December? November... October! OK, so this is a little — OK, OK, a lot — overdue, but things have been busy.
October saw Untputdownable, the Bristol Festival of Literature, and BristolCon, Bristol's one-day SF and Fantasy convention, overlapping once again. Last year I time-sliced between the con and the last day of the lit fest. It was exhausting. This year I decided to avoid spreading myself too thinly by spending the day and early evening at the con and the evening at the Unputdownable Speakeasy, the lit fest wrap-up.
The con is very writer- and writing-focused and ridiculously good value for money, with some well-run and carefully considered panels, plus a host of other events, readings and casual conversations, all collocated. An intense day.
The lit fest is spread out over two weekends and the week in between across a number of venues around Bristol. Work-related travel meant I had to miss most of the events during the week, but along with my older son, Stefan, I did manage to attend a writing challenge on the first Saturday. The challenge? Write a story involving a Bristol-wide disaster of supernatural proportions themed around the event's title, The Kraken Rises!, and prompts and ideas dotted at three central Bristol locations, with writers on hand for inspiration and discussion.
Stefan noted that everyone seemed to stand around and talk about writing without actually doing any, while he got down and wrote his story, wasting no time taking out the suspension bridge and other landmarks in his opening paragraphs. I decided to experiment with a different approach to storytelling in my tale, "#KrakenEvent", using Twitter, web pages and texts to tell the story. We both got our stories in the next day.
But the story of the stories doesn't end there. During the week I received an email that my story had been shortlisted and was to be included in an ebook anthology. Because there was some crossover between BristolCon and the lit fest, and many of The Kraken Rises! participants are active in the Bristol Fantasy and SF Society, the winners were announced at BristolCon. Scott Lewis won with the storming allohistorical adventure of "Kitty McClure and the Cult of the Kraken". And I came second! And not once but twice in the same evening: the winners were announced again at the Speakeasy, along with the winner of the ebook coverart competition, Tina Altwegg.
We all walked off with bags of bookish goodies and the warm glow of an alcohol-washed evening. The ebook turned up in my inbox the next week... at which point I received the best surprise: Stefan's story had made it into the anthology! He'd been missed out of the original round of emails notifying shortlisted authors, hence the surprise. This made my day and his, and also means the anthology is bookended by Henneys — his is the first story in the book and mine the last. You can buy it for the Kindle, with proceeds going to the lit fest. Not all of the formatting of my story survived the ebook process — the dangers of eschewing the conventions of page and paragraph — so if you're interested in the story as originally formatted, drop me an email. You can read more about The Kraken Rises! in this interview by Joanne Hall with its organiser, Pete Sutton.
Given the number of Bristol Fantasy and SF Society folk who ended up in the ebook, we're planning a special Squidpunk BristolCon Fringe next September with readings from The Kraken Rises!. Squidpunk? A new genre created by Joanne Hall at BristolCon this year.
And speaking of Joanne Hall and BristolCon Fringe, the two of us are reading tonight. Better get my act together...
October saw Untputdownable, the Bristol Festival of Literature, and BristolCon, Bristol's one-day SF and Fantasy convention, overlapping once again. Last year I time-sliced between the con and the last day of the lit fest. It was exhausting. This year I decided to avoid spreading myself too thinly by spending the day and early evening at the con and the evening at the Unputdownable Speakeasy, the lit fest wrap-up.
The con is very writer- and writing-focused and ridiculously good value for money, with some well-run and carefully considered panels, plus a host of other events, readings and casual conversations, all collocated. An intense day.
The lit fest is spread out over two weekends and the week in between across a number of venues around Bristol. Work-related travel meant I had to miss most of the events during the week, but along with my older son, Stefan, I did manage to attend a writing challenge on the first Saturday. The challenge? Write a story involving a Bristol-wide disaster of supernatural proportions themed around the event's title, The Kraken Rises!, and prompts and ideas dotted at three central Bristol locations, with writers on hand for inspiration and discussion.
Stefan noted that everyone seemed to stand around and talk about writing without actually doing any, while he got down and wrote his story, wasting no time taking out the suspension bridge and other landmarks in his opening paragraphs. I decided to experiment with a different approach to storytelling in my tale, "#KrakenEvent", using Twitter, web pages and texts to tell the story. We both got our stories in the next day.
But the story of the stories doesn't end there. During the week I received an email that my story had been shortlisted and was to be included in an ebook anthology. Because there was some crossover between BristolCon and the lit fest, and many of The Kraken Rises! participants are active in the Bristol Fantasy and SF Society, the winners were announced at BristolCon. Scott Lewis won with the storming allohistorical adventure of "Kitty McClure and the Cult of the Kraken". And I came second! And not once but twice in the same evening: the winners were announced again at the Speakeasy, along with the winner of the ebook coverart competition, Tina Altwegg.
We all walked off with bags of bookish goodies and the warm glow of an alcohol-washed evening. The ebook turned up in my inbox the next week... at which point I received the best surprise: Stefan's story had made it into the anthology! He'd been missed out of the original round of emails notifying shortlisted authors, hence the surprise. This made my day and his, and also means the anthology is bookended by Henneys — his is the first story in the book and mine the last. You can buy it for the Kindle, with proceeds going to the lit fest. Not all of the formatting of my story survived the ebook process — the dangers of eschewing the conventions of page and paragraph — so if you're interested in the story as originally formatted, drop me an email. You can read more about The Kraken Rises! in this interview by Joanne Hall with its organiser, Pete Sutton.
Given the number of Bristol Fantasy and SF Society folk who ended up in the ebook, we're planning a special Squidpunk BristolCon Fringe next September with readings from The Kraken Rises!. Squidpunk? A new genre created by Joanne Hall at BristolCon this year.
And speaking of Joanne Hall and BristolCon Fringe, the two of us are reading tonight. Better get my act together...
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