Adrian FaulknerFantasy Author

The Raddison Edwardian Heathrow is a strange place. It was either designed by an architect whilst dropping acid or one with an acute hate of right angles. It is possible to take a lift up one floor and end two floors above where you started, routes back from places don’t seem the same as the one you took to get there originally, there are secret stairs that don’t seem to take you down to the logical place on the floor below; heck, it even has a pond on the second floor. It is a place that seems to break the laws of geometry and physics, and therefore the perfect place to hold an Eastercon.

So it looks like I am going to Eastercon.

For a long time it didn’t look likely. First it was severe lack of funds, and then when I started the new job which has an out of hours element it was very likely I might be on call that weekend. And then there was the small point of moving house around then.

But these conventions are one of the few chances to catch up with friends, not just the ones I chat with regularly, but the ones who I rarely get chance to have more than a few real words with. I hoped that I might be able to make one day but it seems all the stars have mysteriously aligned and Easter is the one free weekend I have for literally months.

So having been paid (and whipped into action by friends), I went and booked myself in for the whole weekend. If you want to blame anyone, blame Anne Lyle for letting me know that the convention was close to capacity. And you can blame her by buying her book that comes out next week!

It’s probably not wise to go to a convention a week after moving, but hey-ho! And after a couple of months where real life has had to take priority over the writing (oh, how I can’t wait to settle in and have time to get some serious writing again) going to a proper event is just what I need to motivate me.

Hope to see some of you there in the bar!

I’m sure in the summer, Prestatyn is a pretty place, full of excited holiday makers, but in winter it feels slightly depressing; bleak and lonely.

We arrived in darkness, and morning found us in something between a council estate and a prison, a gated holiday-community in the form of Pontins. We were lucky, we had gold accommodation. However, having to choose via a ominous switch on the wall between hot water and the cooker, the lack of a microwave, the need to bring our own towels, and the large iron mark on the carpet in one of the bedrooms, one couldn’t help but wonder what extra hardships those in silver would have to endure? Even the television, a relic of the 80s cabled into their ‘network’, had worse reception than my first ever wire-aerial TV.

This weekend sees the return of the SFX Weekender and I’m currently getting ready for it.

Last year’s event proved a lot of fun. Despite being hosted in a holiday camp that looked like it was made to hold prisoners of war, there was a good crowd there and whilst I attended very few panels (I was nearly permanently in the bar) it was quite a laugh.

Even so, I hadn’t planned to go this year. January is the worst time financially and a tumultuous year this year means I’ve cut back on pre-booking cons. But a friend won tickets and so a posse of us will be heading up to the new Prestatyn venue via Cambridge on Thursday. Seems like a lot of people are going as well, so it will be good catch up, especially since Eastercon currently looks unlikely for me this year.

Because I’m on a very strict budget, I’ve been shopping to get a few bits of food (soup and pot noodles) today and doubt I will be drinking very much at all. But I’m looking forward to the event and look forward to seeing some of you there.

Fantasycon is a strange beast. It was my first literary con some years back and despite everyone being very nice and friendly, I felt largely invisible as a newbie. The dichotomy extended to the programming where despite being a Fantasycon, due to the tastes of people who attended, was mostly focused on horror. Yet despite that, and despite the dodgy hotel in Nottingham, I kept going back, and enjoying myself.

Twitter changed a lot of things for me. I found myself a group of likeminded friends and suddenly cons were no longer a lonely experience but one as part of an ever-growing inclusive posse. Yet Fantasycon still remained this odd little con that’s mere mention would cause others to raise eyebrows and mutter “more like horrorcon”.

2011 saw Fantasycon move away from Nottingham and the addition of some major Fantasy guests. I mean, whether you like Christopher Paolini or not, he has sold an awful lot of fantasy books. Joe Abercrombie is always good value for money, entertaining and a big name in his own right. Yes, there was still a lot of Horror content and guests, but I don’t think even Fantasycon’s biggest critics ever wanted to get rid of the horror element.

As a result, what we ended up with was probably one of the best cons I’ve ever been to. It was slick, it was organised (to the extent that the organising committee were going round at a ridiculous hour in the morning to inform people the hotel bar would be closing shortly and to get their drinks in now) and it seems like everyone had a great time whether they were veterans or virgins.

Well, it’s that time again when everyone emerges blinking into the sunlight and heads off to Fantasycon for a weekend of fandom, alcohol and (if we’re lucky) a bit of debauchery. This year, Fantasycon has decamped from Nottingham and headed to Brighton on the South Coast.

If I had one criticism of Fantasycon, it would be that it’s always a little horror centric. That’s mainly due to the large number of horror writers and readers who attend, but I’m really glad to see that this year, there’s an abundance of fantasy guests: Gwyneth Jones, Joe Abercrombie and Christopher Paolini.

For some reason I always seem to go to a convention and come back with a load of new personal philosophies on my writing career. I say some reason, but in truth I know them all and drafted a big long blog post about it all before I decided that wasn’t what I wanted my SFX Weekender post to be about.

What I really want to tell you about is the fun I had.

I’ve had a habit of taking my friends on my adventures. My friend Pob came to New York Toy Fair one year where we ended up stumbling drunk all over the city at 2am after a party with Run DMC. My friend Nick came out to San Diego Comic Con with me (after a personal video plea to his wife from Good Charlotte) and was sat there at the table with me as I nervously interviewed Charlize Theron. But my friend Simon, for one reason or another, missed out on those crazy, crazy times. So going to SFX weekender was in some small way a good opportunity to make up for that.

OK so the biggest ‘moment’ was when Mark Charan Newton recognised me (like I’m hard to forget). Simon seemed impressed with that, and I was happy that he was impressed. We did also see Steven Moffat and Russell Tovey in the bar (who I spent ages staring through trying to look at someone on the other side of the bar before I realised who it was).

We spent most of the time hanging out in the bar but we went to a number of panels and screenings. I made Simon rewatch Skyline, because A) I hadn’t seen it and B) He’d made me see Repo: The Genetic Opera the night before and that sort of crap deserves payback.

Funniest moment had to be where Scott Andrews beat me at Bragfest with his Summer Glau story. That is the first time it’s ever happened. The Abaddon Pub Hour was pretty hilarious as well.

I never bought any books. Which whilst that might sound disgusting to some, has good reason. Now I have my kindle (and no space left in the house) I’m restricting myself to ebooks. Whilst I might not have bought any books, there are a large number of additions in my kindle reading queue.

My biggest regret was that I never got to meet and chat to all the people I wanted to. Some people were around but they were deep in conversation and it wasn’t the right moment. If I know you, follow you on twitter and never got to chat to you, I’m sorry.

We weren’t staying on site and had to drive home on Saturday night, meaning we missed out on some of the late night shenanigans. On the plus side, it meant I couldn’t drink (which after Eastercon last year, is a good thing!). I think the best advice I can give anyone thinking of going to a convention is to stay on site.

It’s only a couple of months until the next event, Eastercon, and I’m already looking forward to it. Hope to see some of you there!

I got a very nice call last night to tell me I’d won 4 tickets to the SFX Weekender. To say I was pleased was a slight understatement.

It looked like a lot of what I know as the “book crowd” were going and I’d regretted not booking when there were offers on. Whilst there are a range of celebrities available, it was catching up with these friends that I was more interested.

So getting free tickets was ideal. “Great,” the caller said. “I’ll ring back in the future for the names of your guests.”

Guests? Oh crap.

You see, like everyone I have various social circles: There are the old workmates, there are the geocachers, there are friends from when I used to do charity work, friends from the collector community.

The trouble is, they don’t sit nice together. They’re all very different types of people and whilst variety is the spice of life, I don’t want to take someone who finds the prospect of sitting in a bar and talking books all day, boring.

Yes, my friend A would love a free day out as much as the next person but I have visions of him getting pissed up and telling China Mieville to f*** off. I mean, he doesn’t even read.

My friend P would love to come and would be unlikely to cause a ruckuss but he couldn’t afford to come down to me on the train.

My friend N isn’t the greatest of readers but has a good enough understanding of geek culture. He did come with me to San Diego Comic Con after I got Billy from the band Good Charlotte to record a personal plea to his wife. But she’s expecting their first child within a month of the event, and it would probably be wrong for him to leave her for a weekend.

A lot of my US friends would dig it… but they’re in the US, so they’re hardly going to fly over just for this event. Not when they go to San Diego Comic Con and New York Comic Con.

And my book friends? Well it looked like all those who were wanting to go had already got tickets.

So this left me with a quandary. Here I am with 152 friends on Facebook (and no I don’t try and collect them, just add people I know / interact with) and I had no-one to go with.

Now I usually have no issue with going to events alone. And it’s not like I wasn’t going to meet up with people. But the thought of telling the organisers I had no-one to bring really, really bothered me. I felt like Nobby No Mates. Oh the shame! How would I ever live it down?

But thankfully my friend Simon is able to make it, and it’s like a huge weight off my shoulders. He’s a reader (in fact he’s an alpha reader for my novel although he’s kept fairly quiet about his opinions so far) and I’m always giving him fantasy books to read that he doesn’t like. We agree on the Lies of Locke Lamorra and Tome of the Undergates, but that’s about it. Still I think he’ll get on with the book crowd.

Not sure if I’ll get another two people before they ring back, but at least if I have one I won’t feel like such a Nobby No Mates.

So let’s be honest here, rather than pretend this to be some massive act of fandom. After a week of getting miserable under edits and real life stressing me out, I really needed to get out the house. So on Saturday morning, I jumped in the car and drove a hundred and fifty miles to Derby for the one-day Alt.Fiction event, Other Worlds. This, my brain told me, wasn’t a form of procrastination because it was still linked to writing.

The idea of these one day events is to try and capture those people who never go to cons; to give them a taste of what to expect. And I have to be honest, and say that whilst I’ve thought a lot since about how the event can be improved, it wasn’t because Other Worlds did anything wrong.

The event kicked off with some optional SF or Fantasy workshops in the morning. I didn’t go for a number of reasons but I heard from people who did go who said it was well-attended and very beneficial.

The panels started with a discussion on the landscape of SF and Fantasy with panellists Adrian Tchaikovsky, Mark Charan Newton, Peter F Hamilton and Tony Ballantyne.. What was clever about this was that they introduced some friendly SF v Fantasy banter into the debate. This really helped ensure the conversation flowed from side to side, became a bit animated and engaged the crowd.

From there people followed their allegiance either into a panel on SF or (in the case of myself) the discussion on Fantasy. If you’ve ever been to a con before then you kinda knew what to expect, but both Mark and Adrian made it an interesting panel.

A signing there followed, but if I’m honest (and it may be because I wasn’t queuing up to have anything signed) it felt the event had ended and we were just hanging on for the raffle. I’d prefer the event ended with a bang rather than a whimper.

Are these events suited to your average con-goer? I think some will find them deliberately light on panels, so unless you’re supporting a favourite author, it might not be worth doing hundreds of miles. But I think if you’ve never been to a con before and are nervous about committing to a whole weekend, then these are perfect.

The thing I’ve been thinking a lot about since is the goodie bag. A lot of people seemed genuinely excited about getting King Rat by China Mieville in their bags. I got a SF book. A free book is a free book and I think most regular con-goers would agree. But if these one-day events are outreach programmes, I found myself wondering if there should be a separate fantasy or SF goodie bag. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about what was done, but instead wondering if the event is catering to those people who are just entering fandom, whether the goodie bag could be changed to better suit that slightly different audience. I’m sure if I had wanted I could have swapped the book (although I do own King Rat), but if this is possibly someone’s first con experience and we’re looking to try and engage them with fandom, do we have to offer something slightly different in the goodie bag? What about a book by one of the authors present? Maybe even play around with the entrance fee to budget for it. It’s something I offer as a point of debate not a criticism.

One thing they did include which I thought was a great idea, was a sampler from Tor. A lot of people were very excited to see that the little booklet included samples from Embassytown and The Sea Watch. Now you can be cynical and say it’s just Tor promo material, but I think giving the fans an early taste of things to come gave the event weight. I know hardcore fans who were excited about an extract of Embassytown, so to a casual first-timer, I think it would have been a big deal.

These one-day events are definitely a good thing, and there’s another in the form of Conjour being planned for next year in Leeds. It would be great if there was a way these smaller events could filter out to places that never get any form of fandom events, maybe even more rural areas. Hardcore fans seem to be willing to travel, so they should ensure events are well attended. If this is a form of outreach programme I think we as a community still have more to do, things to still experiment with.

All this might sound like I’m being slightly negative about the event. I’m not. It tried something slightly different and I think it worked. It was brilliantly organised and a very good event. I had a great day out and I think those who were experiencing their first con, did so too.

I quite infamously went to my first Fantasycon two years ago and went nearly the entire weekend without a person speaking to me.

It’s tough if you’re a newbie. Fantasycon is such a tight-knit group that even though they are genuinely very welcoming, they are always huddled in little groups, making it impossible to just join in.

My second year was better (to be fair they did respond to my criticism) but it was still quite a lonely experience.

However twitter has been a real life-saver this year. Through it I’ve met and got to know some lovely new ‘genre friends’ who made this Fantasycon the best yet.

Of course it didn’t start that great. After assuring my disease-ridden friend on Monday that he shouldn’t worry “as I have an over-active immune system and don’t catch colds” driving up on Thursday I came down with the mother of all colds. So Thursday Night and Friday up until the convention started I spent in quarantine, which was extra depressing as it was my birthday.

However, I rested enough to feel better (and when I wasn’t sleeping I did work on the novel, including writing an entire chapter at 3am in the morning when I couldn’t sleep). Come the start of the convention I was over the worst of it.

First person I saw was @hagelrat of Unbound where I got to see another side to her. Now, you may think Adele is sweet and dear. Don’t believe it! She’s a tyrant, gathering her minions and plotting blogging domination. I only hope she wasn’t too hard on newest minion Chris that he had a good time!

I also saw Sharon AKA @dfreview (http://darkfictionreview.net/). I think I’ve only ever said hello briefly once before but I got chance to chat with her over the weekend at various points. She too celebrated a birthday over the weekend.

Friday night saw a meal with @alrutter, @ghostfinder and his lovely wife Sandra, and @gavingsmith. Brilliant company, and lovely food. Amanada reviews books over at Floor to Ceiling Books (as well as a million other things) but she writes some of the best reviews in the business. Adam is a very talented writer (www.AdamChristopher.co.uk) whose work has appeared in Hub and a load of other places. He won the Sir Julius Vogel Award this year for editing (New Zealand’s answer to the Hugo) and most of the humour of the evening came from trying to come up with different ways he could display the trophy. Gavin G Smith is a published novelist with Gollancz (http://www.gavingsmith.com/) whose novel first novel Veteran is out now. I’m personally not big on Sci-Fi novels but hearing him describe his makes me want to pick it up.

From the meal we went to the Heavy Metal Karaoke. This is where I discovered I have now become old and find it “all a bit too loud”. I also didn’t recognise any of the songs. I doubt whether I would have even if they’d been sung perfectly, so I left early, thinking I should take it easy given the cold.

Saturday was a fab day. Normally at conventions I plot out my panels, rushing from here to there, trying to pick up information that will be of value to me in my career. I either know it all now or am beyond help, as I spent most of the day in the bar. There we were joined by Mark and Liz De Jager from My Favourite Books. Lovely, lovely people. And you’d think a day of sitting in a group drinking and chatting with people popping off here, there and meeting back up would make for a boring day but the constant flow of people made for such a interesting day that I was glad I was there rather than going to panels.

I did go to one on “How Not To Get Published”. I don’t know why I subject myself to these things. I mean the panelists made it interesting and entertaining but I have to accept that I know not to include rose petals and perfumed paper with my submission. I get a little disappointed when I come away from a panel not learning anything new, but then there is only a finite amount of information you can impart in an hour.

Of course, it’s impossible to go to these events and not talk writing. Just four and a half chapters from completing the novel writing is very much on my mind (I’ve stopped giving drafts numbers and am now on to letters. I think this is draft M). Whilst I think the ‘pitch’ needs a lot of work and hence didn’t get rolled out, I think I managed to talk about it without sounding like an idiot or boring everyone.

It appears a few of us are going on a pulp SF binge, but I won’t say any more about it for fear of pre-empting something.

I did see @markcn (www.MarkCNewton.com) briefly, but he was as in demand as ever.

We didn’t go to the banquet but instead, @alrutter, @gergaroth, @lizuk, @ghostfinder, Mrs Ghostfinder and myself went out for food and cocktails. This is where things start getting murky.

I may (at some point) said I could take George R R Martin and Neil Gaiman in a fight. I did not say I could take Joe Abercrombie – I know my limits.

We came back for the awards. These were the awards my non-fiction book got longlisted for. Lee Harris went and collected the award for best non-fiction winner and then put it down on the table next to me. Evil plots were indeed plotted but I do like Ansible and think it a worthy winner, so nothing was carried out (quite literally).

The downside to missing the banquet is the free books. Free Gollancz books may I add. At some point someone may have given us theirs, so I did come away with King of the the Crags (Thank you @kaisavage for your retrieval skills).

I took very few pictures at Fantasycon and this is probably well as I do have photos of Amanda and Mark making leopard poses that I only sort of remember. The one thing I do remember was Mark telling me about his book, which just sounds awesome and I want to read.

Another person I met was Will Hill. He’s a new YA writer whose book sounds interesting but I won’t say any more as I think Harpers has various things planned for launching him. Just remember the name and keep an eye out on all your favourite blogs.

If Saturday was the party, Sunday was the hangover. Mrs Ghostfinder came down with a cold. I maintain it takes 48 hours for a cold to develop so couldn’t be Liz or I, Mrs Ghostfinder is blaming the dirty wine glasses, so we’ll leave it at that and just hope she feels better soon. Likewise Liz and Mark decided to head home early, turning Sunday into a Ghost town.

There seem to be a lot of complaints that Fantasycon is more horror than fantasy but as an fantasy person I do have to say that if only horror people are joining and taking part in the British Fantasy Society, you can’t really blame them if things get skewed towards what their members want. The only way it will change is to start to get more of the fantasy writers there. I don’t think it would be resisted either. In fact I’m almost positive that it would be welcomed.

But I had a absolutely brilliant Fantasycon, in no short part to all the great people I met up with and talked to (only some of whom are listed above). Next year the event moves to Brighton after years of being in Nottingham. Hopefully that will mix things up a bit and see another big influx of new people.