The Bristolcon, the Feared and the Noisy
My fellow people of the West Country rejoice, for your local-yearly-small-yet-growing-one-day-speculative-fiction-event is but a few short weeks away. Yes, on November 6th I shall be Guest-of-Dishonouring at Bristolcon, at the Ramada Hotel, alongside Paul Cornell, and with a cornucopia of other writers including Al Reynolds, Juliet McKenna and John Meaney in attendance. The full schedule is up here, and my part in it looks a little something like this:
11.00 – Question and Answer session with Cheryl Morgan.
13.00 – Signing of anything and everything bearing my name. More than welcome to bring your own.
15.00 – Visualising Fantastical Worlds – panel on … visualising fantastical worlds.
18.00 – Writing Fight Scenes – panel. I must confess to being a little concerned about this one, as John Meaney has already acquired permission from my wife to physically damage me during it (it was surprisingly easy to obtain) and he’s a hardcore martial artist.
Then I dareasy I’ll hang around a while to shoot the proverbial. As said, it’s a small event, but only in its second year, so if you are in the area and fancy it, it’d be great to see some of you come along…
In other news, for those of us who’ve always liked to argue bitterly with other members of your Runequest group about things like who would win in a punch up between Lara Croft and Galadriel, Suvudu.com are running another of their cage matches, in which various fictional figures square off against each other in a tournament style battle to the death, decided by public vote and with the authors responsible occasionally turning up to put their thumb on the scales. They did warriors, this time they’re doing villains. More importantly, this time I’ve got a man in the game. Yes, indeed, everyone’s favourite half-tattooed, half-invulnerable, superhumanly strong, strangely twitching, eight-foot-giant-devil-blood-killing-machine, said to have been dug out of a mountain and resurrected by a witch, the undefeated champion of the King of the Northmen, Fenris the Feared will be taking on an assortment of this galaxy and several others’ most evil in combat to utter annihilation. I’ve never read the Foundation books, so I don’t know much about his first opponent, the Mule, but he don’t sound so tough. Just a kind of small horse, right? Still, after that it looks like Lord Soth, who I seem to remember being able to kill with a word, then someone from a selection of Terminators, Aliens, Professor Moriarty, and the Nothing from the Neverending Story, and if Fenris can somehow put that lot down, in the Semi-Final he faces none other than the great eye himself, Sauron. Man. Tough draw. So get on there and VOTE FEARED. Only with YOUR SUPPORT will he make it through those tricky opening rounds…
There’s also a video interview with me up at Book Spot Central, conducted by Elena Nolan at the Recent New York Comic Con. You’ll have to forgive the ropey sound. It was pretty noisy in there…
Proof-Reading, Short Stories, Review
Back in the UK, and now in the final phase of work on The Heroes – proof-reading. This is when you check through the finished pages, fully typeset as they will appear in the finished hardcover. Generally any changes are at the spelling or setting level, though it is surprising how often you’ll come upon […]
Back from NYCC
So, my four day oddessey to the Big Apple is complete, and I am back in lovely blighty. An exhausting yet thoroughly enjoyable (and even, in a couple of cases, actually useful) trip was had. Spent thursday talking strategy with the folks at my US publisher (alright, they were talking strategy, I was talking rubbish), […]
New York, New York
Some trains, some sleeping on an inflatable bed, some more trains, some trudging through miles of anonymous airport corridor, some customs and security checks, some films on a tiny screen (Kick Ass – good fun, bit less interesting than I was expecting, though, and Prince of Persia – vaguely distracting hokum with some laughably ropey dialogue) […]
