Den Valdron
KEYCON 2026
I’ll be doing the Dealer’s Room at Keycon 2026,
Hilton Winnipeg Airport Suites, 1800 Wellington Avenue
May 15th – 17th, 2026
I’ll be going in with other Authors of Manitoba, notably Nancy Walker, Rachael Clark, Sandra Terra and V.H. Balaban.
Since the last Keycon, I’ve got several new books – Squad Thirteen, Murder Chickens on Mars, The Time Traveller Chronicles, 1 and 2. And I’ll be bringing back several classics – Starlost Unauthorized, Drunk Slutty Elf and Zombies, Axis of Andes, the Mermaid’s Tale, Lexx Unauthorized, Bear Cavalry and More. It’ll be great. Don’t give money to Amazon, come to Keycon and give money to me directly! Meet the authors! I’ll autograph. We all do autographs. I’ll give bulk discounts! Cash, Interac or Credit card!
Also, I’ll be doing panels and presentations:
Saturday 9:00 AM – Executive 4 – Worldbuilding Panel – Den Valdron & Casia Schreyer
Saturday 12:00 Noon – Executive 4 – A Starter Guide for Self Publishing – Den Valdron
Saturday 4:00 PM – Executive 4 – Comedy and Sci Fi – Den Valdron & Casia Schreyer
Sunday, 12:00 Noon – Main Room – Authors Roundtable, Den Valdron & Others
Drop by!
The Time Traveler’s Chronicle, Season Two
H.G. WELLS NAMELESS TIME TRAVELER IS BACK to save the day, with mixed results. Alongside the superpowered but sarcastic duo, Heart and Diamond, the Time Traveler meets old friends and enemies, travels from the age of piracy to space opera, stumbles over monsters, and tries to do his best with wit, charm, high intelligence and low cunning. Featuring:
The Pirates of Penance – The trouble with being a Time Traveler is you never know if the past is catching up to you, or if it’s coming back around the other way. The secrets of Heart and Diamond are revealed.
Heartbreak – The Time Traveler’s old foe is back, as a tourist? Featuring Morlocks, aliens and more.
Mourning – The Time Traveler, seeking help, looks up an old friend. Maye ‘friend’ is too strong a word.
Toad Warrior – On his own, the Time Traveler visits a sleepy English village which conceals a supernatural guardian. But even the supernatural ages, and things are about to go wrong.
Debts Owed – Shapeshifting aliens invade a golf course, friends are re-united, enemies are back for another round. The fate of Weena, the secret of the Morlocks and the Time Traveler’s true identity are about to be revealed.
The Time Traveler’s Chronicle – Season One
The further adventures of H.G. Wells’ nameless TIME TRAVELER, with his associates, Heart and Diamond, mysterious twins gifted with sarcasm and superpowers. Season One chronicles five adventures of the Traveler, as he encounters an alien blancmange trying to go home, teams up with Sigmund Freud, tries to solve the murder of a giant frog, flees an extra-dimensional parasite and fights Morlocks on an alternate Earth doomed to destruction. With nothing more than keen intelligence, compassion, a dash of humor and his associates superpowers, the Time Traveler arrives to try and save the day, with mixed results. Featuring:
The Monster of Ness– A community is plagued by an invasion of Lizard Men, who turn out to be regular humans in really bad costumes. But this is only the beginning of the confusion, as each new clue creates an even more impossible mystery.
Vienna 1913 – Joseph Stalin, Leon Trotsky and Josef Tito are all living within a few square miles of each other in the city of Vienna in the summer of 1913. As the Archduke goes about his business, these four men become embroiled in an alien plot to bring on a war to destroy humanity.
The Clone Soldiers– The Traveler is summoned to Citadel Prime, the world of the Clone Troopers, where everyone looks and thinks exactly the same, but somehow, secrets and conspiracies abound. Can the Traveler figure out what’s really going on and save himself and his Associates?
Time Parasite – The Traveler and his associates find themselves on a famous derelict ghost ship of the Clone Troopers, the Emploder, lost in space for centuries. But they’re not alone, something hungry waits, even as the ship teeters on the edge of the universe.
Volcano– Cast into an alternate universe where a fascist government rules England, the Traveler and his friends struggle to save the planet from impending doom and an invasion of Morlocks. Meanwhile, in a mausoleum, a sinister Dracula-like figure watches and plots its escape.
2025 THE WRITER’S YEAR IN REVIEW
So, here’s the writing year in review: What a shit year. What a seriously shit year.
The big news was an apparent heart attack in July, which turned out not to be a heart attack. Instead it was compression and distortion of cervical vertebra, followed by months of excruciating pain that did not respond to medication, and the more months of reduced pain under heavy medication that did work. Prognosis? Waiting on referrals. Taking physiotherapy and meds and hoping to get better. Late November and early December, there’s been some improvement, but I have months to look forward to. Just a fucking nightmare.
In hindsight, this condition was building up over several previous months. Since at least spring, I recall experiencing increasingly frequent episodes of pain, poor sleep, chronic exhaustion and depression. I just refused to pay attention, dismissing it repeatedly as just a bad day and forgetting about it. But there were more and more bad days and fewer good days, I was unconsciously triaging my life, reducing or cutting more and more things back, focusing on maintaining critical activities like work, but even there slowing down when I could. Even activities I enjoyed like Improv I was disengaging, reacting less, arriving last minute, leaving early as possible, avoiding socializing. My life just kept getting narrower.
What a fucking year.
MURDER CHICKENS ON MARS is out!
It’s official! And available in Ebook and Print at Amazon, Apple, Smashwords, Google, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Vivlio, Biblioteca, Baker & Talyor, Draft2Digital, etc. I think some 18 platforms in all. Or it will be. It’s out there, it’s just taking time.
SO WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?
Let me try to explain the existence of Murder-Chickens on Mars, and help people understand, if not appreciate, what this book is.
I am the son of a Mechanic. I grew up around cars, fixing flat tires, pumping gas, taking things apart and trying to put them back together. I was an okay mechanic, but not gifted. My father and brother were both very gifted. But I could do breaks and exhaust pipes, replace whatever needed replacing, taking breaks and engines apart and put them together. I’m also the grandson of a Carpenter, and along the way I learned to hammer a nail, lay a beam, bevel, mortice, measure and cut. And along the way, I had other experiences.
I have always been driven to examine, to understand, to try to figure out how things work. There’s an elegance to the way a machine or a body works, to the precision gears of a clock or a social system, the intricacies and harmonies. My world is one of blood and chaos. And perhaps because of that, I’m desperate to understand to make sense of things.
I’m fascinated by the overlooked, by the hidden corners, all the stuff we take for granted. I think I was a journalist once, because of that. And a teacher. And a historian. This world of randomness and horror, I want to unravel it, perhaps to find a way to to make it less random and less horrific.
When Words Collide – Conference Schedule
Well, I’m attending When Words Collide, a literary festival held in Calgary, Alberta. And I’ve volunteered to contribute to programming so I’ve got five sessions up.
Friday, August 15 through Sunday, August 17
Volunteering in the Merchant Room
D.G. Valdron books available
* Squad Thirteen
* Starlost Unauthorized
* Drunk Slutty Elf and Zombies.
Friday, August 15
1:00 pm to 1:30, Merchant Room
D.G. Valdron and Arlene Marks
Autograph Session
Friday, August 15
2:00 PM Sheraton West Room
D.G. Valdron – Solo Presentation
A Crash Course in Copyright
Just what it says. I’m a lawyer, I kind of deal with this stuff. A run through on all the basic concepts that a writer needs.
Saturday, August 16
4:00 PM – Barlow Room
MODERATOR – Den Valdron. Panelists -Panelists: Marie Powell, Anna Shannon, David Worsick
Accuracy in History, Science, and General Knowledge
When and when not to have it. How far can you ignore it or exalt it in a story before you either bore readers (too much accuracy) or anger readers (too little accuracy).
Sunday, August 17
9:00 AM – Barlow Room
Moderator: Heather Wilkey
Panelists: Denis Valdron, David Worsick, R. Overwater
Alternate History
Explorations of other paths, what to read, what to write, what to research and what to watch out for.
Sunday, August 17
2:00 PM – Sheraton West Room
D.G. Valdron Solo Presentation
A Crash Course in Contracts for Writers
Just what it says – I’m a lawyer, Contracts are my life. I explain the basics and run through the Important Issues.
https://www.whenwordscollide.org/
https://www.whenwordscollide.org/2025-lineup.html
https://whenwordscollide2025.sched.com/grid
SQUAD THIRTEEN – It’s official
IN THE LAST DECADES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, all over America, unstoppable masked killers began to emerge. Called slashers, and using everything from machetes to chain saws, these figures would appear out of nowhere, slaughter a group of people, and then vanish, leaving traumatized survivors, only to reappear again, months or years later.
LAW ENFORCEMENT WAS HELPLESS against Killers who would not die, who appeared and disappeared out of nowhere, who would not be stopped. Eventually, the Army was sent in. They couldn’t stop the slashers.”
SO THEY RECRUITED THEM.
IT WAS PROBABLY A REALLY BAD IDEA.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: A PASSIONATE PERSPECTIVE
There are actually quite a lot of troubling issues around AI which really don’t seem to be discussed, or get discussed in the shallowest way.
The thing that everyone, and I mean everyone overlooks, is that AI is not a public resource. It is private property. It’s owned. And the owners are pouring money into it, with the intention of getting a profit out of it.
In pursuit of their profit, they are literally stealing everyone’s information. The works of artists, the works of writers of books and novels. We’ve seen language inserted everywhere to try and allow AI to take your zoom conversations, your phone calls, your social media posts, all taken without permission or compensation, for the ultimate purpose of the owners of AI and their investors to make a lot of money.
It was recently revealed that one of these AI companies early on considered paying for peoples work, they decided it was too expensive, and they’d just steal it instead. Wow. Well, that’s a completely ethical stance. Decide to steal, and then argue a self serving justification, and throw a bunch of lawyers at it, maybe buy a few judges.
I have to say, I find that viscerally offensive. Let me explain where I’m coming from.
WRITER’S YEAR, 2024 WRAP UP
Well, here’s my writer’s year in review. What have we got? Another year of nothing much, unfortunately. Another year of spinning the wheels. Six books in all, though I didn’t write one of them, and only partial for another. I’ve been doing this the last few year, trying to keep track of what I’ve been up to and how far along I’ve gotten. I went back and reviewed the last few roundups. It’s rather distressing – basically, plugging away hard, the same projects slowly advancing or not advancing year by year. Word counts piling up, but an uncertain sense of accomplishment. Anyway, let’s jump in.