hurrah!

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was Fantasycon 2007!

Give me about a week or so and I'll do the Fantasycon Blog Carnival I was muttering about on the BFS Forums - need to give everyone time to blog their thoughts first! (In case there's confusion, the Blog Carnival will be posted here, the idea was what was on the forums... sorry, still a bit dazed!)

So, how was it then?

Well, still mostly sick as a dog but managed to stay vertical long enough to do sensible things. General consensus is that the con was a bit on the quiet side - however there were more events going on so people were more spread out... (that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!) And next year they're getting a proper publicity dedicated person and more help to shout about it in the necessary places and I know they're also getting help to improve things to the next level. (Whatever that may mean!)

(And for some reason I also promised I'd do a couple of odd things for Fcon next year. But I'm definitely not on the committee. Oh no. Can't catch me that way.)

But back to this year.
Only panel I got to see this year was Jo Fletcher's editorial one which was absolutely brilliant. Would have liked to have seen Chaz's Write for Life thingy that came after, and a couple of the others but alas, could not be done. Will have to rely on others for panel chatter.

The bar almost managed to cope - except 4am Sunday morning they had to kick people out because they thought they were out of beer. (Actually they weren't, because when Richard, our go-to manager guy arrived in the morning he said there was a spare stash and he'd left instructions with them about where it was and he was going to kick their asses for being idiots.)
Also, one of the pumps broke.

The raffle... was long. Very very long. Had to leave after an hour or so (sick as a dog!) - apparently this one lasted about 3 hours.

The banquet... hee! Now that was fun. We did the room up Halloween style, with a couple of books on everyone's seats, spooky soundtracks playing, neon green cobwebs, candles...
Very cool!

As for the awards - well, it was a bit different this year - done properly on stage, with two presenters per award (and an attempt at 'Hollywood glamour', apparently)
The winners:
The Sydney J. Bounds Best Newcomer Award - Joe Hill (collected by Pete Crowther)
Best Non-Fiction: - Mark Morris: CINEMA MACABRE
Best Artist: Vincent Chong (collected by Pete Crowther)
Best Small Press: Peter Crowther, PS Publishing (who started to run out of room on his table)
Best Collection: Neil Gaiman: FRAGILE THINGS (collected by Steve Jones)
Best Anthology: Gary Couzens: EXTENDED PLAY: THE ELASTIC BOOK OF MUSIC
Best Novella: Paul Finch: KID (or K.I.D. if you're Chaz B!) from the Pendragon Choices thingy.
Best Short Fiction: Mark Chadbourn: WHISPER LANE from BFS A Celebration (collected by Sandy Auden. Also, rumour has it the story has been picked up by a couple of reprint anthologies too...)
BFS Special Award: Ellen Datlow (Collected by John Grant)
Best Novel: Tim Lebbon: DUSK (who needed a drink and Pete Crowther got a bit nervous so had to whip his wine away before it got it nicked!

All in all, rather good fun!
Thanks to everyone who came, you were all fab!