Sebastien de Castell visits Strathmore to debut new title

By John Watson Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Sebastien de Castell stopped in Strathmore, Aug. 30, as part of his tour promoting the launch of his newest titled book, The Malevolent Eight. 

Sequel to The Malevolent Seven, de Castell’s visit in Strathmore kicked off his time in Alberta to meet with fans and sign copies of the new print. 

“We wanted to create a focus around rural base. We know that Music Box Books is a new store – they are very indulged in the fantasy world, and so when I reached out to them initially mentioning this, they were ecstatic and they just went full buy-in on this event,” said Mickey Mikkelson, publicist with Creative Edge Publicity. “We had a number of people come and talk to Sebastien; people have bought books, they have inquired about his new titles, they have inquired about stuff he has got coming up – it has been nothing but positivity all across.”

Overall, the tour is to encompass 20 locations within a 10-day span which will see stops across Canada and the United States. 

Mikkelson added part of the appeal of adding a stop such as Strathmore to the tour is to focus more on the community aspect of being able to interact with fans.

“There is not a lot of book touring that happens anymore in traditional publishing because people always feel like, if you can’t get to 500 people at once, what’s the point, but that is not really the point of doing a book tour – of meeting new readers, of meeting fans,” said de Castell. 

“You do those things because it amplifies a lot more with people. When you sell a book online to somebody, one person buys your book and hopefully they like it. When you meet someone and they love your book, then they end up sharing it with everybody they know, and that is just a much more valuable relationship for an author to have with readers.”

de Castell has been a fantasy author for approximately the last 10 years. He took up writing after leaving archaeology. His other professional endeavours have included being a musician, ombudsman, interaction designer, teacher, project manager, actor, fight choreographer, and product strategist.

He described that the journey started at the age of 16, being inspired by the idea of being a bard, similar to archetypes established in fantasy settings. 

“I became a travelling musician, and I choreographed sword fights for the theater for a while, and I ended up travelling the world and I did all kinds of different things, and then that all kind of culminated in that storytelling side of getting to be a fantasy author. 

de Castell joked that The Malevolent Seven was originally never meant to be published. Rather, it was a project he wrote for himself, stemmed by frustration about language use being heavily policed in his other work.”

“I wanted to write what I think of as a sort of palette cleanser novel, which is just a novel for me. I’m going to write whatever I feel like writing; I’m not going to question it,” he said. 

The Malevolent Seven and The Malevolent Eight are available both in physical and audio formats.