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.

Psst, wanna buy a house...?

If you're interested in moving down to the wilds of Dorset, Evil Twin and the boyf are trying to find buyers for their one bedroom mid terrace place in Blandford... It's only been on the market a couple of weeks...
It's on Right Move here if you've the inclination.... They really need some better photos (or any!) of it though....

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.

Happy happy happy

Ha hah! No more Prism for me!! Finally finished the March Prism last week (yeah, I know, it was supposed to have been the Feb Prism... but honestly, what else did you expect?) Sent off to the printers and it's sooooo out of my hands now! Vicky's on the mailings now which is beyond fabulous as I can now sit back and watch as Prisms magically appear in the letterbox!

Of course, this didn't happen without the usual run of disasters. This time, it was all the Fcon photos fault. Ok, so technically we're a few months late for doing an Fcon 2006 report, but there were a heap of other BFS AGM type stuff that needed to be published for the members so it seemed churlish not to add the Fcon report (a multi person deal with bits from Allen Ashley, Pete Coleborn, and Paul K & Marie O'R.) So the first batch of photos I had were from uncle Pete, and I'm sure that last time I fiddled with them they were fine... but alas, when I really needed them to work, just touching one of them froze up my machine to the extent where plugs and batteries had to be yanked before it would do anything.

Luckily, ace reporter Sandy A. takes bucketloads of photos so I had those. Except, after inserting every thirdish one, my poor machine crashed... cue many reboots. But it got there eventually.

So, this week our Vicky will be mailing out awards recs forms & an Fcon newsletter/progress reporter thingybob.
Next week, probs towards the end, there'll be a jumbo Prism (108 pages!! 108 freaking pages people... for Prism, that's damn near illegal...) and a jumbo Dark Horizons (about 112 pages I think uncle Pete said. Or possibly 140. Probs somewhere inbetween...) DH is the 50th issue so they're doing something or other there. The Anne Sudworth cover is gorgeous (a bit horror-y, for which I'm sure there'll be the usual complaints from the horror bias obsessed crowd.).

But mainly, I'm just looking forward to having Prism out of my brain. And I don't have to mail it anymore! Tee hee!

Which means I can finish up the H&N wind up stuff, focus properly on Fcon and do other funky stuff...like finish up the Egyptology course, (which is a bit lightweight, so I've turned into something of an extra-credit junkie what with extra research and the like...) , then I can do a part time Uni course in October.
The course'll be a little scary as apparently it'll be equivalent to a first year undergraduate thingy and this from someone who didn't stay in school long enough to get GCSEs, let alone A levels... (got a couple of GCSEs and an A level Archaeology at night school years later, but that's by the by...) And since the uni course is archaeology/history thing with optional modules in art & architecture, it's not totally impossible. Plus, as it's adult ed, lack of formal qualifications is not a problem. Which is nice.

And in other news, the Evil Twin is moving back up north with her boyf. Probably around the Hook/Basingstoke area, and intends to join the family business for her main income (despite maintaining for years that she would never, ever, indulge!) So we've had to rework the office to accommodate her, and it means less work for me, (and less money, but I'd rather be skint and less stressed). May just drive me a bit potty though.

Harry Dresden
And I've just discovered the Harry Dresden phenomenon. Had flicked on the TV proggy the other week but wasn't overly bothered either way, but then Orbit send me a copy of the latest book in the series so I found a few hours spare to settle down and give it a go.
Proven Guilty is the 8th book in the series, so right off the bat there's the threat of missing backstory... and I wasn't too hopeful when it started off a tad slow. Then something clicked and I couldn't stop reading the damn thing.
Needless to say, I now think it's the hottest thing eva! Since the last hottest thing eva! :->

It picks up and speeds along from crisis to crisis to disaster to almost certain death and back again and a good portion of it is set in a horror film convention. Which was a bit of added fun.
The few back references to previous Dresden adventures don't impede on the enjoyment if you've not read them as it's easy to get the gist of what happened. And I love the politics between the various supernatural factions. And the hints of greater machinations. Truly excellent. And, of course, I now need to read the other 7. Like, now.

Bloody hell! We got Terry Brooks for Fcon!!!

That's all I'm sayin'!

(That and I'm still in the middle of wrapping up the things that need wrapping up amidst file corruptions and mysterious dead phone lines....)

Fork

This probably comes as no surprise at all to anyone but H&N is well and truly dead. I'm attempting to email everyone about stuff today. So, subscriptions will be refunded shortly, other outstanding bits and pieces will be well and truly sorted by the end of this month. If you've concerns you might be forgotten, please email the majorarcana (jen [at] majorarcana [dot] demon [dot] co [dot] uk ) address and copy in isisdirect [at] aol [dot] com.
Issue 8 will not be going ahead. I'd hoped otherwise, I really did, but there's just no way.

Huge apologies to all those who've be hanging on waiting to hear about submissions - I'd been certain things were going to be otherwise, but they weren't so it's not fair to anyone to keep things up in the air like this.

BFS bits
Also, Prism is getting new editors as from April - Jay & Selina being the more capable hands. And Vicky is taking over various BFS mailing and cyberstore duties. Bless her.
So all I've got to do is sort out the Feb Prism and I'm done there too.

(Still doing Fcon, though.)

Other bits
So Demon, or possibly BT Surftime are changing their bloody packages again. Bastards. This would be the blatantly obvious attempt to get everyone on to bloody broadband else face paying by the minute again. I don't want to go on to broadband, I've heard nothing but bad from all sorts of people using all sorts of different packages. Bastards bastards bastards. Possibly I'm over-reacting due to being permanently pissed off at the moment. Or possibly I'm just a luddite... Mind, swapping to a new ISP might actually be a bonus, given various problems, and if nothing else it may stop the ridiculous prawn spam levels that have started flooding in again. Ah well, got 'til March to sort that one.

Whinge whinge whinge.

Department of Work Avoidance
Lets Go!


Department of Work Avoidance II
When Fangirls Attack!

Pretty, Fizzy Paradise

Stressed, depressed & terminally jaded, signing off...

Remind me not to be optimistic. It's lethal.

For various reasons I've been mostly offline since November (eek!) ... I won't bore you with why, (think the usual reasons, plus a few more for added spice) - it's too depressing and I'm trying to keep to a mostly upbeat blog...

Updates on that H&N thing (Hi Fran, thanks for reminding me, thought I'd done it!) & misc. BFS things another time. Later this week, maybe. I've got masses of end of month accounts to sort first else I'm getting evicted.

Apart from that... happy things to blather about... hmm, tricky... give me a minute, something'll occur... erm, the last Lucifer graphic novel is due out shortly, likewise the latest Fables... and Resi Evil 3 is still set for coming out this year, so that'll be nice... :-> (You can tell I'm really reaching here, can't you!)

Erm... snow! Okay, so it was last month, but how (briefly) cool was that!

Erm... erm... oh, just heard the Fcon hotel have a small room they're going to give us for free so we're double & triple streaming this year with more workshop type things and I wasn't going to do BFS stuff today so I'll stop...

Ugly Betty! Not a great TV watcher as a rule (who has the time!) , but Ugly Betty rocks!

Other people. That's always more cheerful... so that mother person has started up yet another new business - chiropody (cue cries of 'why would you want to play with manky feet all day?' apparently she enjoys it!) - of course, there's still the massive family business to be looking after so guess who gets lumbered while madam is doing unmentionable things to old people's toes... ok, so probably not a good topic to go into after all...

Magic Rob! That's always fun. Magic Rob is Evil Twin's other half - a gigantic 7ft tall guy (who makes her look like like a pygmy in comparison... and we're not a tall family to start off with...) and they had their first Xmas together this year (aah!) So in a carefully calculated fit, he threw in his job as a financial advisor and has taken to doing his magician thing full time... (mind, he did start off wanting to do mentallist magic, but childrens parties is where the money is...). And he has puppets! A duck and a dog, apparently. Both with the same name, because, according to himself, only one gets to make an appearance at a gig so it doesn't matter.
Luckily, it seems to be going quite well but they're currently considering moving up nearer the M3/M4 corridor as the money is better this way (whereas, down in Blandford, it's fair to crap.)


Enough. Burnt out.

To Nanowrimo or not to Nanowrimo, that was the question. On the one hand, with stacks of outstanding stuff to do should one spend a month frantically writing 50,000 words of variable quality just because it sounds like a fun thing to do; or should one ignore the whole thing and use the excuse of non existent spare time?

Well, the clocks went back, which means waking up earlier, so more time in the morning to get things done, which means new optimism for achieving things... so you guess!

*

Went to the Heffers in Cambridge thingy the other night (spent all yesterday recovering!) and it was a great li'l event. Lovely BFS authors were there and as friendly as always, other authors were there too - had the beginnings of a nice chat with Mike Carey about Lucifer but got struck down by the usual forgetting everything about everything, else I'd have drifted into Hellblazer chat too (but couldn't remember if he'd done any, even though I kinda thought he had...)

Had many many books bought for me as November is birthday month so the perfect excuse for a book binge. (Though I'm not going to have much time to read them until after Xmas! Yipes!)

Had most of the books signed, too! I never get books signed. I was in shock!

Also had the opportunity to bounce ideas about next years potential Reading BFS thingy. First couple of weeks of July was suggested as a good time. Venue, possibly, to be Reading Town Hall as there's a bunch of (reasonably priced, according to my expert) function rooms, plus it has its own cafe/bar, plus it's in the next street from the station so there's fairly easy transport links. We've got a BFS committee meet on the 18th so will be thrashing things out then.
Personally, would love to have a Reading event of any sort (alas, no Fcon in Reading as the only 2 suitable hotels are being asses about the accomodation rates...)

Oh, talking of events, did you hear that Eastercon '07 in Liverpool has been cancelled. There's mumblings about someone emergency organising a scaled down Eastercon , possibly in the Britannia in Docklands. Thought it's all theoretical at the moment, I think.
Ansible has the best updated info on it, as well as links to related news...