Thursday 24 September 2015

Literally Beyond the Edge

With BristolCon just around the corner — the corner being Friday — it might be a good idea to catch up with the one-day con I attended in July...

Back when summer was actually a thing that was happening, I headed over to Derby for Edge-Lit, a one-day SF/Fantasy/Horror con. My main reason for going was the launch of the We Can Improve You anthology, featuring my story "Ragdolls", and introduce myself to Alex Davis, who runs Boo Books, the publisher of both We Can Improve You and Haunted (which features my story "Promises You Can Keep").


Like BristolCon, it's a moderate-sized single-day event, but with quite a different emphasis and style. There were two tracks of workshop sessions with a strong writer focus. I attended one led by Alex Davis on the teaching of writing where I picked up a couple of ideas I might use in future workshops. As well as attending panels, launches, etc., I bumped into a couple of authors I knew from BristolCon, another who I saw this year at CrimeFest and I also got the chance to meet Joanne Harris. Although my original motivation was the anthology launch, there's enough there that I plan to return next year.

As for BristolCon, there's lots to look forward. I'm going with Stefan, so I'll be interested to see if and what he blogs, especially as I went with him to the somewhat larger Loncon last year. There's panels and interviews and more that I want to see, but I'll be missing Ian Stewart's "Time Travel and Real Physics" (if you asked me the one panel I wanted to go to...) because I'm on the "How Green Is Your Future?" panel. For my reading straight after I think I've figured out what I'm going to read... I think.

Thursday 17 September 2015

Readings Past, Present and Future

Way back in June I read "Star Signs" at Talking Tales. The podcast of the event is now available to fill the commutes, walks and other states of in-betweenness we might find in our lives. In July I read the same story out at Science Showoff, a year on from when I first performed there.

Tonight I'm off to Novel Nights, which is having a short story special with Tania Hershman. Tania is on in the second half, while the first half features a number of local short story authors, including me, Harriet Kline, Helen McClory, Grace Palmer and Pete Sutton. I plan to read "Like Giants", my story from North by Southwest.


I've been very much looking forward to Novel Nights since I discovered that the dice of my September schedule — which rarely brooks any midweek opportunities — had fallen to allow me to both attend and — with the coincidence of it being short story rather than novel focused — read.

In two weekends it's BristolCon, where I'm on the "How green is your future?" panel in the afternoon with a reading straight after. I haven't yet decided what to read, but I know that time is always of the essence because readings are interstitial between one main session and the next.

In October it's the Bristol Festival of Literature — more on that in another post — and I'll be reading at Written from Art on Wednesday 21st October.

There's a couple of other things in the pipeline, which I hope to write about before they happen rather than when they're receding in the rear-view mirror.