con between 11h30 -12h30 at the Mulligan room, on the first floor of the Brookstreet Hotel.
As the schedule is full, you don’t have to stay for the full hour: drop in for a few minutes of quiet reminiscing and watching some pics.
This year I found out more and more that «small is beautiful »: short and sweet events work better for me, an indie SF author and artist, as the big-city bookfairs where you are lost in a sea of authors.
Advantages of the short & sweet events:
The table fees are way less expensive (often under 100$ or even free in some events)
The short driving distance from home means not having to stay at an expensive hotel.
The public going there will be made of “niche” public who already appreciate your genre.
The duration is often a single day.
In a smaller exhibition space, people who get there take the time to *look* at the booths.
The quality of the interactions with the readers is better.
My lil’table at a Blooming Boulevards plant sale event in my city, last year !
Challenges with the short & sweet events:
Getting your stuff and banners on site! This time I had the help of my husband to get me to the south of Mississauga.
The cost in personal energy and time can be variable. See the examples below. It is not something I will do in my 80s.
The sales might not be as high as you expect. (But there are other advantages like meeting new fans.)
the table location can be inaccessible to most of the public (in one library event my table was on a fourth-story, while the public stayed mostly in the 1-2 lower levels.) See sales point.
Some Examples
Surprises at the Grafficker Alley!
A simple graphic art event in September 12th turned out to be a joyful event.
The Grafficker Alley(organized by Anime North) allowed me to meet the public and present my comic books and a few books and short-story collections along with the graphic novels. A lot of students like to practice their French, so I sold the French version of a graphic novel! Even my historical novel at Les Éditions David (le Kaiju de Mississauga, found their readers!
The venue was the Small Arms Inspection Building, a place with large large floor-to-ceiling windows, so the light was good. grosse valise à rouettes pleine de livres! All on floor level, so very accessible when you have to drag a book-filled suitcase… and my banners (top photo).
It was a simple day event in my city, so I asked the husband to drive me and my stuff there. I dismounted my display in a record time and managed to carry everything using the transit system (Shoot-out to the Mississauga Transit MiWay!)
Même mon roman historique chez Les Éditions David (le Kaiju de Mississauga, en-dessous de l’affiche Ruego sur le présentoir rouge) a trouvé preneur ! Bref, j’en suis revenue avec une valise plus légère!
The Safran
I attended my first Safran in 2024, then 2025, but this year the grants were late, so the organizers managed with a lot of will to get a free venue, and mounted a full one-day program (instead of three) on a Saturday in March, at St. Catharine’s, ON. We were four authors, and here is me at my table, signing a graphic novel.
Michèle signing her books at the 2026 Safran in St.Catharine’s
I remember also mini-exhibitions in the street close to the Image Collection Comic Book Store in Mississauga, in a cinema, at an outdoor movie presenting a superheros flick… All left good impressions.
The most important…
Are the new people we get to know. My table neighbors were young artists (and I bought one of the painting that had not found its public atthe end of the day.)
I had the unexpected pleasure to meet two Toronto Science-fiction fans, the editor of Amazing Stories Lloyd Penney and his partner Yvonne. They had themselves a lot of experience in those events, and left with two books. Lloyd even push the nicety to pay me in 5$ bills, so I could offer change to the next fans (who had mostly 20$ in hand.). That small attention went to my heart. Thanks Lloyd and Yvonne! You can support the online magazine here with Patreon.
And when I have a fruitful conversation with a fan, I often ask to leave their name in my honor notebook (which is my writer’s notebook). So my notes are in pencil, but I give a nice color of pen for the fans to use.
This is really for my joy. I have colorful signatures in carnets dating from 2006!
A good reference
My colleague Mark Leslie Lefebvre who is a indie pro attending both big and small events since 30+ years offers a lot of advice with “A Book in Hand.” (From the saying “a bird in hand is worth two birds in the bush”). Here is the link to the ebook and the Kickstarter campaign for this book
At the time of writing this blog entry, Mark is attending the Sudbury Creature Kon, specialized in horror/fantastic, with a worthy table.
Having a solid formation in natural science, I can’t just sit there and looking at the mega billionaires destroying our cohesive society… and the planet.
So this blog entry is basically a big YAY to Nina Monteanu and several SF writer colleagues who offer many paths to climb out of the hole we dug for ourselves. I am endeavouring to contribute to this SF field, but I have mostly short-stories as my ecological SF contribution.
I was invited to contribute to the blog Reality Skimming, about sustainability and writing science fiction. Especially I like the sustainability before ambition headline. It is something I strive to achieve with my own publiching house. The Sustainability thread is a thematic series of articles, curated by Canadian SF author Nina Munteanu and sponsored by Reality Skimming Press.
Some questions were more challenging for me than others, because I had less time as before to consult the numerous online resources. But I loved to be able to expand on ways that my work as a publisher can be sustainable. All my Echofictions paper books are printed in Canada and a list at the end encourages readers to pass it on.
The article is about 9 minutes of reading, including an excerpt from a YA novel, there.
A Diary in the Age of Water by Nina Monteanu (Inanna Publications, 2020): a dystopia that show us “a future shaped by water scarcity, societal collapse, and ecological memory” (well said by Kyo Hwang Cho ). It was a bit hard for me to read because I get attached to the fallible characters, but Nina is an author who doesn’t pull her punches. She knows her stuff. I do endeavour to save and protect water in my everyday use, and after reading this book, you will, too!
Dandelion, dandelion, dandelion… what’s not to love in that gorgious cover?
A Half-Built Garden, by Ruthanna Emrys, explores a First contact situation with aliens who have a very maternal notion of family. The narrator lives in region divided in watersheds where the water and resources are managed toward healing the environmental disasters. But there are also libertarian pockets and old nation-states who would just looove to get their mitts on the alien tech… Aliens convinced that humanity should leave the wounded planet to survive! There is a nice concept of dandelion-style organization in that slow-burn and deeply reflective story.
Arboreality, by Rebecca Campbell, Stelliform Press 2022. A very advanced tree species spread everywhere. Set in Britisth Columbia over several decades, so you get to live in this changing landscape with the protagonists.
Rebuilding Tomorrow, Anthology ed. by Tsana Dolichva (Twelfth Planet Press). A collective by dis-abled writers with savvy protagonists living with a visible or invisible handicap. I must admit the cover art is to die for! “An anthology of apocalypse fiction featuring disabled and chronically ill protagonists, proving it’s not always the “fittest” who survive, it’s the most tenacious, stubborn, enduring and innovative characters who have the best chance of adapting when everything is lost.” The stories show how people with different abilities can help each other, even after a catastrophic event. As a more “valid” reader, I had difficulties in one or two stories guessing what was ailing the protagonist… who, of course, were on the “autistic spectrum” (neurodiverse) with their own perceptions and ways of thinking.
Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver. Not SF, but an eco-fiction novel about a wayward colony of Monarch butterflies choosing a hibernating site too much in the North, and the farming woman who discover them, also beset with her own worries. A novel about how climate changes affects migration, and also a social commentary. I always tell people that The Great American Novel has been written: it’s Flight Behavior.
Speculative Shorts: Stories that fell out of my brain, by Cait Gordon, Dinsdale Press. The environment is not the main subject, but a collection of fifteen tales of queer life, disability, romance, power, defiance, and resilience cannot go around the destruction. And because I like the story, refreshing. Fun to read!
Ice Monarch, my own first clim-SF dystopia (2010, 2012, 2014, 2017). A 2010 Solaris Prize Winner short-story that got published in four magazines: in French (twice), in Russian and in English. A cyborg butterfly flies over the devastated Earth, in search of images to transmit to his masters living in palaces roaming the artificial ice of the poles. Soon, a dilemma presents itself to the cyborg, because helping survivors is not in the master’s agenda. Be warned, the mood is more poetical and somber.
I’m proud to announce that one of my stories has made the final ballot of the Aurora Awards! In the Gardener’s Service, a 14 000-word novelette, is a finalist in the Aurora Awards in the Best Novelette-novella category.
This story is from my Gardener’s universe.
You can read the story here. The voting period is on us. The final vote ballot is visible here.
You vote for the Aurora by going to the CSFFA site (if you’re registred, the vote closes on July 18th.
…And on the Asimov’s Reader’s Awards!
Presentation of In the Gardener’s Service by Sheila Williams
And In the Gardener’s Service, published in Asimov’s last year, is a finalist to the Asimov’s Reader’s Award, in the novelette category.
Many big thanks to the Asimov’s readers who voted for my story! The final results will be announced in October.
The Aurora Awards nomination period is on us. The CSFFA website lists the eligible works. It is humanely impossible to read them all, but you may find a few stories and creations that you liked. The nomination period is open until March 28th.
I am partial to my Asimov’s novelette, that is *also* eligible for the 2026 Hugo nominations, open until March 28th. Last vacation of a Termite is a short story set on a gaseous giant, told by an old retiring miner.
Do you love Valentine and running? This one is for you!
Running Strong for Valentine
by Michèle Laframboise
That idiot groundhog had gotten it all wrong, Lenny Strong thought as he ran, his Brooks Launch 89 plopping in a slush that was the color of Demerara sugar but less inviting. Each step made a moist sucking sound that would have fitted well in a space monster movie, but that promised misery to his toes farther on the race route.
At least, the cold tampered down the municipal dump’s signature smells of burnt plastic and ash, carried several kilometers over by an ill-meaning wind. He had gotten a whiff of plastic burnt as soon as he had opened the door of his Volkswagen in the parking lot of the arena.
Winter was not, definitely not, retreating, despite what the groundhog had said (not in so many words; reporters did the talking).
Wiarton Willy, the Ontario winter specialist, had gotten half his round body out of his lair, sniffed at the cold Owen Sound air, and retreated before the TV crew could get a good look at the mammal to confirm if it was the same groundhog as last year and, more to the point, if Willy had seen his shadow.
Whatever: this winter was like Lenny’s nephews, endlessly changing their mind about what he should buy his girlfriend. As if a pair of six- and eight-year-old boys knew anything about a right gift for a Valentine Day, a gift that would not scream “Made in China along with ten billion others” when his sweet Alice opened the package.
Maybe it would be the last time he could buy something nice for a girl. He felt by reflex the flat cell stuck in his front pocket, a lifeline or a leash. His current employment was about to stop, not that anyone had told him yet. But there were undercurrents of unease among his colleagues, and he knew the updated management program he was helping set in place would render his task obsolete.
He had deposited his final assessment report this Friday. A hovering cloud of unemployment shadowed his every move and eroded his carefully built self-confidence.
That race, at least, helped him escape the pressure that had been slowly building up in his mind. Running had always been his escape from the worries. His baby sister suspected he was an undiagnosed autistic spectrum adult, because he had been a shy and silent child, then a socially awkward, long-limbed teen. His russet hair and long arms had inspired his classmates to call him orang-outang.
His right sole slid on an icy patch that left no purchase for the clever design of his shoe’s outsole ridges. Lenny stomped his left foot, hard, to regain his balance. He heard the papery sound of water-engorged ice breaking, and suddenly lost three inches of altitude.
A chill enveloped his toes; he saw too late that his left foot had sunk in a muddy puddle of melted snow. Lenny had been thinking too much, not watching how the other tracks had sidestepped this too-smooth patch of trail.
He made an awkward dance to get off the earth-tinted puddle, more papery ice cracking and mud sloshing up his other foot, sending gobs of mud around. He must have looked like a fool.
Fortunately, there were not many people standing by to cheer up the runners or post funny pics to Instagram. Races held in the cold of February had their advantages.
At least, the lady in her sixties or her seventies plodding behind him had slowed down and circled around the puddle. She had been running a few paces behind him, her short silver hair held in earmuffs, as lime green as her nylon vest. Her apparel was sober and efficient, and he surmised she drank from the liter-and-half bottle tilted at the back of her belt. Her lined face was set in a determined configuration; Lenny guessed she would probably finish in the first tier of her age group.
He hurried forward, his feet sloshing in icy water. Winter races had their disadvantages, too.
#
A sizeable crowd had been packed at the auditorium as the five hundred runners of the Valentine Day Half filed out in a tight pack of pink or red bibs to get close to the START banner. The six-foot high boom boxes had been projecting an orchestral rendition of Chariots of Fire, the kind of movie everyone had heard, because of the score, but that no one had actually watched (to the lasting regret of his sister Merril, who was a movie buff and, yes, had been loosely named after actress Meryl Streep).
The mother of two unruly boys who gave the term ‘perpetual movement’ its sharpest sense, Merril had been swamped in last-minute book-keeping contracts, by clients worrying about the upcoming tax season, unable to attend his feat. And as the “perpetual movement (and noises)” prevented Merril to keep her focus on their spreadsheets, she has nicely asked her brother if he and his girlfriend would be willing to bring the boys out to watch the race.
She had emitted reserves about her big bro running in sub-zero temperatures, but Lenny had the best running apparel his modest salary could get, the latest technology in fabrics and breathable nylon and polar lining from neck to feet.
Wrapping shades transformed his eyes into mirrors, but protected his eyes against UV rays, imprinting the landscape around him in warm hues of yellows and honeys. He was wearing the race’s signature hat, a candy-red knit cap with a white heart over his brow, also made in China with in wonderful polluting polyester.
Well, he wasn’t the one managing the race kits and finisher’s medals, nor seeing to the provenance of the cheap goods in the “looting bags”.
When the horn signaled the start, he had stolen a glance of Alice Windham behind the movable barrier. She was minding the rumbling pair of nephews, in their bright black and gold and red Transformers winter outfits. Her parka was a mud-challenging ivory-cream tone that contrasted sharply with her springing ebony hair and soft brown skin tone.
Alice Wyndham was one of those women who did not need to put layers of foundations and makeup to go out. A grove of stitched Nordic pines on her parka composed a winter landscape that fell naturally on her ample bosom. Even if she wore size sixteen, Alice carried herself with a quiet pride, an aspect that had drawn shy and restless Lenny to her.
Alice ran short to middle-long distances, despite a bulky frame that did not seem to agree with exercise. She ignored the occasional taunt coming from the sides (not from other runners. Long-distance runners knew the training and respected the efforts put into it). Her weight made Alice slower than her age group, but it had never deterred her from taking part in races. That strong will was one thing that Lenny had liked about her.
Today, however, she had taken custody of his racer’s bag with a change of clothes, after helping pin the red half-marathon bib on his left thigh, a place his swaying long arms would not brush off. Many runners had taken this habit, what with the camel-back water reserves, or the ‘munition belt’ of plastic flasks he was currently using. There were four water stations along the way, less than in a summer race, but he preferred to control when to hydrate himself.
There had been too many runners packed tight for him to wave at her. Alice was smiling, her big eyes searching the crowd of colored runners… had she seen him?
Three years after OnSpec published my first story, I got my second one accepted. Alas, it will also be the last one. OnSpec, a staunch support and platform for Canadian SF authors, will launch its last issue, 134 this month.
Another sad news on the Canadian SF front, three weeks after learning of the demise of my first SF mentor Jean-Louis Trudel in Lithuania. I would not have become a writer if I hadn’t met him in Montréal, at a comic book launch at the defunct Nebula bookstore. I had always hesitated because I didn’t feel drawn to write “serious Litewrature“, me who had grown on Isaac Asimov and several fine SF writers (mostly Americans guys at the time, but the field have diversified since!) When Jean-Louis told me there was a very active French SF community in the Québec province, I jumped on that train faster than you could say “Ray gun” !!
Organizing a literary magazine is no piece of cake. The Ontarian literary mag, Virages, founded by Marguerite Andersen, ceased its activities after 75 issues. In OnSpec, I liked to read Barb’s and Diane’s editorials. As solitary writers, we need those voices and their reflexions. And Onspec stories were never too long or boring, presenting a full palette of subgenres from hard-SF to fantastic and horror, not forgetting Steampunk.
Thirty-five years of choosing stories, cover image, editing, writing the editorial, putting up the issue… this is an staggering sum of work.* A consistent body of evidence that went almost ignored my the general public… until CBC made a piece last November. Prodding that reaction: “I didn’t know you existed!”
Well, it happened for a ton of beautiful, valid works lost in the algorithmic maze of our profit-obsessed culture. Every week, I find out about that author, or this person that passed away.
A big, big thank you to Barb and Diane and the OnSpec team. I find myself very lucky to share space on Issue 134’s cover, along with several author friends.
In those difficult times, we need to rely on each other, to provide warmth, acceptance and friendship for those who feel rejected. Let us all lit up the night !
* I publish my own Échofictions books and thought I would be able to put up one new book per month, like my author friends Dean Wesley Smith. Hm nope. Life happened (and death, I lost my mother in 2023), and I am only coming back on the saddle. I put out three books in 2025, and the next year, 4-5 books will be my goal.
This distinctively Canadian hard-SF story has been published in ANALOG SF & Facts, vol XCIII, 5-6 (May-June 2023)
Kuiper Pancake
by Michèle Laframboise
The thick smell of maple syrup welled up in my olfactive memory when I rolled into the kilometer-wide depression under a bowl of clear, unblinking stars.
A long time ago when I still had legs under my body, I had tasted my grandmother’s warm pancakes, flat wheat flour disks covered with bubble cavities, looking like the face of the Moon. We didn’t get real, grown wheat flour often, maybe it had been contraband from northern Alberta, but wow! did it taste awesome with the reconstituted maple syrup! I called to mind the homey scents of the kitchen and the rumor of the city behind gran’s windows, the basil and spice and coffee (not for me, that), to help me face reality.
My gran’s kitchen was hundreds of millions klicks away now. Her smile had evaporated decades ago, the price every Scout or Explorer paid for getting an extended life span.
Here in the Kuiper belt, I didn’t possess any sense of smell, except in a very practical, this-could-save-your-life row of chemical gas samplers, apt at identifying the spicy sting of toxic compounds that could eat my hull and nibble at the precious wetware inside. Mechanical vibrations were similarly filtered and transcribed into sounds, along with the IA voice of the Explorer talking to me.
My current body had grounded to a stop, a six-wheel tank spiked with sensors and samplers, its huge swiveling head crowned with an array of cams and antennas and teacup radio-receptors.
Presently, that huge swiveling head was stuck in the throes of indecision, like a teenager.
Can a bankrupt resort owner find a new hope on a ski slope? A ballerina escapes the Iron Curtain, but can’t forget her ghosts as she prepares a Nutcracker performance in Toronto. In the same city, a radiohost’s voice raises the spirits of a depressed musician. See a weary, guilt-ridden mother find her lucky star in Hawaii. And a sad, dispirited stunt woman meets two special persons on Christmas Eve !
Five women, each overcoming her own challenges, are about to discover a holiday magic that opens the hearts!
Five tales to take a respite from harsh times and share with your loved ones, told by award-winning author Michèle Laframboise.
CW: the opening of the second story contains some threat of violence, but the characters manage to escape. Fifth story has a character mired in a muddy relation but she regains her freedom.
The screen in vivid green that greets us. I love the little Africa-shaped pendant!
That Wednesday should have been an ordinary middle-of-the-week day. Except for those two words uttered by my morning radio program host: Jane Goodall. Plus: Toronto this evening.
I stopped everything I was doing to get the venue. Jane Goodall was coming to Toronto.
For someone like me who have been fascinated with ants and nature since a toddler, who could be found at the crown of any tree, who still goes out with a pair of binocular to watch the skies, Jane Goodall, who started her magnificent, long-standing work studying chimpanzees the year of my birth, and this, without a diploma, is a heroine.
So what if the transit from my place to the Meridian Hall took more than two hours and a half? I bought one ticket and off I went, in the middle of the afternoon, to see a legend. Getting there was a bliss, apart for the hurdle of eating something, anything, before the speech. The Meridian Hall offered drinks and food, but I didn’t know it and lost stomach-grumbling time at a café, before deciding to use some plastic for a hearty beverage.
Somehow, I had bought a seat very well located. I sat in an ambiance filled with the quiet sound of a distant jungle.
The introduction is done by five young people of the Foundation, which count a Canadian branch. Because, this is not only about African countries, but everywhere. If you do not respect the first Nations who took care of the land, you can’t heal the same land.
That is the lynch point of the Institute : you can’t protect the environment while ignoring the needs of the people residing on the earth. You can’t come to a village where the children are hungry and tell them what to do. All projects of Jane Goodall Institute involves the people living on the territory.
When we put local communities at the heart of conservation, we improve the lives of people, animals and the environment.
Jane as a storyteller
Jane, was finally introduced in a thunder of applause. At 91 years-young, she walks without aid and talks with enthusiasm. Jane Goodall gave an electifying, uplifting speech in Toronto.
She regaled us with anecdotes from her childhood in Britain, of growing up in WWII with rations, reminding us that TV had not been invented at the time. Her mother and aunts were very liberal, letting the little girl roam, and not calling the police when little Jane disappeared for four hours, finally emerging from the coop because she wanted to see how the hens could produce their big eggs!
(I did disappeared once. I had been playing with a friend in the parc, and she had invited me at her home to play, and I ended up staying for supper. On my return to our apartment block, I found two police cars and my mother frantically gesturing. Did I warn her ? Oops.)
Nature fascinated the little Jane, and she knew she wanted to be near animals. At ten, she was a ravenous reader, and one day, she found a novel that embodied all the adventure she dreamed of. Tarzan of the Apes. She fell in love with the “Lord of the Jungle” until…
“He wedded the WRONG JANE!” she said, sending all of us roaring with laughter.
At a point, she was invited by a relation to Africa, and worked as a waitress to save for the boat ticket (there were planes, but too expensive and rare.) And finally, she got her first contact with Africa, South Africa to be precise.
She returned home, eager to get a job close to the animals, but without a diploma? Eventually Louis Leakey invited her to assist as a secretary. And she got introduced to scorpions, snakes, baboons and,… an ambling rhinoceros! On those occasions, she managed to stay calm, that prodded Leakey to assign her to observing the chimpanzees. Without a diploma.
But here was a problem, In 1960, letting a young woman alone in the jungle (even with a crew) was a no-no. So, who came to chaperone Jane?
Her MOM! Yup, she stayed as long as necessary, even if the elder Goodall did not care for the scorpions, snakes and various samples of the local fauna. But she managed to write (she was a novelist) and even opened a small clinic to dispense very basic band-aid care.
And so, her marvelous work started to gain attention with the National Geographic endorsement that came on… July 14th, 1960. Ahem.
Keeping Hope
Jane is not blind to the current world state, and she mentioned the war and genocide occurring in Ukraine, Soudan and Gaza. His interviewer, radio host Georges Stroumboulopoulos, tells her: You’re not afraid to say that? And she replied: I don’t care (who is offended.)
I didn’t know, but Jane, who was vegetarian for a long time, has become vegan since a few years, like Georges is. She showed us plush animals, a chimpanzee, an octopus, a pork, a jungle rat, each having intelligence and capacities. Farm animals are sentient, and often sapient, too. We can act, in things as small as consuming a plant-based diet, better for the animals and the planet.
How can you stay so hopeful when the world is burning? (Nor exactly that phrasing). Jane gives us the reasons;
First, the younger generation is growing up and resilient. Second, the human indomitable spirit and our intellect that can find solutions to problems.
Photo from my seat. Georges Stroumboulopoulos, Jane Goodall, and the head of the Institute in Canada.
And she added uplifting examples of hope: of children planting trees in war-torn countries, of the Gombe forest (in Tanzania) that had almost disappeared due to over cut in the 1980s, and that grew back on the hills. Roots & Shoots is a global youth leadership program that exists in more than 140 countries. Through Roots & Shoots, participants identify and address problems in their communities.
Helping people to improve their lives also helps the nature around. And do not stop acting to the best of your knowledge, to help people, the environment and the animals. Even in small things.
I left the Meridian Hall in a happy mood. It was worth the five hours total of public transit.
To discover more about the Jane Goodall Institute, go here. And for more words of hope, go below!
