And a jolly good time was had by all

Well, Eastercon has been and gone already, and the Saturday that I was there just wasn’t long enough! I attended a couple of lectures and discussion panels, briefly wandered the dealer hall and spent all of three minutes in the art exhibition. I also spent quite some time seemingly in a remake of The Poseiden Adventure – wandering corridors in a vain attempt to work out where I was.

Of course, the highlight of the day was meeting up with the other Flash Fictioneers, except for Dan Pawley who was unable to be there.

Here we are ready to begin our Flash Fiction Workshop:



Photography by the lovely Gemma.

From left to right: Me, Martin McGrath, Paul Graham Raven, Neil Beynon, Gareth L Powell, Justin Pickard, Shaun C Green.

This was the first time we’d all met up, and my chance to get my hands on my own copies of Illuminations – our new anthology. I have to say it looks fabulous – smart, crisp, clear; we’re all very proud of it. We all signed each other’s copies too, for posterity.

The workshop went well; a small but interesting group listened to us talk about our enthusiasm for flash fiction, asked us a few questions, then had a go at writing a short story in about 20 minutes. Of course, we all wrote something too and you can see the results, mine and presumably the others, this Friday.

Something very exciting was going on in the next room, lots of cheering and laughter while we attempted some serious concentration. We managed though, several delegates read out their stories and everyone offered comments. We may even have recruited a couple of new names to the Fictioneers, including our first female member. Check back on Friday to see the results.

Meanwhile out in the convention I saw several names I recognised wandering past and stopped to speak to a few. I spoke with Ana Feruglio Dal Dan, author of Passing the Test, one of my favourite stories last year, and author / reviwer Colin Harvey.

I caught up with Terry Martin, who no longer lives just round the corner from me, at the Murky Depths table. In case I haven’t mentioned it before, Murky Depths is a fabulous looking magazine. Some of the stories and artwork aren’t necessarily to my taste, but there’s no denying the quality it exudes.

Over at the Interzone table I practiced my Dutch on Jetse De Vries. Sadly, all I can manage is ‘Good Morning’ and ‘Industrial Waste Processing’, so I couldn’t exactly get by on holiday!

For now I’m going back to my reading of Illuminations…