WFC: the shopping experience

The dealer’s room at this year’s WFC was one of the best I’ve seen in years. A VAST room, filled with books. The range of wares on offer from the pro and indy publishers, from the secondhand paperback sellers and the high-end collectibles dealers, was awesome. And for someone like me who for reasons of […]

Ten minutes

Writing this at Gatwick Airport with ten minutes of free wifi left, which is apt because ten minutes was, I reckon, the average amount of time I manage to spend in conversation with any one person on any one (of a million) important, personal, silly subjects at WFC in Brighton. Some conventions are relaxed affairs. […]

All Hallows

So Hallowe’en is supposed to be fun? Fun? Really? Over on Facebook, a friend was asking about Hallowe’en traditions, having seen an English newspaper report expressing concern that the UK had irrevocably now imported the American customs of Hallowe’en – from fancy dress to carving pumpkins to trick-or-treating. And my friend’s point was (quite correctly): “Wait […]

WFC shopping list

One of the benefits of the awards reading stint was that I inadvertently didn’t buy any new books for several months. I know! Imagine! This of course must be rectified, and it so happens that the imminent World Fantasy Convention will be the epicentre for a conflagration of book launches. In addition to the two […]

Last Exit…

Had the pleasure this week of a sneak preview of Chris Kelso‘s new novella, Last Exit To Interzone. It is most excellent bizarro fun. In what amounts pretty much to a love letter to the beat writers of the 50s and 60s – an admiration evident down to the punctuation – Kelso weaves a gonzo […]

Ready to launch

There’s two and a bit weeks to go before this year’s World Fantasy Convention down in lovely Brighton. I’m not doing terribly much at it, so you’ll mostly find me in the bar, but what will be happening at the con is the launch of a couple of anthologies which I’ve mentioned before here on account of […]

Legs, home

So, the last two weekends with the Scotland Writers team were pretty amazing. Gothenburg and Vienna, two lovely but contrasting cities – tidy, calm, designed vs sprawling and historically stratified. Our hosts for both trips were hugely friendly, the hospitality excellent – whether it be the astonishing seafood platter in the Dubliner pub in Gothenburg […]

Away games

Nearly a year ago, I had a conversation in a hotel bar in Toronto with Graham Joyce about his experiences playing in goal for the England Writers international football team, a collection of novelists, poets, playwrights and publishing types who play matches against teams from other countries. Brilliant fun, he said. On the back his mention […]

Free Bones

Coming to the end of the BFA reading now (literally, a couple of books and a comic to finish and I’m done), and the writing projects are forming a disorderly queue clamouring like kids to be first into the tuck shop. (And how old exactly is that simile? You see what happens when you don’t […]

Fringe activities #3

Well, that’s the last weekend of the 2013 Fringe been and gone. Had a great one, with two excellent de Saw / Finkle shows on Saturday night, played to brilliant audiences (even the one that seemed to think we were a comedy act), and two beautifully experimental stints as a member of the Creative Martyrs’ […]