Ooh, one week 'til Fcon. I'm excited. Are you excited? :->
What's even better is this year, minimal stress and total utter laziness. Ha hah! Except for a couple of hours on Saturday when I've got to be a bossy madam about setting up the banquet. Balloons is all I'll say to you. Why I suggested them I'll never know... Hopefully, if all things come off, there should be some fun stuff on the tables for those of you who're attending it.
Also, Fcon Friday is Talk Like a Pirate day. Woo hoo! I'm expecting some piratical type things from peeps during the quiz. And no ninjas. Oh no. Ninjas will be walking the plank, yargh!
The usual happy puppy Fcon report will inevitably follow as soon as the beast is slain for the year.
Wonderlands
In other news... if you haven't already checked out Wonderlands then pop along as it's rather good fun.
Authonomy
And also the Harper Collins Authonomy website is now live. Even if you're not a writer type wanting to post your work up there, it's still fun for reading other peoples work. The main gist of it is that, through a complicated ranking system that nobody quite understands, the five books that get in the top five at the end of month make their way to a bunch of HC editors for reading and commenting.
And me mate Debs made it last month! Coolness, or what?! She's still waiting to hear the verdict on her book.
14 September 2008
19 May 2008
Bits and bobs
TV Heaven!
Hurrah, NCIS is back for a new series! FX, Sundays at 9pm or repeated on FX+1 at 11pm....
But seriously, did anyone actually believe for one minute that the corpse was DiNozzo? And the continuity fairy has been having the day off as some of the hair?! Shocking!
Oh yeah, there was a plot, wasn't there... :-> Despite the fact that anyone with half a brain guessed the Frog/Jeanne relationship somewhere quite early on last season, it wasn't a bad follow through. The post-explosion scene of crime bits were very well done, the DiNozzo entrance and barney with the creepy CIA guy also good. The Madam Director bits were the usual cringeworthy stuff but the DiNozzo / MD smack down was very good, accented by that Gibbs 'attaboy' smirk. The ending boat scene seemed needlessly tacked on, though. (There's a joke there somewhere...)
And Doctor Who!
Agatha Christie and giant wasps!! The vicar was a boring gink though.
It did also remind me that I've never actually read an Agatha Christie. (Shock, horror!) Had no idea that Murder on Nile & Murder on the Orient Express were Poirot mysteries either! (Wiki is my friend. As is Amazon.)
And next week looks cool. (Except it's not next week, it's the week after, bloody useless Eurovision thingy.)
Bookity Book
More thumbnail reviews!
Smoke and Mirrors - Tanya Huff. The mystery portion was of the good, the protag wangsting about his love life, not so good. Luckily, not much of the latter, so a damn good book.
Empress - Karen Miller. Crikey. Fevered or what. Despite the protag being not the most pleasant of peeps, it's got a frantic pace and it was only towards the end where our girl is much older and more deranged that it started losing it a bit. Want next one. Now!
Halting State - Charlie Stross. Once you get used to the second person p.o.v. it's a lot of fun.
However, The Atrocity Archives by Mr. Stross totally hits it out of the park.
Dark Space - Marianne de Pierres. Found myself skipping half the p.o.v.s but still got a good story out of it. This one will benefit from re-reading (and including those other p.o.v.s now that I've got the drift of the story...)
Small Favor - Jim Butcher. Loved loved loved it! Am a total Dresden groupie! More please. Soon please!
Midnight Never Comes - Marie Brennan. Wow. That was a surprise. Faeries in the court of Elizabeth, all very smoothly done. Excellent!
Blood Noir - Laurell K. Hamilton. Never speak of this book again. Unless you have brain bleach handy. You can pretty much tell from the first paragraph how dire it's going to be. On the plus side there are less sex scenes (I think. I skipped over the portions that threatened to be the usual boring step by step blather...) And poor Jason. Resident of village of the damned! It's those blond identical children... Strangely, I think you get more plot in the epilogue then you do in the whole book. If you're looking for a continuance of the more interesting Mother of Darkness plot rather than the how-many-more-men-can-we-add-to-the-orgy and just what super power will it give us this time plot. Oh Anita, what have you become...
Shadow Gate & Spirit Gate - Kate Elliot. Gosh. I'm now a fan! Excellent stuff. When's the next one out?
The Burning Man - Mark Chadbourn. Better than the last one (whose title currently escapes me). Alas, Jack and Ruth still very irritating. Expecially Ruth, who managed to be both bland and sanctimonious. Laura, however, still bringing the winning snark!
Last Argument of Kings - Joe Abercrombie. Make this man king! This was a fabulous ending to the trilogy. Glokta! Dude! Bayaz! Bastard!!
(One day I'll remember how to do proper length reviews... )
Hurrah, NCIS is back for a new series! FX, Sundays at 9pm or repeated on FX+1 at 11pm....
But seriously, did anyone actually believe for one minute that the corpse was DiNozzo? And the continuity fairy has been having the day off as some of the hair?! Shocking!
Oh yeah, there was a plot, wasn't there... :-> Despite the fact that anyone with half a brain guessed the Frog/Jeanne relationship somewhere quite early on last season, it wasn't a bad follow through. The post-explosion scene of crime bits were very well done, the DiNozzo entrance and barney with the creepy CIA guy also good. The Madam Director bits were the usual cringeworthy stuff but the DiNozzo / MD smack down was very good, accented by that Gibbs 'attaboy' smirk. The ending boat scene seemed needlessly tacked on, though. (There's a joke there somewhere...)
And Doctor Who!
Agatha Christie and giant wasps!! The vicar was a boring gink though.
It did also remind me that I've never actually read an Agatha Christie. (Shock, horror!) Had no idea that Murder on Nile & Murder on the Orient Express were Poirot mysteries either! (Wiki is my friend. As is Amazon.)
And next week looks cool. (Except it's not next week, it's the week after, bloody useless Eurovision thingy.)
Bookity Book
More thumbnail reviews!
Smoke and Mirrors - Tanya Huff. The mystery portion was of the good, the protag wangsting about his love life, not so good. Luckily, not much of the latter, so a damn good book.
Empress - Karen Miller. Crikey. Fevered or what. Despite the protag being not the most pleasant of peeps, it's got a frantic pace and it was only towards the end where our girl is much older and more deranged that it started losing it a bit. Want next one. Now!
Halting State - Charlie Stross. Once you get used to the second person p.o.v. it's a lot of fun.
However, The Atrocity Archives by Mr. Stross totally hits it out of the park.
Dark Space - Marianne de Pierres. Found myself skipping half the p.o.v.s but still got a good story out of it. This one will benefit from re-reading (and including those other p.o.v.s now that I've got the drift of the story...)
Small Favor - Jim Butcher. Loved loved loved it! Am a total Dresden groupie! More please. Soon please!
Midnight Never Comes - Marie Brennan. Wow. That was a surprise. Faeries in the court of Elizabeth, all very smoothly done. Excellent!
Blood Noir - Laurell K. Hamilton. Never speak of this book again. Unless you have brain bleach handy. You can pretty much tell from the first paragraph how dire it's going to be. On the plus side there are less sex scenes (I think. I skipped over the portions that threatened to be the usual boring step by step blather...) And poor Jason. Resident of village of the damned! It's those blond identical children... Strangely, I think you get more plot in the epilogue then you do in the whole book. If you're looking for a continuance of the more interesting Mother of Darkness plot rather than the how-many-more-men-can-we-add-to-the-orgy and just what super power will it give us this time plot. Oh Anita, what have you become...
Shadow Gate & Spirit Gate - Kate Elliot. Gosh. I'm now a fan! Excellent stuff. When's the next one out?
The Burning Man - Mark Chadbourn. Better than the last one (whose title currently escapes me). Alas, Jack and Ruth still very irritating. Expecially Ruth, who managed to be both bland and sanctimonious. Laura, however, still bringing the winning snark!
Last Argument of Kings - Joe Abercrombie. Make this man king! This was a fabulous ending to the trilogy. Glokta! Dude! Bayaz! Bastard!!
(One day I'll remember how to do proper length reviews... )
06 May 2008
Little Brother
As reviews go, I'll keep this short and sweet.
Cory Doctorow's Little Brother - read it. It's a mind-bomb of a book.
But don't take my word for it, you can download it for free and gratis from here.
Cory Doctorow's Little Brother - read it. It's a mind-bomb of a book.
But don't take my word for it, you can download it for free and gratis from here.
28 March 2008
Cons and stuff
Where's my room service gone?! I was getting used to that :->
(My Visa, however, will be spending the next three months trying to recover. Ah well.)
Anyhoo... the rest of Eastercon also fun, if a bit knackering. Apparently they're holding it there again in 2010 - April 2-5, 2010 with GoH: Alastair Reynolds, Liz Williams, Mike Carey. Definitely be going to that one. Not so convinced about next years Eastercon in Bradford though...
In the meantime, had a wild and impetuous moment over the weekend and booked into Newcon 4 which is happening in Northampton in October. It's run by Ian 'sells ice to eskimos' Whates and Ian 'lovely voice' Watson. The main event isn't based in a hotel, but why let that stop you!
Alt Fiction looks to be good fun this year - which is a shame cos it's on the same day as mum's birthday and she got a bit stompy when I mentioned the possibility of actually going this year...
Back to Eastercon - spent all my money cash in the Dealers Room. Books, books and more books... and a t-shirt. Have only read one of my purchases - Dalton Quayle Rides Out by Paul Kane - published by Pendragon Press - and that one I highly recommend as it's ridiculously funny. It's a bit of a Sherlock Holmes spoof that shamelessly takes the rip out of a whole heap of other genre things too!
From the panels - the Mythology panel was interesting but a bit distracting due to the prancing about of the tech guys in the scaffolding rig to the side of the room. Liz Williams is an excellent panellist (and she also has a shop in Glastonbury! Think it's the Magick Box one...)
The supernatural romance panel was quite fun, mainly because Tanith Lee was beyond brilliant! (Must now read some of her books... ).
Books on the web turned into deep discussions on copyright issues. Plus Mr Boing Boing showed us a pic of his new baby! Toughening up Fantasyland good due to the fabulous Joe Abercrombie... although another distracting one due to a) the people eating a sloppy curry on the back row... coincidentally, during the discussion on Fantasyland stew! b) the woman knitting a stripy sock not two chairs away from me and c) the strange person with a wooden ale mug attached to her belt that kept doing odd exercises in her seat.
People-wise - chatted to Chris Teague, Andrew Hook and Jonathan Oliver (poor boys!), said a very quick hi to Juliet McKenna, waved to Chaz Brenchley and was this close -) (- to Joe Abercrombie! Have I mentioned he's fab? He seriously needs to do a panel or something at Fcon...
-
And talking of the always excellent Juliet McKenna... she'll be running a workshop at the Winchester Writers Conference this year in June. Have always wondered though... what exactly happens in a workshop? How does it work? Must hit up my experts and ask...
(My Visa, however, will be spending the next three months trying to recover. Ah well.)
Anyhoo... the rest of Eastercon also fun, if a bit knackering. Apparently they're holding it there again in 2010 - April 2-5, 2010 with GoH: Alastair Reynolds, Liz Williams, Mike Carey. Definitely be going to that one. Not so convinced about next years Eastercon in Bradford though...
In the meantime, had a wild and impetuous moment over the weekend and booked into Newcon 4 which is happening in Northampton in October. It's run by Ian 'sells ice to eskimos' Whates and Ian 'lovely voice' Watson. The main event isn't based in a hotel, but why let that stop you!
Alt Fiction looks to be good fun this year - which is a shame cos it's on the same day as mum's birthday and she got a bit stompy when I mentioned the possibility of actually going this year...
Back to Eastercon - spent all my money cash in the Dealers Room. Books, books and more books... and a t-shirt. Have only read one of my purchases - Dalton Quayle Rides Out by Paul Kane - published by Pendragon Press - and that one I highly recommend as it's ridiculously funny. It's a bit of a Sherlock Holmes spoof that shamelessly takes the rip out of a whole heap of other genre things too!
From the panels - the Mythology panel was interesting but a bit distracting due to the prancing about of the tech guys in the scaffolding rig to the side of the room. Liz Williams is an excellent panellist (and she also has a shop in Glastonbury! Think it's the Magick Box one...)
The supernatural romance panel was quite fun, mainly because Tanith Lee was beyond brilliant! (Must now read some of her books... ).
Books on the web turned into deep discussions on copyright issues. Plus Mr Boing Boing showed us a pic of his new baby! Toughening up Fantasyland good due to the fabulous Joe Abercrombie... although another distracting one due to a) the people eating a sloppy curry on the back row... coincidentally, during the discussion on Fantasyland stew! b) the woman knitting a stripy sock not two chairs away from me and c) the strange person with a wooden ale mug attached to her belt that kept doing odd exercises in her seat.
People-wise - chatted to Chris Teague, Andrew Hook and Jonathan Oliver (poor boys!), said a very quick hi to Juliet McKenna, waved to Chaz Brenchley and was this close -) (- to Joe Abercrombie! Have I mentioned he's fab? He seriously needs to do a panel or something at Fcon...
-
And talking of the always excellent Juliet McKenna... she'll be running a workshop at the Winchester Writers Conference this year in June. Have always wondered though... what exactly happens in a workshop? How does it work? Must hit up my experts and ask...
22 March 2008
Eastercon
Morning! Long time, no blog.
So to get things back and funky, today's blog is live from Eastercon at Heathrow! As this is my first Eastercon, Fcon/Econ comparisons are inevitable so let's get them out of the way first.
Eastercon is huge! 1200 registered people, most of whom have already signed in (according to Mark from the committee who I had brekkie with this morning) Goodie bags are much the same sort of thing as you'd get at Fcon... Econ went a little better and did a groovy Econ mug. Scored myself a Neal Asher book (Polity Agent) as the book-in-the-bag. Never having read the chap before this is proving to be quite an interesting experience...
Registration was total chaos. Queued for a good 30 mins to get to the desk. (Never have that problem with Fcon!)
And the hotel is a total maze (including helpful signs pointing the way to the minotaur!)
The panelling so far has been a lot of fun and there's a great atmosphere going. Yesterday I did the 'so you want to be a SF writer' where John Jarrold depressed everyone by saying that out of the millions of subs both he and big publishers read, they only take on one or two a year. Ian Whates moderated that one and the boy done good. He's very entertaining.
Then there was the 'hovercraft of disbelief' which the panel peeps worked out was the rant panel for the weekend so they ranted and we ranted about all those irritating inconsistencies that you get on the telly and in books and wotnot. Never mention a King Arthur film to a Celtic Historian... Paul Cornell was also on that one and he was really good.
'When it changed', a panel about women f/sf writers was quite interesting - Juliet McKenna subbed for Pat Cadigan at the last minute, Kari Straun (?) was an excellent mod. Got a bit distracted by the room though as it was done up with staging and a huge flat screen to the side and a scaffolding rig with the tech guys in. Gosh. You don't get that at Fcon!
People wise, despite being totally unsociable, managed to accost and subsequently bore Andrew Hook, Gary Couzens, Martin Owten, John Aitken, George Budge, Billy Stirling and a very chirpy Steve Jones.
Hotel wise, excellent! Great rooms, good food, very friendly staff. Although it's easy to spend a lot of time wandering the corriders... they move, I swear. Peeps are calling it the Raddison Euclidian.
Like this as a venue. If Fcon ever gets monumentally big, then this would be a good spot.
Not that I'm biased because it's only 30 mins down the road from mine. (Or an hour if you get as monumentally lost as I did once I left the motorway...) Really embarassing thing is I grew up around here (in my defence, I was six when we moved... but still... :-> ) Our old house is a couple of roads down the A4 from the hotel (Firs Drive - you'll pass it if you decide to get on at J3 of the M4 when leaving the hotel...) and my old school is up a little bit if you're trying to sneak up Sipson Road to avoid the one way system and get on the M4 at J4 (William Byrd, since you asked).
Also, if you open your bedroom window, you can hear the planes taking off, which is fab. (Ah memories... in my day, we lived so close to the airport we used to get plane headlights shining in our windows at night!)
And with that merry thought, I'll leave you for the day!
So to get things back and funky, today's blog is live from Eastercon at Heathrow! As this is my first Eastercon, Fcon/Econ comparisons are inevitable so let's get them out of the way first.
Eastercon is huge! 1200 registered people, most of whom have already signed in (according to Mark from the committee who I had brekkie with this morning) Goodie bags are much the same sort of thing as you'd get at Fcon... Econ went a little better and did a groovy Econ mug. Scored myself a Neal Asher book (Polity Agent) as the book-in-the-bag. Never having read the chap before this is proving to be quite an interesting experience...
Registration was total chaos. Queued for a good 30 mins to get to the desk. (Never have that problem with Fcon!)
And the hotel is a total maze (including helpful signs pointing the way to the minotaur!)
The panelling so far has been a lot of fun and there's a great atmosphere going. Yesterday I did the 'so you want to be a SF writer' where John Jarrold depressed everyone by saying that out of the millions of subs both he and big publishers read, they only take on one or two a year. Ian Whates moderated that one and the boy done good. He's very entertaining.
Then there was the 'hovercraft of disbelief' which the panel peeps worked out was the rant panel for the weekend so they ranted and we ranted about all those irritating inconsistencies that you get on the telly and in books and wotnot. Never mention a King Arthur film to a Celtic Historian... Paul Cornell was also on that one and he was really good.
'When it changed', a panel about women f/sf writers was quite interesting - Juliet McKenna subbed for Pat Cadigan at the last minute, Kari Straun (?) was an excellent mod. Got a bit distracted by the room though as it was done up with staging and a huge flat screen to the side and a scaffolding rig with the tech guys in. Gosh. You don't get that at Fcon!
People wise, despite being totally unsociable, managed to accost and subsequently bore Andrew Hook, Gary Couzens, Martin Owten, John Aitken, George Budge, Billy Stirling and a very chirpy Steve Jones.
Hotel wise, excellent! Great rooms, good food, very friendly staff. Although it's easy to spend a lot of time wandering the corriders... they move, I swear. Peeps are calling it the Raddison Euclidian.
Like this as a venue. If Fcon ever gets monumentally big, then this would be a good spot.
Not that I'm biased because it's only 30 mins down the road from mine. (Or an hour if you get as monumentally lost as I did once I left the motorway...) Really embarassing thing is I grew up around here (in my defence, I was six when we moved... but still... :-> ) Our old house is a couple of roads down the A4 from the hotel (Firs Drive - you'll pass it if you decide to get on at J3 of the M4 when leaving the hotel...) and my old school is up a little bit if you're trying to sneak up Sipson Road to avoid the one way system and get on the M4 at J4 (William Byrd, since you asked).
Also, if you open your bedroom window, you can hear the planes taking off, which is fab. (Ah memories... in my day, we lived so close to the airport we used to get plane headlights shining in our windows at night!)
And with that merry thought, I'll leave you for the day!
13 November 2007
strike
A short link post today...
The Writer's Guild of America is on strike. Doris Egan explains why here, Stephen Gallagher explains what this means for UK writers and Joss Whedon adds his views here.
Oh, and in other news... Nanowrimo count = 80,045 words... Woohoo!
The Writer's Guild of America is on strike. Doris Egan explains why here, Stephen Gallagher explains what this means for UK writers and Joss Whedon adds his views here.
Oh, and in other news... Nanowrimo count = 80,045 words... Woohoo!
07 November 2007
nanowrimo is go!
If it's November, it must be Nanowrimo madness! My wordcount so far is just a few words over 40,000. In 6 days! Woohoo! Am starting to lose the ability to type though.
I blame the Word Wars. I love the Word Wars. We just got my region signed up to the UK & Ireland multi region war so the new goal is to whip the asses of everyone everywhere... Oxford are the reigning champions - for three years straight they've topped the daily average word count... this year victory will be ours!
Film Fun
Just watched Mirrormask - got a nifty box set with Dark Crystal, Labyrinth and MM in, and, actually, MM is better than I expected. Probably to do with the lead actress actually being good. The plot was a wee bit wobbly at times, but there were some fun visuals.
Have also discovered that I can't watch Dark Crystal without giggling at the voice work. Can't even watch it all the way through as it seems to drag a lot more than it used to do. (Oh, and according to the back of DVD box, 'Jen' is an official trademark! Perhaps I should be changing my name?)
Book Fun
Have also just finished reading the latest Tom Lloyd - The Twilight Herald. (Though after discovering his blog, keep wanting to call it Twiglet...) It's been a while since I read the first one, so there was a few moments of 'what was that about again?' and some of the early viewpoint changes almost lost me, then came a point about a third of the way through where the 'can't-stop-reading' kicked in, so all was right with the world! Utterly champing for the next one now.
I blame the Word Wars. I love the Word Wars. We just got my region signed up to the UK & Ireland multi region war so the new goal is to whip the asses of everyone everywhere... Oxford are the reigning champions - for three years straight they've topped the daily average word count... this year victory will be ours!
Film Fun
Just watched Mirrormask - got a nifty box set with Dark Crystal, Labyrinth and MM in, and, actually, MM is better than I expected. Probably to do with the lead actress actually being good. The plot was a wee bit wobbly at times, but there were some fun visuals.
Have also discovered that I can't watch Dark Crystal without giggling at the voice work. Can't even watch it all the way through as it seems to drag a lot more than it used to do. (Oh, and according to the back of DVD box, 'Jen' is an official trademark! Perhaps I should be changing my name?)
Book Fun
Have also just finished reading the latest Tom Lloyd - The Twilight Herald. (Though after discovering his blog, keep wanting to call it Twiglet...) It's been a while since I read the first one, so there was a few moments of 'what was that about again?' and some of the early viewpoint changes almost lost me, then came a point about a third of the way through where the 'can't-stop-reading' kicked in, so all was right with the world! Utterly champing for the next one now.
31 October 2007
fantasy communities
So, across the blogosphere and other places has sprung a debate about the existence, or lack thereof, of a fantasy community in the UK. It kicked off in Nick Cirkovic's myspace blog here, (not to be confused with his other blog elsewhere) and after he posted his comments on the BFS forums a fascinating set of arguments have popped up. Mark Chadbourn has waded in with his feelings about the need for splitting the BFS as he feels it's predom horror and not serving fantasy as well as it could. This, of course, has garnered the same sort of responses as the last time it was raised on the boards...
The essence of the main points seems to be a desire for places that concentrate solely on fantasy, and not fantasy & horror, or fantasy & SF or all three. Which is fair enough, I've been carping for years about wanting fantasy magazines and anthologies and the like... although I'm always confused about the difference between horror and dark fantasy, myself, surely they're the same thing?
So, fantasy communities then... as the interweb is the new place for building communities, are there any just-fantasy places for a bod to hang out or get news and wotnot from? UKSFnews covers all three genres, as does Ansible and Locus.
Forums: apart from the BFS one, we've got SFFworld - which covers all three genres, as does the Chronicle Network. I know there are horror forums around, but are there fantasy forums around? Other than the ones specifically connected to author sites, that is. If there are, I don't currently know about them but a prolonged google might reveal otherwise. (And if you know of any, please post them somewhere on the BFS forum so's I can have a looksie, ta!)
And another thing that crops up, like it did the last time on the boards, is that the definition of fantasy is erring towards epic fantasy again. I like epic fantasy, but concentrating on the epic side (ie. Gemmell/Martin/Jordan/Brooks etc.) is abandoning a lot of other sub genres and personally my preferences are stronger towards contemporary and comic fantasy than epic and would I want a place/community that was just epic fantasy? Nope. Would I like a fantasy community that's as strong as the SF one? Oh hell yeah.
The essence of the main points seems to be a desire for places that concentrate solely on fantasy, and not fantasy & horror, or fantasy & SF or all three. Which is fair enough, I've been carping for years about wanting fantasy magazines and anthologies and the like... although I'm always confused about the difference between horror and dark fantasy, myself, surely they're the same thing?
So, fantasy communities then... as the interweb is the new place for building communities, are there any just-fantasy places for a bod to hang out or get news and wotnot from? UKSFnews covers all three genres, as does Ansible and Locus.
Forums: apart from the BFS one, we've got SFFworld - which covers all three genres, as does the Chronicle Network. I know there are horror forums around, but are there fantasy forums around? Other than the ones specifically connected to author sites, that is. If there are, I don't currently know about them but a prolonged google might reveal otherwise. (And if you know of any, please post them somewhere on the BFS forum so's I can have a looksie, ta!)
And another thing that crops up, like it did the last time on the boards, is that the definition of fantasy is erring towards epic fantasy again. I like epic fantasy, but concentrating on the epic side (ie. Gemmell/Martin/Jordan/Brooks etc.) is abandoning a lot of other sub genres and personally my preferences are stronger towards contemporary and comic fantasy than epic and would I want a place/community that was just epic fantasy? Nope. Would I like a fantasy community that's as strong as the SF one? Oh hell yeah.
24 October 2007
fcon blog carnival
Ah yes, the Fantasycon Blog Carnival!
Roll up, roll up, ladies, gentlemen and those who have yet to decide... here's who thought what in the blogosphere...
Ah the awards... such a glittering event... Tim Lebbon was a shaking wreck, Mark Morris has been waiting 20 years for it and Ellen Datlow via her emissary, was very happy about her award too...
Chaz Brenchley has issued banquet connected grounds for committal... and GoH Stephen Jones agrees that, as usual, it was barely edible... (but you'll need to check out the 'appearances' page on his site as can't get a direct link!)
Meanwhile, the small press peeps were having an interesting time of it... oh the book boxes, or lack thereof... Chris Teague almost didn't get his but they were hiding being PS... Screaming Dreams were there in their first official capacity and will be doing a longer report in the next Estronomicon and Murky Depths fell asleep twice during the raffle...
Mark Samuels managed a feat that most Fconnies don't (unless it involves the fabled curry hunt) and got away from the bar to see the outside world... yes, apparently there is a world outside the Britannia Hotel - he has the photos to prove it. Dave Price also discovered the outside world.
Martin Sketchley had a short piece to say about the doom and gloom in all the panels about publishing
Gary Greenwood actually managed to do some work at the con!
And Allyson Bird teases us about Dracula, the hawthorn bush and jaffa cakes...
And that's it on Fcon for this year!
Roll up, roll up, ladies, gentlemen and those who have yet to decide... here's who thought what in the blogosphere...
Ah the awards... such a glittering event... Tim Lebbon was a shaking wreck, Mark Morris has been waiting 20 years for it and Ellen Datlow via her emissary, was very happy about her award too...
Chaz Brenchley has issued banquet connected grounds for committal... and GoH Stephen Jones agrees that, as usual, it was barely edible... (but you'll need to check out the 'appearances' page on his site as can't get a direct link!)
Meanwhile, the small press peeps were having an interesting time of it... oh the book boxes, or lack thereof... Chris Teague almost didn't get his but they were hiding being PS... Screaming Dreams were there in their first official capacity and will be doing a longer report in the next Estronomicon and Murky Depths fell asleep twice during the raffle...
Mark Samuels managed a feat that most Fconnies don't (unless it involves the fabled curry hunt) and got away from the bar to see the outside world... yes, apparently there is a world outside the Britannia Hotel - he has the photos to prove it. Dave Price also discovered the outside world.
Martin Sketchley had a short piece to say about the doom and gloom in all the panels about publishing
Gary Greenwood actually managed to do some work at the con!
And Allyson Bird teases us about Dracula, the hawthorn bush and jaffa cakes...
And that's it on Fcon for this year!
23 October 2007
Books
Have I mentioned that Chaz Brenchley's River of the World is utterly lush? (As we used to say back when I occasionally went to school...) RotW is the sequel to Bridge of Dreams, (both of which are published by Ace Books, over the pond) and what a sequel it is. Chaz has this wonderful knack with language and a gift for creating vibrant cultures in his books which leaves the average reader utterly spellbound.
But what of the story? River of the World continues the story of Issel, the water seller turned mage & resistance fighter; and Jendre, the general's daughter who married a short lived sultan; and what happened when their two worlds collide...
It is, as you might have guessed, beautifully told, with action and emotional wrenches aplenty - the only flaw being that Jendre's story is wound up too fast at the end - or perhaps it's because what you really want to happen to the bridge doesn't, frustrating one of Jendre's main motivations throughout both books.
I hear tell that Chaz has sold a short story involving a couple of the chaps from Bod & RotW (yay!) - now any chance we can get a story about Armina and her lot? Pretty please...
But what of the story? River of the World continues the story of Issel, the water seller turned mage & resistance fighter; and Jendre, the general's daughter who married a short lived sultan; and what happened when their two worlds collide...
It is, as you might have guessed, beautifully told, with action and emotional wrenches aplenty - the only flaw being that Jendre's story is wound up too fast at the end - or perhaps it's because what you really want to happen to the bridge doesn't, frustrating one of Jendre's main motivations throughout both books.
I hear tell that Chaz has sold a short story involving a couple of the chaps from Bod & RotW (yay!) - now any chance we can get a story about Armina and her lot? Pretty please...
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