Conventions

Kevin on the Radio

~ Cheryl

Well that was a lovely way to start the day. Last night KJFC, one of the local radio stations in the Bay Area, devoted the whole of its Thoughtline program to discussion of Westercon 64. Kevin, together with con chair Glenn Glazer and dealers’ room manager Dave Clark, got a very respectful interview from a presenter who is clearly sympathetic to what we do.

It isn’t the slickest radio in the world. (Glenn dear, you need to stop saying “right” at the end of every sentence.) However, the boys had plenty of opportunity to get the message over, and they did it pretty well, I think. If you would like to hear the show for yourself, download this mp3. There’s a bit of music at the front, but the discussion gets going fairly quickly.

So, thanks to Robert Emmett and KJFC for a great show. I wonder how we can get that sort of thing to happen in Bristol?

Convention Appearances

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

This coming weekend I will be at the Write Fantastic Convention in Oxford. I won’t be on any panels, but I should have a few copies of Dark Spires with me, and one of the guest writers is my good friend Ben Jeapes, two of whose books I now have available in digital form.

As I will be in Oxford (and for more obvious reasons), I will not be at BayCon. However, Scott Dennis will be there with his t-shirt business, and he has kindly agreed to take a few copies of Dark Spires back to the US with him. So anyone who is going to be BayCon will be able to get it without paying trans-Atlantic postage.

Next month I will be at the Eurocon in Stockholm (17th-19th) (of which more very soon — exciting stuff is due to happen). I will also be at Alt.Fiction in Derby (25th/26th). For complicated reasons to do with train fares and Hilton points I’ll be there all weekend, and Alex has kindly put me on a couple of panels. They are:

  • Saturday 10:00am: The Digital Revolution;
  • Sunday 3:00pm: The Value of Literary Awards.

Sadly that’s almost it for the year. Once Finncon is over that will probably be me done until BristolCon, because I can’t afford to go to anything I haven’t made a commitment to, or already paid part of the cost of. But I guess it will be nice to spend a few weekends at home.

Kevin’s Reno Reports

~ Cheryl

A week or so ago Kevin was in Reno for a train-related event. He took the opportunity to stay at one of the hotels that will be used for Worldcon, and to look around the area. He has posted a number of reports on his LiveJournal. Here are links to some of them.

And while I’m linking to Kevin, he has also, in response to discussions elsewhere, drafted a motion that would require amendments to the WSFS constitution to be ratified by popular vote. Kevin and I both think this is a good thing in the long term, in that it allows more people to be involved in the decision-making process, and provides some balance between the vast majority of fandom and those who care enough about WSFS to participate in the Business Meeting. However, we have more important fish to fry in Reno so unless someone else wants to bring this forward it is unlikely to be discussed in the short term.

Bristol Expo Roundup

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Much of my weekend has been spent at the Bristol Comics Expo. It all seemed to be going very smoothly, and from talking to friends like Simon Gurr and Simon Breeze who had tables in the Small Press section people seemed to do decent business. Next year it looks like we’ll be back in the big shed at Temple Meads (now apparently renamed the Brunel Hall), which is great news. Exciting things may also be happening in the Ramada. Watch this space.

I arrived too late for the women in comics panel, but my friend Marjorie went and she said it was good. What I can do, however, is note that there were many fine women comics creators in the Small Press section. Here are a few.

I’ll start with my Greek friend, Sissy Pantelis. She doesn’t have much out in print at the moment, but she has a bunch of projects underway, including one with Markosia. There’s a review of the one-shot, Dream Lover, which Sissy did with her artist friend, Valia Kapadai, over at Geek Syndicate.

Sissy pointed me at UK-based manga artist, Sonia Leong. You can find her website here. Kevin, if you haven’t clicked through yet, do so now. Everyone else, I can particularly recommend this and this.

Not exactly comics, but a great female artist, is Anne Stokes. If you are into dragons and goth women you will absolutely love this. If I was still doing Salon Futura I would have been talking to Anne about a cover (though I probably couldn’t afford her).

In a very different vein my next shout-out is to local Bristol illustrator, Katie Green. I’m impressed with anyone who has degrees in both biology and sequential art. Most of what she has out at the moment is fairly lightweight in terms of themes, but I’m looking forward to seeing Lighter Than My Shadow, a graphic novel that Katie has sold to Jonathan Cape, which is a memoir of her struggle with eating disorders.

Finally in the round-up of ladies we have another Bristol-based artist: political cartoonist BlueLou. She’s already had work in The Guardian. And she’s the only woman political cartoonist that I know of.

I’d also like to make brief mention of a couple of guys. First up is Geof Banyard who does the wonderfully silly Fetishman comic, and also a fair amount of steampunk stuff. Anyone whose stall includes zeppelins, squid and a comic full of spoof Daily Malice outrage articles is OK by me.

And last but by no means least I have finally, after much prodding by Joe Gordon, got hold of all four issues of Spandex, a small press comic about a group of gay superheroes from Brighton. This deserves a proper review, for which you will have to wait. Sorry.

Expo Time

~ Cheryl

I’ll be spending much of the weekend at the Bristol Comics Expo. They are sold out, so there’s no point in my encouraging you to come along, but I will get to see a bunch of good friends, including Paul Cornell, Sissy Pantelis and Simon Gurr. The event hashtag is #bristolexpo. I’ll do my best to report on what is going on, and I hope to grab a quick interview with Bryan Talbot about Grandville.

Eastercon Report

~ Cheryl

I wrote this a week or so ago and then got distracted by other things. I have finally got around to posting it. The short version is that in future I’m not going to be able to attend many cons and I have to decide which ones are best for my business. Eastercon isn’t going to make the cut. You can find the report here.

A Modest Proposal

~ Cheryl ~ 8 Comments

There is currently no bid for Eastercon for 2013. In addition the US West Coast convention, Westercon, is struggling to attract members. I therefore propose that we hold the 2013 Eastercon and Westercon together, in Greenwich.

Eastercon – Sunday

~ Cheryl

Another day survived, and this one was a lot better.

I spent a couple of hours following the Australian awards ceremony from Swancon. I was astonished at the number of women winning awards. They dominated in all categories, but particularly notable were the Ditmar Awards. Out of 11 categories, only one was won by men, and in that case the wining work already had an Oscar (well done again, Shaun Tan). Every other category went to the ladies.

My one panel today was on nuclear power and it went very well (in marked contrast to all of my previous panels). Many thanks to Nige Furlong and Vincent Docherty for being excellent co-panelists.

Of course you absolutely cannot complain about a day on which you get a Hugo nomination. I’m a very small part of the Clarkesworld operation, and I have several Hugos already, but I am hoping we win this one because Kate Baker’s name is on the ballot this time and she’s a major part of our success. Kate Deserves a Hugo.

I’m also very pleased to see Peter Watts’s story, “The Things”, on the ballot. It was very popular with readers, with “Best Of” editors and now with award voters. Thank you for letting us publish it, Peter.

Of course it would be rather ironic if two of the Hugo winners were unable to accept their trophies because they are barred from entering the USA.

I’ll doubtless have more to say about the Hugos later, but as it is 1:00am here at Eastercon I really need sleep. I’d like to conclude with a quick shout out to my friends Ian Watson and Robert Quaglia for their nomination in this year’s Seiun awards. There are at least three Hugo nominees on the translated short fiction list, so they should be very proud to be there too.

Eastercon – Saturday

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Despite many dire predictions of disaster, Eastercon is progressing merrily on its way with little sign of Blackpool-like disaster. Several of the dealers I have spoken to have been quite happy, and I understand that the £700 or so that the fan fund auction raised is quite good given the state of the economy. Possibly people are saving money by not buying as much beer, because even such legendary drinkers as Eastercon attendees are beginning to balk at the bar prices.

Programming is proceeding pretty much on time but is perhaps showing a few signs of lack of preparation and forethought. Alternatively maybe the world is just changing. All of the panels I have attended so far have reminded me of online discussion, and not in a good way. There seems far too little discussion, and far too much argument by anecdata and straw man, or just people wanting to “have their say”. I’m sorely tempted to head into Birmingham tomorrow, but it is Easter Sunday and everything will be shut.

Ah well, there is a very nice lake next to the hotel with a path round it, allowing Kevin and I to take a pleasant post-breakfast walk. Also I have bagged an interview with Liz Williams for Salon Futura.

I have posted the results of the BSFA Awards over at SFAW. I’m very pleased to see The Dervish House win, though the field was very tough. It was also nice to see wins for a South African artist and a French writer. Clarkesworld‘s on entry in the short fiction category didn’t win, but I have high hopes for Peter Watts in the Hugos. Commiserations to my pals Jonathan and Gary — I voted for you, boys.

One other piece of interesting news is that the same folks who created the DnA Award have also secured the rights to create a new version of the legendary New Worlds magazine. Things are at a very early stage at the moment so there are a few rough edges to be filed off, but I’m always happy to see interesting new projects getting off the ground.

Eastercon – Friday

~ Cheryl ~ 7 Comments

There is a convention going on. I haven’t seen much of it, but all of the usual suspects are hanging around the hotel so I have to conclude that there is indeed a con. I’ll be able to report more tomorrow when I have seen some of it.

The one thing that is obvious is that food is an issue. We are in a posh hotel close to a US-sized convention center at which nothing is happening over the weekend. The hotel food is OK but very expensive. There is a convention food service that is not very good and over-priced for what it is. A few food outlets in the NEC were open today, and may be tomorrow, but probably not in the evening or on Sunday and Monday. By far the best option is to take a train into Birmingham (only £2). Kevin and I did that last night (with very excellent company — thanks Charlie and Feorag), but things we need to be at for the convention conspired against us doing so today and will do so Saturday and Sunday. On Monday we will flee for London in search of decent food. Thank goodness for free breakfast.

Internet access is patchy. I can get the iPhone to work on the hotel wifi in convention space. We have free wired internet in our room, and the MiFi also works here, but not in the convention space. Thankfully we don’t have to do much. I’ve been banned from doing official Hugo coverage, but the Renovation people have kindly taken up the baton and will be doing their own live event. Details of that and other award coverage is over at SFAW.

Next up, we have panels. Kevin is on one at 9:00pm. I have one at 10:00pm. We expect an audience of close to zero for both events. After all, anyone with any sense will be in the bar.

Travel and Book Update

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Kevin and I have been having a great time looking at trains and odd bits of history. Very shortly we will be off to Eastercon, where hopefully we’ll see quite a few of you.

Meanwhile the blogosphere is taking note of Ben’s books. Ben himself has been writing about the history of His Majesty’s Starship here and here (and there should be a Part 3 to come). In addition Mike Glyer has a post, which he has decorated with this very fine photo:

Ben Jeapes and friend

Ben is the one on the left.

The books are currently not available on Amazon because they are refusing to believe that I have the right to publish them. Hopefully this will be resolved soon. But in the meantime you can of course buy them here.

Convention Reportage

~ Cheryl

A couple of weeks ago I did a post on the conreporter.com website asking for people to help with coverage of the Easter weekend conventions. Kevin plugged it on his LJ as well. No one has responded. If that means that people are not interested, that’s fine, we’ll not bother (save for covering the award stuff) — it is one less thing for us to have to worry about — but I thought I would check here first.

Hugos Announcement Update

~ Cheryl

Many of you will already have seen the press release put out by Renovation, this year’s Worldcon, yesterday. I was heading to bed when it appeared, but Petrea Mitchell kindly covered it on SF Awards Watch for me.

There are two key points here. The first is that we have another new record for participation in the nominations process. Last year Aussiecon 4 reached a new high with 864 nominating ballots submitted. Renovation easily passed that, collecting 1006 nominating ballots from people in 21 countries on 6 continents. That’s still a relatively small number of people, but I’m pleased with the strong upward trend.

The other key point is that the press release states that the nominee lists will be announced at 2:00pm Pacific Time (10:00pm UK time) on Sunday, April 24th. There will be simultaneous ceremonies at Norwescon and Eastercon, and apparently fans will be able to “follow the announcement live”.

What the press release doesn’t say is how and where this live announcement will happen. Mike Glyer has been speculating, and consequently I should note that no one has approached me about doing anything. I am also guessing that nothing has been said on the Hugo Awards Marketing Committee. There have been no official posts on their website, and Kevin hasn’t mentioned anything to me. In any case, most of the point of kicking me off the HAMC appears to have been to prevent things like this happening on the official website.

I am assuming that Renovation will be handling the webcast themselves. I have no idea how they are planning to do it. All I can say is that Kevin and I will be at the Eastercon event, and if no one else is providing coverage we will attempt to do so. If Renovation has something wonderful planned and I can sit back and enjoy the event I shall be very happy.

Eastercon: Schedule and Hugos

~ Cheryl ~ 9 Comments

The Eastercon programme schedule is now online here. As far as I know, I am doing the following:

  • Getting your digital fix, Friday 10:30pm
  • Women Invisible, Saturday 1:30pm
  • Britain’s new nuclear programme, Sunday 4:30pm

I believe that Kevin will be on the Why Being A Fat Fan Is Bad For You panel (Friday 9:00pm).

The scheduling is, um, interesting. In particular the Women Invisible panel has been scheduled against David Weber’s GoH talk. From one point of view it rather clever: the sort of people who love military SF won’t be interested in feminism, and vice versa. On the other hand, it acts to perpetuate exactly the sort of problem that the panel is all about.

Elsewhere my Sunday panel has been scheduled against the Translation panel. I’m very much hoping we get no audience for mine so I don’t have to do it.

But the things you folks will be interested in are 7:30pm Saturday, which is the BSFA Awards ceremony, and 10:30 on Sunday, which is billed as Admiralty Ball & Announcement of the 2010 Hugo Award Nominations. Internet connections willing, Kevin and I will try to cover both of those live.

Of course the Hugo announcement has been scheduled against the LGBT Meetup, because no prominent UK LGBT fans have any interest in the Hugos, do they? *headsmack*

Update: It has been pointed out to me that Peter Hamilton’s GoH talk is scheduled against Women in SF.

Also Roz’s poetry reading has been scheduled against the BSFA Awards.

Convention Website 101

~ Cheryl ~ 15 Comments

While I am having to cut back on most of my convention travel, I will make an exception for any event that both Kevin and I can get to. As a result I have just signed up for the 2012 World Fantasy (Toronto) and 2013 World Fantasy (Brighton). Both of them have membership-buying experiences that are best described as woefully embarrassing. Here are a few tips for prospective convention runners.

  • Buying memberships should be a one-stage process. Submitting your membership application and your payment separately is a recipe for disaster.
  • Consider that people may want to buy more than one membership at once.
  • If your only means of accepting money is PayPal, stump up for a business account so that you can accept credit cards.
  • If you put instructions on your website for prospective members, make sure that the payment process allows them to fulfill those instructions
  • If you use a system other than PayPal, make sure it sends receipts to the customer.

We got all of these things right in for San José in 2009. How come years later the quality of WFC websites appears to have gone down the tubes?

P-Con

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

I have been to Ireland. I have had a wonderful time. I have also probably doubled my alcohol consumption for the year in a single weekend, and had to get up way too early this morning to catch a plane home. Consequently I am somewhat the worse for wear, but I shall try to comment briefly on events in Dublin.

First of all many thanks to everyone who came to the panels I was featured on, and to my fellow panellists. I very much enjoyed doing the panels. Thanks also to the people who agreed to be interviewed for Salon Futura. We have some good material coming up in the next two issues.

Ian McDonald was the Guest of Honour, and I believe that Pádraig Ó Méalóid will be transcribing or podcasting the GoH Interview panel.

Many thanks are due to Peter McLean who has done a wonderful job with the convention for several years and is now entering a well-deserved retirement.

Pádraig will be taking over the convention next year, and has acquired a fabulously fiendish moustache to go with his new role. The Guests of Honour will be Robert Rankin and the fabulous comic creator, Bryan Talbot. Pádraig is moving the convention from the Central Hotel to the Irish Writers Centre. I shall miss the Library Bar, but I quite understand Pádraig’s desire to obtain additional program space at reduced cost. I am sure that we will find somewhere to drink next year.

There is no web site for next year’s convention as yet, but it does have a Twitter feed.

Comics in Caerdydd

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

The first ever Caerdydd Comics Expo has come and gone, and the general impression appears to be that it was a great success. The event was held in a Mercure hotel near the city center. Advance tickets sold out a week or two before the event, and there were long lines of young people (some in very fine costumes) hoping to get some of the few at-the-door tickets. I’m always happy to see young girls with green hair, and young boys in pink wigs and schoolgirl uniforms. I like to think that if this happens enough various shouty conservative folks will explode.

The main dealers’ room was quite large, but Mike Allwood told me that he could have taken a lot more people if he had had the room. Next year’s event is already planned to be two days. Panels were upstairs in a room that was rarely filled, but not deserted either. It was great to catch up with good friends such as Paul Cornell, Sissy Pantelis, Dave and Barry from Geek Syndicate and Simon Gurr. Tony Lee, wherever you are, you were sadly missed. I got to introduce John and Yvonne Meaney to the comics world, and John repaid me by letting me fondle his Neal Adams X-Men comics, which are every bit as gorgeous as I remember from when I was a kid.

Also I got to be in Caerdydd on match day, albeit that the action all took place far away in Rome. Wales won. A good day all round.

Picocon

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

I am now back home having had an enjoyable time at my first Picocon. This is a university convention held at Imperial College in Kensington, not far from the Albert Hall. If it were not for the fact that it is is London it would doubtless be a fairly small event, perhaps similar to the ironically much smaller Microcon, which takes place in Exeter in 2 weeks time. However, being in London, Picocon is able to attract a wide range of locally based authors and fans, which makes it a much bigger event. It is split site, in that the main panel sessions take place in a lecture theatre a short walk from the student union building where the bar rest of the con is, so it is hard to gauge numbers, but it is certainly over 200.

I got to hang out with Paul Cornell, Paul McAuley and Mike Shevdon, and also said hi to Juliet McKenna, Kari Sperring, Pat Cadigan, Jaine Fenn, Farah Mendlesohn, Graham Sleight and many others. Thanks in particular are due to Mike for finding a great pub for lunch (even if they were rather stingy on the chips) and to Terry Martin of Murky Depths for looking after my bags and putting copies of Dark Spires on his dealer table. By the way, the graphic novel edition of the Richard Calder & Leonardo Giron story, Dead Girls, is utterly gorgeous. It is expensive, but it’s a signed, limited edition. If you see Terry at a con, ask to see it.

I missed Kari’s GoH talk, but Paul did a great session on the moons of the outer planets, packed with gorgeous Cassini photographs, and Juliet held forth in her usual fascinating way on why a fantasy author needs to know a lot of science. It is apparently traditional at Picocon to drop various dodgy pieces of SFnal merchandise into liquid nitrogen and they destroy them. The students, being students, love this so much that they stood out in the rain to watch it being done. When I left they had just started a fish-fighting tournament, which is like sword-fighting, only with fish. I have no idea why, but they are students which hopefully explains everything.

And oldish fellow called Langford gave me a piece of paper which he said was something called a “fanzine”. It was interesting, but I’m not sure that the idea will catch on.