From the 19th-30th June Australia played host to one of fantasy’s biggest names, Voyager’s own Raymond E. Feist! Just in time to celebrate the end of an era with his final Riftwar book, Magician’s End, Raymond toured all over the country, visiting two big conventions, Supanova Pop Culture Expos, in Sydney and Perth as well as events in libraries and bookstores from Brisbane to Melbourne and Adelaide.
Supanova is now a truly massive and impressive fan convention attracting big star talents & a wide variety of activities; from cosplay contests to live wrestling matches and talks by authors. As well as Mr Feist we had fellow Voyager authors Kylie Chan and Traci Harding at the Sydney event and Kylie also toured over to Perth. Despite the lousy weather all weekend in Sydney both days were packed affairs with it almost being hard to move at times on Saturday! Another Voyager author, K.J. Taylor, came all the way up from Canberra to attend and she signed a few copies of book one in her latest series The Shadow’s Heir for us to giveaway while she was there!
Raymond had several book signings and meet/greets over at the Kinokuniya Bookstore shop just opposite our own Voyager stand and each had a massive queue that ran most of the way along the wall of the Dome building. On Sunday Kylie & Raymond were on a panel about creating epic fantasy as well.
Outside of Supanova Raymond visited several stores around the country and was met crowds of adoring fans wherever he went. Jason Gale blogged about meeting him at Robinson’s Bookshop in Victoria, and in Adelaide the crew at Mount Barker Library put on an AMAZING stage show, including copious amounts of dry ice, dramatic lighting, knights sword fighting in full armour and a whole host of extras dressed up in medeval inspired costumes! They even had special sweatshirts and bottles of local wine made up for the event to give out to attendees! 
Raymond was extremely impressed! Mt Feist also stopped by the Sydney offices to sign a mountain of books for stores during the tour and he sat down with Voyager publisher Rochelle to answer a few questions and give us some hints on what may be next … Enjoy!
