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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
It seems the done thing these days for writers to announce when they are attending conventions. They announce any launches they will be doing, any signings they'll be holding, any readings they'll be performing and any panels they'll be attending. I, on the other hand, will be in the bar. I'm not advanced enough in [...]
