Oh yeah, and Stuart Young has a blog!

(Knew I should have popped into the BFS forums more often.)

H&N (again)

Forgot to say, we're definitely closed to fiction submissions until further notice, but still open to articles/interviews/artwork etc.

The lovely H&N
Alrighty then. Issue 4 goes to the printers next week. I can say this confidently because I've just got to squeeze a couple of articles in and it's done. Phew.

I tell ya, this catching up malarkey can be quite scary. I was rifling through the old emails before chasing up contributors who I was fairly sure I hadn't received stuff from, and I find that half of them had sent the stuff and I'd forgotten I'd gotten 'em, and a couple of peeps have been waiting since, oh, forever, for me to tell them how I want their bits sent over. Which I have now. So quite a few people will be getting emails today from little miss dazed & confused!
Oh, and if you do get one, and you've moved house since last we spoke, please mention it!

Oh, and (the second), I'm looking for someone to interview the lovely Mark Chadbourn as his latest book 'Queen of Sinister' is just out and I love his stuff! Email me if you're up for it, and the interview will appear in Issue 6 which will definitely (and I truly do mean it!) be coming out at the end of November.

(Which reminds me, must send out a newsfeed thingy today - haven't done one of those in about a year. Bad girl.)

BFS Stuff

So I'm back as stockholder again. Which is fun! (Tony M. is off for foreign climes to teach... I think English, but not absolutely sure.)

Awards
Those of you who are BFS members should know that it's BFS award recommendation time and the H&N Issue 3 stories/authors are eligible for the short fiction award this year. (plug that plug!)
Although since I'm on the committee, the actual mag is NOT eligible for the small press award. But the stories are, so nominate, and then later in June, VOTE, gorramit!
The deadline for recommendations is about the 17th May.

If you haven't received your Prism mailing (and more on that in a mo.), then email Gary Couzens at : bfsawards@britishfantasysociety.org.uk and in the email, include your BFS membership number (if you can't remember it, just say so and ask him to cross reference you with the active member list), plus the things you want to recommend for awards. Or there's one of those submitable form things on the BFS website at www.britishfantasysociety.org.uk

Prism
Prism, you may have noticed, hasn't been seen since November 2003. This is due to that gremlin called 'unforeseen circumstances' but Marie, who edits & mails it out, says the latest bumper issue was sent out last week. The next issue is in the midst of preparation.
The next issue is the one that will go out with the actual voting forms for the awards.

Also, in the next couple of days, BFS peeps past & present should be receiving some newsheets to tide you over while you wait for Prism. There's details about the BFS short story competition, Fantasycon and some of the other social events that have been organised. Like the Bath fantasy week, and a few author readings dotted around the country.

(There, that's my BFS PR thing done... I feel much better for that!)

One more week and finally things can get back to normal.

Since I last blogged, I've quit the main job (or did I mention that already?) therefore freeing up oodles of time to do the stuff I actually like doing. (And, yep, you've guessed it, catch up on stuff. Is it me, or has the last couple of years been devoted to catch up work?)

Also, the building work is now finished so we have the house back to ourselves. (Yay!)
And wasn't that a fun experience. No, really. The window guy decided it was so hot he just had to take his shirt off (yum. nice tattoos too!)
The foundation & brickie guys were a laugh and one of the carpet guys was an expert in Resident Evil (which was handy as I was stuck on this one bit....well actually, quite a few bits but there you go...)

And once the furniture comes in on Tuesday I can finally finally rediscover that concept known as efficiency. Well it's taken long enough, I swear. Fitting 3 businesses into 1 tiny bedroom? Never, ever, again.

All of which means Issue 4 is waiting until next week before I can look over the layout before sending it to the printers. (I know, I know. This is totally, absolutely, the last bump in scheduling.)

So end of next week is when the website will finally, definitely, get updated. I've got issue contents for the next few issues, plus new publication dates & a couple of other bits to add.
And for US peeps, H&N will be getting stocked on Shocklines &/or Project Pulp soon so that'll make it easier for you to get your supplies!

Ooh, and Mark Chadbourn's new forum is now up at markchadbourn.net

So, before Xmas I wrote this absolute beauty of a post. Went on for ages, covered everything that needed covering. Then the machine crashed when I hit the submit button and, well, meh. Lost the will to live for a while. Too much work over Xmas (I'm sorry, was that supposed to be celebratory type days off..?) means that now (and OMG, I can't believe it's the end of January already. Mentally I'm still in the first week of Jan...) I'm behind in everything again, and back in another furious catchup phase.

So updates then:
Issue 4 - still haven't sent it off to to the printer. Waiting for artwork.
Mag generally - will attempt to go triannually this year in the hope of managing to get to a regular schedule. Will update the website sometime in Feb to show the new dates. Will also email everyone who's had work accepted to tell them the new dates of their appearance.
Outstanding Submissions - anticipate reply by the end of Feb
Submissions generally - may have to close to submissions longer than June, but haven't decided yet.

Nanowrimo word count: 29,004. Just 4 days left to do the last 20,996. Oh boy.

Fantasycon

The only way to describe the weekend (and a bit) that's just been, is to swallow a thesaurus and regurgitate the entries connected to fantastic, fabulous & phenomenal. Yes, ladies & gentles, it was just that good.

Juliet McKenna turned up on Saturday for a couple of panels and was fab to listen to. She sat on the Myth panel in the morning, with Chaz Brenchley, Katherine Roberts & Catherine Fisher; and boy was it a lively one. It started out with the trouble of overmilking Arthurian myth and moved on to cover most of the other world mythology bases, then sliding back home to Britain & oral traditons.

Her afternoon panel was one about character building, joined by Chaz (what a sweetie) Brenchley, Mark Morris and Katherine Roberts. That was a fun one, and was also great for getting an incite into the authors in question.

There were interviews with guest of honours Catherine Fisher & Christopher Fowler, a brilliant late night ghost story with audience participation from the inimitable Tina Rath, and an entertaining vampire presentation from Gail Nina Anderson.

Saturday also gave us the skinny on what publishers, booksellers &, bizarrely, the library service look for when they're buying titles. Ariel, Jo Fletcher, Stephen Jones & some chap from Stafford library were all on that one and it didn't take long to see how passionate they were about the genre. Jo Fletcher in particular is very keen in pushing new fantasy authors.

(more later when I wake up a bit)

Fantasycon fantasycon fantasycon yay!

And I shouldn't really be blogging as I've still got to put together the BFS Publications statement of accounts for the agm thingy, and cyberstore junk has to be done, and author royalties, and Issue 4, and email queries, and a million other things before we leave for Stafford tomorrow; but instead I've gone into major work avoidance. I mean, Sat & Sun I reread the entire Anita Blake series, Mon & yesterday I went through the first 4 books in the Dark Tower series... even got distracted by Evil Twin's Playstation! It has to stop...

Of course, seeing as how it's my birthday next Thurs, I've got the annual parental funded book shopping spree to look forward to at this year's Fcon dealer room.
What's so funny is the mother person keeps saying things like 'now if you don't see anything you want you don't have to buy anything..' Strange woman. You can't put me a room full on books without me wanting at least a hundred or so things, and I've gone back to liking horror flavoured books so that increases my want list.
And once the books are in my possession I'm going to be absolutely useless for anything. (ahem, no change there then.)

So Fantasycon then - Starts officially on Friday at 4pm, but I'll be around all day Friday setting up (hence getting there on Thursday for a bit of pre-con chill), then once it kicks off, I'll be behind the registration & BFS books table til they close.
Saturday I'm taking the day off and doing wall to wall panels! Then Sunday is juggling shifts on the BFS table with the offical BFS junk eg. agm & awards thingy. (As usual, I'm not going near the banquet as posh food and me don't get on.)

It's yet to be seen how smooth the trip will be given that it's mum, me & evil twin going. I predict razor tongues at dawn. Evil Twin intends to spend as much time near the bar as possible drinking whoever under the table (it's her special mutant power), mum will most likely be totally getting the wrong end of just about every stick going.

And don't even talk to me about the nanowrimo thing. This year is going to be a total ditto of last year. I hit 14637 words by the end of the first week and then... meh. It'll be a last minute rush next week, I can just see it now. What I've got so far is kind of fun. A little on the schizo side, but definitely fun. Slightly AU contemporary fantasy that's gone way weirder than I thought it would. Oy.

And speaking of new mags.... Gary Fry's got one called Fusing Horizons just about to show its face.