BristolCon 2013

This year I stayed in the BristolCon hotel, which was very convenient for dropping stuff back up to my room. It was a great day, including the book launch mentioned in my previous post, a couple of interesting panel discussions, and lots of conversations with several authors, publishers and artists, many of whom I met for the first time, and a few brief hellos in passing with various others. And free tea!

Ode to an Earthworm

Saturday at BristolCon saw the launch of the anthology Looking Landwards from NewCon Press, which includes my story Ode to an Earthworm. In the morning I signed 100 signing sheets for the limited edition hardback, and the book launch was at 2:00 PM. There were seven of the authors present, plus cover artist Andy Bigwood. After a few words of introduction from editor Ian Whates, each of us spoke for a minute or so about our stories. After that there was wine and crisps, and a queue of people buying the paperback edition and moving along the table to get their copy signed by all of us. It was great fun and I'd be happy to do it again!

BristolCon Approaches

Only a month till BristolCon, a small con that I enjoyed immensely when I went 2 years ago. Looking forward to seeing lots of familiar faces, and meeting some new ones. Of course, to make it even more exciting, there will be the launch of Looking Landwards, the first UK-published anthology I have appeared in.

The Best of Murky Depths

One of the people I met up with at BristolCon was Murky Depth editor Terry Martin. As revealed on his blog, we are working on The Best of Murky Depths, an anthology containing my selection of the best graphic and prose stories from the first 10 issues.

The selection has already been made, I've written a few words about each of my choices and permissions are currently being sought from artists and authors. The anthology will go out in PDF format, giving readers a chance to sample what Murky Depths has to offer.

It will look pretty awesome.

Saturday at BristolCon

BristolCon is a relatively small con in its second year, and I made the 2 1/2 hour trip down to Bristol for the weekend and attended the event on Saturday. It may be small, but it was very relaxed and friendly.

Two minor things I thought were good ideas and worth noting were:

• Name badges were printed on both sides. At previous cons, people's badges tended to flap over so you couln't see their name. This neatly solved that problem.
• There was a constant supply of free tea and coffee. Admittedly, that would probably be impracticaly at a much larger con.

This was a single-stream con, and I attended about half of the programme items, spending the rest of the time in the dealers' room, art show and bar (drinking tea), or lurking round the lobby.

I met up with a few people I've met before, others I've interacted with on the web, others whose work I've read, and saw several others whose names I knew but embarresingly hadn't read anything by them. I don't feel too bad introducing myself to fantasy authors whom I've not read as I don't read any fantasy, but it's a bit more awkward when it's a well-known SF author and I've not read any of their work. :o/

Anyway, I got to chat with authors Kim Lakin-Smith, Colin Harvey, Gareth L Powell and his wife Becky, Neil Beynon, John Meaney and his wife Yvonne, Mike Wood, Paul Cornell, Adam Colston, artist Andy Bigwood, Terry Martin of Murky Depths, Steve Upham of Screaming Dreams / Estronomicon, Del Lakin-Smith of Dark Fiction, and several others whose names I didn't note. Sorry.

It's especially nice to be able to chat to fellow authors about the trials and joys of writing.

I'm looking forward to my next con.

One Week to BristolCon

Next weekend I'll be attending the second BristolCon, a small convention held in Bristol. I enjoyed EasterCon so much this year that I didn't want to wait until next Easter to get together with the other authors, artists, publishers and others who you can meet at cons.

I'm looking forward to another enjoyable day.