Den Valdron

WINNIPEG HORROR CON, September 12, 2026

Ladies and Gentlemen, Genders of all tastes, I present… Winnipeg Horror Con, September 12, 2026.  I’m D.G. Valdron, and I’ll be one of the dealers – offering my personal bookstore of weird tales of every kind. Starting with…

A dark excursion into cosmic horror, existential dread, over the top gore, featuring 90s slasher movie killers assembled, vampire infestations, river gods, wendigo, human farms, giant centipedes, alien dimensions, and stuff too weird and scary to describe.  The trigger warnings alone for this went on for three pages.

And more…

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A CRASH COURSE IN COPYRIGHT FOR WRITERS

COPYRIGHTS – In the modern era, literally every artist and writer lives and dies on their copyrights.

But what exactly is copyright? Where does it come from? Who created it and how? What does it mean? What exactly do you own when you have a copyright? What are your rights to your own work?  How do you prove or register your rights?  Do you even need to?  How long does it last?  How do you market it, what are you selling?  Where is the line between your copyrights and someone else’s?   When is copyright infringed? What about reviews?

A basic understanding of copyright is a fundamental, critical need for any writer or artist to navigate through life. This presentation is intended to provide the tools to appreciate and explore rights. 

Enclosed are my presentation notes for When Words Collide, 2026.

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE – THE AI ARGUMENT

Friday, August 14, 2026; 12:00 pm – 1:15 pm
THE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ARGUMENT

Artificial Intelligence is changing the world as we watch.  And it’s changing writing.

Somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3rds of the books on Amazon is AI.  AI slop is overwhelming online nonfiction sites like Medium, Quora and Substack, it’s dominating clickbait articles.  As much as 60% of social media traffic may now be bots. The future is here and it’s ugly as hell.

We are literally at ground zero of the potentially transformative explosion.  There’s so much discussion of AI and so much of it is bad, so much is emotional.  Literally every aspect of AI is just…  insane!  It’s a huge amount of ground. 

Does what we do even have a future? Is there a future for the novel, for books. Is there a place in the market for real writing and real writers? Can we use AI?  If so, what can or should we use it for?  What’s ethical?  Is there such a thing as ethical use?

People feel strongly about this topic, and rightly so.  This is not business as usual.

These are my Moderators notes for the panel…  follow along, enjoy, have your own discussions.

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BANNER

BANNER –  Commissioned from VistaPrint.  Designed myself modifying the templates – so no snark please.

The image is from a photograph of mine from my home town. Fossil Cove is just on the edge of town, Dalhousie, a cove just off the Inch Arran beach (it’s a terrible beach, a field of rocks, but go figure, it’s the tourist site).  This is one of the ‘flowerpot’ rocks, exotic shapes carved by ferocious tides.  This rock is so big you can literally walk right underneath it.

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CREATING A COVER

OKAY – Here goes.  You need a cover. You have no money.  You can’t pay an artist. You have no talent, you can’t draw or do artwork.  What do you do?

Well, you get sneaky.  I was doing a book, B-Movie Monsters in Love!  It’s just a personal project, it’s a fun book and I want it to be out there in the world. But I’m a quirky eccentric guy, and this is a really quirky eccentric book. So while I want it to be available, I don’t know that it will sell. At all. But I need a cover.

The Book’s theme is mainly deconstructing movie monsters. So that’s where I’m heading. I need a picture of a monster. Preferably a public domain picture, one without copyright issues.  You can find public domain images if you keep your head around you and look around.  Anything from the 19th or early 20th century can be fair game.  We’re up to 1931 in the United States. Any image you can find that’s earlier than that is reliably public domain. Some of the stuff after that – from say Night of the Living Dead, or the Hideous Sun Demon is in Public Domain because the registrations got screwed up – you can get a screen capture from those. Or outside the US, the limitation period is 70 years after the death of the creator.

You can also buy ‘stock photo’ images with a legal license to use, from places like Alamy and Adobe. Some cover artists use them. I haven’t.

I poked around and poked around, and I found a really nice poster for the original Lost World, the 1926, Willis O’Brien stop motion animated film.  Due to copyright registration issues, the film and its materials had gone into public domain long ago. This was safe.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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