Fantasycon mega-post

As promised, here's everything you need to know so far...
When? Friday 21st Sept - Sunday 23rd Sept
Where? Britannia Hotel, St James Street, Nottingham
With Who? Terry Brooks, Michael Marshall Smith, Stephen Jones & M.C. Peter Crowther
Website: www.fantasycon.org.uk

Preliminary schedule of events:

*Please note – there will be some additional items and panellists added shortly. Panellists appear subject to prior commitments. Some times may be rearranged.

(JB blog note! Also, some of the descriptions will be expanded on - we have yet to pretty up some of the titles!)

Friday 21st September

Devonshire Suite

7pm – 7.15pm - Welcome to Fantasycon

7.30pm – 8.30pm - Mass Signing/autographing party with GoHs and other authors.

8.45pm – 9.30pm - Solaris Launch Party

9.30pm – 10.30pm - Chills vs Thrills - Discussion panel with Tim Lebbon, Mark Morris, Michael Marshall Smith & Nancy Kilpatrick)

10.30pm – 11pm – Chaz Brenchley reading

11.30pm – Midnight – Ramsey Campbell reading

Saturday 22nd September

Devonshire Suite

10am – 10.45am – Comics: Easts meets West – The rise of Manga & Anime. Discussion panel with Jay Eales, Mike Carey, Mike Chinn, Jonathon Oliver

11am – 11.45am – Terry Brooks interviewed by Debbie Miller

12pm – 12.45pm - Are Fantasy Tropes Dead & What is the Perception of Modern Fantasy – Discussion panel with Chaz Brenchley, Juliet McKenna, Sarah Ash, Mark Chadbourn.

(1pm – 2pm – lunch break)

2pm – 2.45pm – Trials and Tribulations of Publishing – Discussion panel with Stephen Jones, George Mann, Peter Crowther, Jo Fletcher.

3pm – 3.45pm – Crime Crossover – Discussion panel with Michael Marshal Smith, Sarah Pinborough, Chris Fowler

4pm – 4.45pm – In Conversation with Smith & Jones – Stephen Jones interviews Michael Marshall Smith, Michael Marshall Smith interviews Stephen Jones.

6pm – 6.45pm – What Makes a Book work on Film? Scriptwriting discussion panel with Stephen Volk, Stephen Gallagher, Tim Lebbon

(7pm – 8.30pm – Dinner break)

8.30pm – 9.15pm – Taboo – Discussion panel with Chris Fowler, Ramsey Campbell, Adam Neville, Nancy Kilpatrick.

9.45pm – 11pm – The Fabulous Fantasycon Raffle

11.30pm – Midnight – Michael Marshall Smith reading.

Gallery Suite

10am – 10.45am – Funding workshop – Chaz Brenchley & Alex Davis

12pm – 12.45pm - Write for Life – Seminar with Simon Clark

3pm – 3.45pm – Making a Living from Scriptwriting – Seminar with Stephen Volk

4pm – 4.45pm – Write for Life – Seminar with Chaz Brenchley

5pm – 5.45pm – Editorial Seminar - Jo Fletcher

Film show in the evening – times to be decided.

Dealers Room

5pm – 5.45pm – Monster Small Press Launch

Sunday 23rd September

Devonshire Suite

1pm – 3pm – Banquet (tickets to be booked in advance only)

3pm – 4pm – British Fantasy Awards Ceremony (all welcome!)

4pm onwards – Clear Up and Dead Dog Party

Gallery Suite

10am – 11.45 – BFS AGM (BFS members only)

- * -
Banquet Menu

(Tickets to be booked in advance. Limited numbers. Please indicate your menu choices and any food allergies/special requirements when booking.)

STARTER
Choice of:

Cream of Vegetable soup

Fan of Charantais Melon served with a compote of Mixed Berries

*

MAIN COURSE
Choice of:

Breast of Chicken presented on Bacon Mash, stuffed with a Herb farce & finished with a Madeira jus.

(Veg. option) Stuffed Roast Pepper with Zuccini, Aubergine, Red Onions & Cous Cous with a Tomato & Herb sauce

(Selection of vegetables & potato served with either)

*
DESSERT
Choice of:

Mixed fruit cheesecake

Chocolate Truffle

*

Coffee & Mints

*

Price also includes 2 glasses of house wine & water/orange juice at the table

- * -

-
Fcon 2008 is confirmed for the Britannia, Nottingham. Date and guests to be advised.
We'll have a decent amount of details about it well in time for this years event! Hurrah!

-

Fcon

Yeah! A particularly fine Fcon meeting, thank you so very much. When I get my brain back tomorrow (3 hours driving on motorways does nothing for the concentration) - I'll get the schedule posted on here, the Fcon blog and and BFS forum. We've got a couple of peeps to get confirmation on, and a couple of panel/workshops we're waiting on confirmation on, but other than that, all done there. Everything from how to get into scriptwriting, editor seminars, publisher seminars, illustrated talks, late night readings, workshops, huge opening ceremony for which we will be plying you with wine and doing signings for the GoHs, all new and improved raffle, and, ooh, bunches of good stuff.

Hotel-wise, there's way more chairs and tables in the public areas now, and we've agreed better opening times for the smaller bar just outside the dealers room. More munchies available at the main bar, and we're getting a quote for getting real ale in. (And they promise the Theakstons is fixed.) Smaller bar should be open 7pm - midnight on Fri, Noon to midnight on Sat, and not sure about Sunday. Main bar will be open until dawn or beyond depending on who's still conscious and drinking.

And we're doing an art show! We weren't sure, but we had a walk around today and worked out a way of doing it with a little rearrangement of the Dealers room and spreading some things out to the room with the booths that you have to walk through to get to the main area. So now we know we've got the space, we're getting that sorted!

And we'll be in Nottingham for Fcon next year too - whether it's the normal Sept date, or the earlier one we may need to do for that year.

And we've sorted the banquet menu now. Better veggie option this time. Better organisation on the service so peeps get it hot. Hotel have asked that peeps choose their options before hand so need to contact peeps to get them to state their prefs for that.

We also decided what we're doing about the limited attendence for the workshops etc. There'll be sign up sheets somewhere prominant (probs near registration) so you write your name down on the day and when the list is full that's it. It'll most likely be something liked 30 - 40 maximum for most of the thingybobs so plenty spare. The room holds 60 so some seminars/workshops may have room for more peeps.

Also, if you're small press and want to launch, we'll be doing the usual in the dealer's room on Saturday afternoon so please let Vicky know if you're up for it. As luck would have it, the smaller bar is going to be right outside the dealer room entrance this year...

Erm. Think that's it. Got to get the attendee list up in places too. Fcon website will be getting updated next week and we may actually get the cafepress Fcon shop working. (Hope so, cos there's an Fcon tshirt I want done so I can wear it to the June open night.)

Prism
Word on the wossname is that it's back from the printers Wednesday and our Vicky will be doing the stamping and stuffing dance over the bank holiday Monday so expect it soon. There should be an Fcon Reporter going out with it too, also the voting form for the awards.

Other bits.
Don't know if I mentioned this before, but Slow Motion Wars, the fabalicious collection from Andrew Hook and Allen Ashley, wot woz going to be a Bradan book before we went kapootski... is now being published by those funky chaps at Estronomicon / Screaming Dreams. So buy it when you see cos it's cool!

Morning. Been a while!


The obligatory BFS section!

Jay and Selina's first Prism has been proofed and should be at the printers now. Quite looking forward to seeing it - especially as I'm now in the position to be as surprised as everyone else about when it lands on the doormat! Word from those that have seen the proofs is that it looks good and has a bit of a comicy feel to it...

Fcon is getting rather interesting - or rather, Fcon and assorted BFS related events for 2008 & 2009. It's all very hush hush at the moment and I'll be skinned alive if I gossip too much about it yet. 'tis quite tickle-some, though... It may entail a slight shifting of next year's Fcon date to a smidge earlier in the year, though. Probs around late June or first week of July before the schools break up - depends what happens about some other things first.

We're doing a Britannia meeting this Saturday to give the hotel bods what for and decide if we can squeeze an art show into Fcon this year, or not. Have got the event schedule pretty much worked out now - solid double streaming with a good lot of workshops and seminars as well as the usual panels. There may be a chance that there's a smaller room we can use if we fancy, it only holds 2o peeps though so we're not sure what we can use it for, unless we try a lot more readings during the day this time.
If you want a space in the dealer room this year, you need to talk to Vicky sharpish as there's limited space and we're almost full up. If you want to pay online for your membership email Vicky or Pat - it's not a facility we can advertise widely on the Fcon site due to various, erm, complications, but it's there if you want it.
Those of you who have booked, confirmation letters will be on the way shortly.

And the raffle has had a complete overhaul. And we're doing a mass signing with the guests and a few other authors on the Friday night as part of the opening festivities (so no quiz this year.)

Ooh, and Mike Carey's coming! He'll be on a comics panel on the Saturday.

And Simon Clark returns with his Write for Life talk, also the utterly fabulous Chaz Brenchley will be doing one as well. We're just working out what the maximum numbers for these will be then we'll sort out if they're going to be ticketed events or not.


The obligatory technological whinge.

I hate broadband. It's official. Especially BT Broadband. Bastards.


Bookie bookie...

Kelley Armstrong's latest one, No Humans Allowed, is fab. Highly recommended.
Joe Abercrombie's Before They Are Hanged is also an excellent read.
Looking forward to the next Locke Lamora one, due 21st June... hurrah!

Have also been on a bit of novelisation jag - 9 Resident Evil ones and 5 Tomb Raider ones. My eyes hurt. Problem with the Resident Evil ones are that the non-movie ones are a bit out of step with the game continuity, and generally with each other - so, for eg. if Zero Hour, written as book #0 of the series, you have the lovingly described account of Rebecca Chambers and the whole crashed train thingybob, then in the next few books where she's gets her cameos in the mansion and in the further between-game adventures, it's written like the mansion was her first experience with the zombies. Logically this suggests that book #0 was written later than than #1 - #5 or #6 but it's still mildly irritating.

The non-movie Tomb Raider ones are between-game adventures now if only someone would do game tie-in novels like they did for Resident Evil, then I'd be a happy bunny as I do love me my Tomb Raider! The comic book TR wasn't bad, the novelisations are better. Although TR: Man of Bronze is a bit blah.


Game fun
Alas, TR:Anniversary isn't going to be out on a platform I've actually got (as I hate playing it on the PC, so it's Xbox or PSone, or not at all...)
TR: Legend's been giving me a bit of hassle though - no matter how many walkthroughs I diligently follow, I still can't get near the gold treasures in Bolivia or Kazahkistan. And don't even talk to me about that bastarding sea monster. Possibly the most irritating end of level bad guy in the world, ever.


Please buy a house
Nope, they've still not sold the Blandford house. Someone please buy it. Or rent it. Or something.


Other fun
Some of the Write Fantastic will be knocking around Uxbridge library next Thursday as part of the Hillingdon litfest - may make it as Hillingdon's near my old turf. It's Jules McKenna, Sarah Ash and Jessica Rydill I believe.

Didn't make it to Alt-Fic after all that, someone decided to take the weekend off (bad boss) so had to work on the Saturday. Apparently it was really good too! Damn it.