26* days and counting...
*well it is if you have to leave on the Thursday... for Fcon, that is!

And Fcon panic has well and truly set in.... in the next couple of weeks I've got to get Prism, Dark Horizons, the Fcon Mag, the Fcon micro newsletter, H&N #8 and Slow Motion Wars all finished and off to the printer so that I can have them all back before Fcon.... (cue the annual chorus of whhhhhyyyyyyy do I always leave things to the last minute....?)

Then there's the Prism/DH/Cinema Macabre mailing to do, the trade orders for the BFS celeb book to despatch, and all those other tasks I keep putting off but need done before Fcon. (Like answering emails...)
And we've got to get the Fcon '07 hotel prelim. sorted as well. Definitely looking like the Quality in Bentley, with a return to a city venue for '08 (which we're also starting to plan...)

Happily, the ever so wonderful Chris of Pendragon has hooked me up with a cracking artist that I can grab for both BFS and Bradan things... round of applause for Steve at Estronomicon...

And for some light relief.... Desert Island Books.... what would you take?


Short stories...

So one of the other things I've been doing, is trying to read the entries for the BFS short story comp (there's a bunch of us who, long ago, volunteered for first round reading... what were we getting ourselves into...?! We've sent the shortlist off to the celeb judges now, so at least that's one thing off the long list of things to do...) - and that, along with catching up with the last few H&N subs has had me going quite potty... so many stories have good ideas in them that are let down by writing that could have been sooo much tighter. By language that could have just been... better. Or beginnings that take 3 pages before anything happens.
Not good. For a short story to work (or at least, for it to keep me reading past the first page) it needs to stop meandering and get right to it...

Actually, Nick 'Lermentov' who posts on the BFS boards, says it much better in his blog ... he's talking about books, but it goes for short fic as well... to steal one of his sub titles from the short essay "A Plot (to paraphrase Woody Allen on relationships!) Must Be Like A Shark: if it isn't constantly moving forward, it dies.."

Enough blather... things to catch up on...