Worldcon – Day 0

I headed to London straight from the studio to be in time to catch up with Rina & Jacob from Tachyon Publications, and Rani Graff from Israel, for dinner. There was a party at Rina & Jacob’s apartment last night, at which I managed to catch up with a bunch of people, including Pat Murphy whom I have not seen in ages. Her work in progress sounds very interesting. Also John Kessel told me he has a novel that he’s almost ready to shop around, which is excellent news.

Oh, and Tachyon are bringing out collections by Kate Elliott and Hannu Rajaniemi next year. SQUEE!

I chatted a bit to Gary Wolfe about various things and he happened to mention seeing the infamous Michelle Goldberg article in The New Yorker, which Julia Serano eviscerates here. Goldberg clearly intended the piece to be a vehicle for TERF propaganda, but I’m starting to hear that for many people it had the opposite effect. Certainly Gary said that he found the TERF line that Goldberg was describing so vile that he automatically took against it. Yay! 🙂

Today the madness begins. I am booked solid from 10:30 to 18:00, save for an hour and a half to check into my hotel and get lunch. That starts at 3:00pm so I’d better eat something now.

A Quick Note For Facebook Users

Some of you are in the habit of using Facebook messages to contact me. As of Wednesday I’ll be starting a two week period when I’m mostly on the road, and I wanted to warn you that I no longer get FB messages on my phone. In fact I’ll probably be dropping the main FB app from it as well soon. That’s because FB wants access rights to things on my phone that I am not prepared to allow. I will try to check into a web version of FB once a day, but that makes it no faster than email. If you need to get a message to me quickly, Twitter is your best bet.

Weekend Events

For those of you who are in or around Bristol, here are a few things happening this weekend.

On Friday night at Foyles Rebecca Lloyd will be launching Mercy and the View from Endless Street. Becca and I talked about the books yesterday on the radio. I’ll post the Listen Again links to that shortly. If you are into deeply creepy short fiction, Becca’s work will be right up your street.

On Saturday there are two events at bookstores in the city. First up Lord Grimdark (aka Joe Abercrombie) will begin his campaign to terrorize the youth of the world with his first YA novel, Half a King. He will be in Waterstones in The Galleries from 1:30pm.

Not long after, at 3:00pm, Gareth L. Powell’s brother, Huw, has a book launch at Foyles. While Gareth is busily forging a name for himself as a writer of adult SF, Huw is looking to take over the kids’ market. Spacejackers looks like a lot of fun.

Finally Saturday is the date of the St. Paul’s Carnival. Ujima Radio will, of course, be out in force all day. We are also running an after party at the Malcolm X Centre. I can’t see me making that, because it doesn’t start until midnight I am leaving for Finland on Monday (flying out Tuesday morning).

Fringe in a Flash

The April edition of BristolCon Fringe will be devoted to flash fiction. That means that we have not two, not three, but a whole eight readers for you.

Well, I say whole. We were going to have the fabulous Gareth L. Powell, but the poor guy is on crutches right now and he needs to be fit and ready for Eastercon so we have excused him his duties. Someone else will fling monkey poo on his behalf.

So the line-up we have is as follows:

Louise Gethin writes about love, death and anything in between. She self-published a collection of short stories, Anecdotes of Love and Death, in 2013 with the help of Andy Gibb (actually, it wouldn’t have happened without him). Otherwise, she has read at The Thunderbolt as part of the Word of Mouth Series and been included in a number of short story anthologies including: Unchained — published by Tangent Books in 2013, Hidden Bristol — published by Tangent Books in 2012. She has been a member of Bristol Writers Group for 11 years and was one of the four founding members.

Justin Newland is a regular attendee at Fringe and is doubtless well known to podcast listeners for being the person who helps Cheryl out by asking questions from the audience when no one else is willing to.

Jonathan Pinnock is the author of the novel Mrs. Darcy Versus The Aliens (Proxima, 2011), the Scott Prize-winning short story collection Dot Dash (Salt, 2012) and the forthcoming bio-historico-musicological-memoir thing Take It Cool (Two Ravens Press, 2014). He blogs at www.jonathanpinnock.com and tweets as @jonpinnock. He read at Fringe in February.

Pauline Masurel has been writing tiny stories for over twelve years now, which is long before most people were calling them flash fiction. Her short, and even shorter, stories have been published in anthologies, and online in both print and audio versions. Two of her short stories were broadcast on Radio 4. She is amply qualified to write flash fiction inspired by astronomy, because she used to live a couple of doors down from the Herschel Museum in Bath and she once watched Patrick Moore falling asleep at a public lecture. You can find out more about her work from her website.

Peter Sutton has lived in Bristol since the late 80’s, on and off, and now considers it his home. Like most authors he had a wide variety of jobs. Unlike most authors he only started writing post 40 after a lifetime of procrastination. He’s always had a passion for books and once tried unsuccessfully to have a publishing career, going so far to get a PGDip in publishing, but it didn’t take and he ended up working for the BBC instead in just one of those ‘any jobs’. He now works for a major telecoms company. He is one of the organisers of Bristol Festival of Literature and has had stories published on 1000 Words, storieswithpictures.org and Hodderscape. He is a contributor to the Naked Guide to Bristol and an event organiser for Vala publishing. You can follow him on Twitter at @suttope and read his blog at http://brsbkblog.blogspot.co.uk/.

Jonathan L. Howard is an author, game designer, and scriptwriter, creator of Johannes Cabal (a necromancer of some little infamy), and the YA SF series The Russalka Chronicles. He can be found on Twitter as @jonathanlhoward and at his site www.jonathanlhoward.com. He read at Fringe last November.

Kevlin Henney is the organizer of Bristol’s annual contribution to National Flash Fiction Day. His work has been published in a variety of venues, including New Scientist. He read at Fringe last December, and this event is All His Fault.

And finally, Cheryl Morgan is a publisher and literary critic who is absolutely terrified at the prospect of having to read her own fiction in public for the first time, especially in the company of such distinguished persons.

As always, BristolCon Fringe takes place at the Shakespeare Tavern in Prince Street (round the back of the Arnolfini). Readings start at 7:30. Full details are available from the BristolCon website.

No Fooling

I haven’t been in the mood today to write anything funny, so I have passed on the opportunity to do an April Fool post. Given the quality of what I’ve seen elsewhere today, that was probably wise. I don’t want to add to the torrent of unfunny posts.

Things will be quiet tomorrow too. I’m doing radio at Ujima at lunchtime (no book stuff, I’m covering for Paulette who is busy elsewhere). Then I have some meetings, and in the evening it is Book Club day in Bath. I’ll see you Thursday.

The End is Nigh

As those of you watching the UK news will know, the world is being destroyed in wind and rain today. I came back from Darkest Somerset on the train today, and was really rather lucky. There’s a tree down on the line between Tiverton and Taunton, so long-distance services from the West Country are severely disrupted. Fortunately I only needed local trains, which were only mildly chaotic.

Mind you, we are doing better than Toronto. From what I am seeing on Twitter, they are suffering an attack by Frost Giants. I hope that Thor & Co. turn up soon.

Coming back on the train south of Bath I could see that the Avon was close to bursting its banks. Many of the fields near Trowbridge were flooded. And judging by the number of people braving the wind and rain to throng to the shops there is a great deal of insanity about. There can be only one explanation. It is that time of year. It won’t be long now before we see Deep Ones swimming their way up the High Street.

The Far, Unfrozen North

Hello everyone, I am in Toronto. The journey went fairly well. The biggest problem that I had was the Tube being down between Kings Cross and Baker Street this morning (which at 8:30am is enough to almost bring London to a halt). Thankfully I had left plenty of time and was able to get to Paddington via the Victoria and Bakerloo lines.

The Royal York is as opulently splendid as ever. However, they are digging a new platform at Union station so the roads outside are pure chaos right now. Thankfully the weather is pretty good. Indeed Kevin says it is warmer here than in San Francisco. Given that I have just seem Amanda tweeting about how cold it is there, I am inclined to believe him. If a Bostonian is discomfited by the cold in San Francisco it must be really cold, not just cold for California.

We have been to Chipotle. There is one just over the road. So I have my North American food fix for the trip. I have a lot I could be doing, but it is gone 1:00am so I’m just going to answer email and watch the cricket.

Not Dead

Yeah, I know, I have been quiet. I have a huge amount of stuff to do before I head off to Canada to see Kevin (and possibly attend SMOFcon, though that’s a very minor attraction in comparison). Progress is being made, sort of.

Anyway, today I am off to Bath for the next meeting of The Emporium Strikes Back, the Mr B’s science fiction book club. Today we will be discussing Vurt, which I have just had the pleasure of re-reading. I will be fascinated to see what the rest of the group has made of it.

Also it is my turn to suggest books for the next meeting. I have been asked to pick three. Naturally they are all science fiction books by women with some sort of feminist element to them. I’ll tell you tomorrow which ones they were, and which one the group finally chose. In the meantime you can amuse yourselves by trying to guess which three I picked.

In Memoriam

TDOR - LA Pride image

I will be out all day I’m doing a Trans Day of Remembrance segment on Ujima at Noon. I’ll be at the University of the West of England in the afternoon for their Trans Awareness event. And in the evening I’m reading this year’s In Memoriam list at a ceremony in City Hall. There are 238 names on the list, and as always it is incomplete, in particular omitting those who were driven to take their own lives.

My thanks to Pride LA who produced the wonderful image above.

Weekend, Right?

Weekends are the times when you don’t do any work, you just veg out in front of the TV or something. At least that’s what I’m told. Here’s what I have done today.

After breakfast I headed into Bristol and on up to the BCFM studios where I was being interviewed for a programme to be broadcast on this year’s Transgender Day of Remembrance (which is this coming Wednesday, November 20th).

From there I headed back into the city, bought a Christmas present for Kevin in the Christmas Market, grabbed some food from Sainsbury’s and ended up at the M-Shed for the Out Stories Bristol AGM.

The first item of business was a fabulous talk by Robert Thompson from LAGNA about representations of LGBT people in the British media in the 1950s and 1960s.

After that we had the business part of the meeting, at which I was able to practice the Ninja meeting chairing skills that I have learned from watching Kevin handle the much more challenging task of keeping the WSFS Business Meeting in order.

On the way back to Temple Meads I popped briefly into the Shakespeare to see if the BristolCon post-mortem needed any further input from me beyond what I had put in email.

And then it was back home for board meeting of SFSFC.

That was roughly a 12 hour day, with no actual breaks for lunch or evening meal, though I did manage to eat both of those. My apologies to Robert for inhaling my lunch during the first few minutes of his talk.

And now I think I have earned some sleep.

Home At Last

Kevin is a couple of hours short of touchdown in San Francisco and I’m back in The Cottage. Eventually I’ll get caught up on stuff. Right now, however, I’m preparing for tomorrow’s show on Ujima where I will be interviewing Jonathan L. Howard about his career in video game design, his Johanes Cabal books, his new series from Strange Chemistry and doubtless a few other things as well. We may even chat about World Fantasy.

One thing I did get done while I was away (because I had a deadline) was a brief report on the World Fantasy Awards for the For Books’ Sake website. You can find that here.

Meanwhile, it is back to reading Katya’s World, which I’m enjoying a lot, and then sleep, of which I seem to need rather a lot.

Busy Day in Bristol and Bath

There was no bloggery yesterday because Kevin and I were out for the day. First up we went to Bristol to do some sight seeing and various errands. Kevin got introduced to the crew at Ujima and made a brief appearance on the radio. We sampled the food at a local cafe that I’m planning to feature on the show. And we went to see the Roman History exhibit at the City Museum which will also get a mention on the show when I have Ben Kane on (which is scheduled for December 11th).

In the evening we moved on to Bath where The Emporium Strikes Back, the Mr B’s SF book group, was discussing Gareth Powell’s Ack-Ack Macaque. Gareth had kindly offered to come in and answer questions, and a fun evening was had by all (though the Salamander does appear to be a bit too noisy for such meetings). Next month the book under examination will be Jeff Noon’s Vurt, but sadly I can’t be there as I’ll be on my way to Toronto.

Radio Silence

Today I am off to Bristol for two Literary Festival events (that will take me all the way from ancient Rome to the apocalypse) and a Black History Month event. Due to crap FGW services on Sundays I am staying in the city overnight because I have to be off early to Heathrow where I will be collecting Kevin. We should both be back online on Sunday evening. In the meantime I will, of course, be on Twitter.

Where Has She Been?

Yes, it has all been very quiet here for a while. What have I been up to? Well, a couple of my fabulous Finnish friends have been visiting the UK, and I took time out to show them around Bath, Bristol and London. Here are a few observations that resulted from that.

Jim Burns and Gary Erskine are very fine fellows and it was a pleasure to catch up with them at the Bath Comic and Sci-Fi Weekender. Thanks also to Andy Bigwood for his generosity. He’ll know what I mean.

The Bristol Museum and Art Gallery is bigger and more extensive than I thought it would be. Most of it is free too. Well worth a visit. Some of the stuff in there is now a little embarrassing, such as the tiger personally shot and donated by King George V, but they have done a good job of putting most of their older material into context. I was particularly interested to discover Rolinda Sharples who is the best of the local artists on display.

We had dinner at Harvey’s Cellars and very splendid it was too. The goat curry, ribs and creole prawns were particularly good, and I loved what they did with Bristol Cream — adding a touch of orange does wonders for it.

And finally, I am still very fond of the Old Operating Theatre, where we launched the Thackery T. Lambshead Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases. As London museums go, it is affordable and delightfully eccentric. Hopefully being right next door to The Shard will get it a lot more visitors.

Busy Day

Well, that was fun. I spent most of today at the Queer in Brighton conference. My paper seemed to go down well, and I met lots of lovely people. I’ll blog more about it tomorrow when I have a bit of time.

I’ve also been busy testing restaurants in advance of World Fantasy. If you haven’t been following me on Twitter you need to check out Giggling Squid and Dig in the Ribs. Again there will be more bloggage in due course.

Busy Week

Don’t expect too much from me this week as I’m off to Brighton tomorrow to give a paper at this conference. There will be much travel on trains, and I’ll be offline most of Wednesday.

Of course when I get back I hope to have a recording of my talk, interviews with a few famous trans folk, and more about restaurants in Brighton, and I’ll be deep in the mire again as I won’t have time to process them.

Back To Brighton: BSSN Conference

While I was in Brighton for Trans Pride, Fox told me about an academic conference that was due to take place in the city in September. The title of the conference is “Life Stories, Histories and Differences” and, as you might guess, it is about queer histories. Fox and Lewis were planning to do a presentation about the My Genderation films. I offered them a paper too, and I’m delighted to say that we both got in. You can find more about the conference here.

As I was a bit late getting in, they don’t have the title of my paper on the website, but it will be “Their-stories: Interrogating gender identities from the past”. It will be about how we present the gender identities of people from the past in the history that we write.

The conference is on a Wednesday, so I guess it will be hard for most people to get to, but if you are interested attendance is only £25 (£15 for the unwaged). You can register here.

Oh, and this will give me an opportunity to try out a couple more Brighton restaurants in advance of World Fantasy.

Weekend Travel

The next few days are going to be very busy for me, so bloggage may be limited. Here’s what is going down.

Tomorrow I’m heading off to Brighton for Trans Pride, and for restaurant scouting in advance of World Fantasy.

Saturday is the actual day of Trans Pride, but I have to be back and home in the evening for a conference call with California (an SFSFC Board Meeting).

On Sunday I’m going to a friend’s birthday party in Darkest Somerset, and I’ll be stopping off to see my mother on the way home.

I should finally get back home again some time on Monday.

Eek.