Everybody's going to Canada...

World Horror Convention starts up in Toronto at the end of the week, and how jealous am I that I can't go. Too much work, not enough money. Bah. And it's Toronto people. The land of Charles De Lint! (Ok, I think technically he's Ottawa, but still, I've always wanted to go to Canada!)

So the lovely Chris Teague is going to be there, also Pete & Jan on their belated honeymoon, also Paul & Marie on their actual honeymoon (they got married last Friday, did I say?) And I have to confess to being quite curious about what a Steve Jones organised convention is like - plus there's rumours that they're introducing the Canucks to the raffle and after the Fcon debacle last year I'm quite interested to see how they do it. Have to rely on M&P reporting back, though...

Imminent technological doom...

Finally have the date for the dreaded broadband conversion. April 3rd. Eek. The seas will boil, the sky will be split asunder and it'll all go terribly terribly wrong. It's new tech in this house, so what else would we expect!

Get thee to a play...

And Chazzie baby has his play wot he writ opening next week. According to his latest blog, the opening night tickets are going slowly so if you're up Tyneside way, pop along and cheer him up!

The play's called 'A Cold Coming', and will be performed over April 3rd-5th at the Library Theatre, South Shields.

And in other Chaz related news, if you missed his Lit & Phil Xmas ghost story evening last year, the stories have been published in book form with an extra audio CD!
Blurb direct from himself: "Volume two is now available, featuring: Sean O'Brien, Gail-Nina Anderson, Chaz Brenchley, Ann Cleeves, Simon Morden and Carol McGuigan
The official RRP will be £18 (and, as Chaz says, six stories, two CDs, lovely binding - it's a bargain already...)," but for a limited period only, you can buy it directly from Lord Brenchley of Desperance via his website, for just £12 inc. p&p.
Any profits go straight back into funding next year’s event.
For the full skinny pop over to his website

Story Comps

Book2book recently gave a flying mention to an interesting sounding thing - apparently Gollancz & the Daily Mail are getting together on a novel writing comp, the prize being a £30,000 book contract and book published next spring. All you have to do is post your finished book ms to the Daily Mail by beginning of July... Full r&rs on both their websites.

Also, rumour has it that this year's SFX pulp idol continues a tradition of funny rules... this time, if you've ever been paid for piece of fiction, no matter where it appeared, you can't enter. Lo, the sounds of many dreams crashing...

Never mind... there's still the BFS story comp. Mum's admin-ing it again this year, and apparently we've got 3 author judges for the final round...possibly 4, I'm never sure, I stay well out of it... There's a 3000 word max set, but no theme thank god! It was bad enough getting the funny questions about the anniversary theme last year. How do people get our phone number to ask them? It's just a bit freaky. We've already had one chap ring up about this year's one asking if the title counts as part of the word count... (I've no idea, so don't ask me. Logic suggests no, but if you're that worried, surely you'd just cut a couple of superfluous words from the story text to allow for the title? Unless the title is one of those horribly long ones that are only sometimes amusing...)

Comics bits...

Apparently Power Girl's boobs are making for hot debates at the moment... the most recent JSA/JLA cover (for #10, I think) has Power Girl depicted with massive flesh coloured beach balls somehow magically attached to her torso. You have to wonder, how she can actually do any superheroing without getting brained by them... and that's without wondering how she doesn't just pop out through the costume window first time she moves... Mind you, that would make a hell of a distraction...

Shellyscomics made a good blog post about the subject, and here's where you'll find a scan of the image in question. (Second one down). Over at Greenlantern'sbutt you'll find a pic that works better for PG.