Not The Fox News: The Second State of the Union

We all wash up alone. In different places, on different shores, we find ourselves free of the constant turmoil and chaos of our pasts. We become so used to clinging on for dear life that it seems normal, tossed around on the tides of loneliness, stress, trauma, adolescence. We share a common past of turmoil and disruption, an early life defined by what we don’t understand, what we don’t know. A life mapped out not by what we have done but by what happens, or sometimes is done, to us.

The past is what we all run from. The future begins the moment we wash up on that shore.

Bedraggled, hurt, bleeding and angry we all stumble out of the waves and up the beach. Some of us want to know what happened, some of us want vengeance for the wounds that drove us here but most of us are just delighted that the storm has passed and that, at last, we’ve found dry land.

And what land it is. A place that doesn’t just welcome us but seems to understand us, seems to sing our songs and laugh at our jokes. For the first few weeks we’re amazed that we could have been this lucky, escaped to somewhere this perfect. Then we stop thinking about the escape and start thinking about the future. That moment, difficult to notice as it always is, is the moment we stop running. It’s the moment we realize we’re home.

As time goes by and we settle down, we find that other people were washed ashore on this spit of land too. We share stories, find common ground in old wounds and new perspectives and before too long we form friendships and partnerships that will define the rest of our lives. There is no point in a person’s history more thrilling than the moment they look out across their new home and map it not into obscurity but into identity. This is the place youi are, this is the place you will be. This is how you will live in it.

Of course, we don’t settle. That’s not what humans do. The same drive that pushed the American settlers so far west they had to go up drives us all. We explore our new home, find new people, places resources and, even after years of exploration, that still manage to surprise us. It’s an untidy business and we all find things that we dislike or that shock us. Sometimes we mark that area on the map as somewhere to avoid. Sometimes we go back a few years later and wonder what the problem ever was.

As we explore, we make two discoveries, both of which will change our lives. The first is that this place, beautiful as it is, constantly evolving as it does, is finite. There are coasts, just like the one we washed up on. There are storms, sometimes out on the horizon and sometimes close in, and there are always new people washing ashore. Sometimes we recognize ourselves in their jagged shock and panicked relief. Sometimes we can help them, and sometimes they have to find their way alone. Knowing the difference between the two, being able to spot it, will be one of the greatest challenges of the rest of our lives.

The second discovery is more profound. We all have a day where we climb as high as we can, look out across our island and realize something; it’s one of millions. A vast, flat sound stretches out across the world as far as the eye can see and for every point on the compass there are a hundred islands. When we look closely we see that there are people on those islands too. Exploring, climbing, realising that the other islands exist.

We all come in alone.

But that’s the last time.

 

As we gaze out across the archipelago, we realize just how fluid it is and just how long it has been in existence. We see ghosts of bridges between islands, boats out in the straits and, from time to time, new land appearing as the mist clears. This is an ecosystem, one as rich and vibrant as any you’ve encountered before and one just as loaded with opportunity and fraught with danger.

The opportunity comes from finding likeminded people to help you explore. The danger comes from not seeking out anyone else. Island life, for all its peace, can breed insularity. Some of those bridges, you notice, were burnt. Some of the islands, close together as they are, do not talk to one another. Other snipe, or steal. Others still watch the newcomers struggle ashore and, instead of asking if they can help, critique their swimming or complain about how crowded the island is becoming. These people, you note, never actually do anything besides complain. For a while, you find their lifestyle an attractive prospect; sitting in comfort, fighting imaginary wars for a high ground all of them can see but none can reach. It looks simple. Relaxing.

Solitary.

But there is always work to be done. Always new places to go, new things to find and best of all, new people to tell about what you’ve found. That’s the glue that holds this society made of survivors together; the expansion of joy, the sharing of enthusiasm. And as you sit, at night, swapping stories about your travels with your friends, you’ll find yourself gazing out across the sea to the next island over. You can hear music and laughter coming from there and a dozen other places, see brightly coloured lights on the boats in the straits. Distantly, you see fireworks, wonder how they made them and realize that, tomorrow, you can go and ask them if you want to. Better still, you can take your friends with you.

 

We are citizens of the Archipelago of Enthusiasm, united in a common love for exploration and the need to discover something new and tell people about it. We all wash up alone but the moment we do is also the moment we come home.

 

Happy new year, everyone. I’ll see you in 2015.

(Images taken from the excellent Tomb Raider game released in 2013 and the remarkable Dear Esther. Both absolutely worth your time.)

Not The Fox News: The Long Con: LonCon 3 Part 1

 

LonCon 3 was the largest convention I’ve been to this year and the one with the most relentlessly varied, and huge, program. In the space of 3 days I recorded a live podcast, moderated a panel, sat in on several other panels, met some of the best people in the field and realized I couldn’t discuss this in a single column. So, below is a look at the structure of LonCon 3, what it did well, and what it didn’t. My personal experiences will be in the next column along.

I’d go get a coffee.

You’ve got time.

What was the shape of LonCon 3? A couple of years ago my friend Pablo Cheesecake described Edge Lit as a little like being inside his Twitter feed. LonCon 3 was a little like holding your twitter feed in front of your face and letting the information smack you in the face for three straight days. It was an intense, for the most part incredibly positive experience.

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Not The Fox News: The Long Con 1: Nine Worlds

For the longest time, conventions were Valhalla for me. Growing up on a small island in the middle of the Irish sea meant that culture, certainly pop culture, was something that washed up on the shore in fits and starts. The closest we had to a multiplex was two whole screens, there were three bookshops, a couple of video shops and every year the same four metal bands would play during TT week. Nothing wrong with a bit of The Almighty, or even Status Quo, but when your cultural options are as bounded as your geographical location, it can get old.

So, conventions, for me, were the place I would eventually end up. It would be like Cheers, I’d walk through the door into an infinite, yet somehow intimate, room full of fellow geeks and they’d all say my name and the audience would cheer and then Kelsey Grammer would get a spinoff show. It would be easy. It would be GREAT. It would happen as soon as I went to the mainland.

None of those things turned out to be true.

 

Continue reading “Not The Fox News: The Long Con 1: Nine Worlds”

Not The Fox News: The Bully Pulpit is not the Moral High Ground

I was bullied a lot at School. Never physically; I was 6’0 and 200 pounds by the time I was 13, but always psychologically and emotionally. That’s the thing no one tells big kids who don’t learn to throw their weight around straight away; the very thing that you could be using to control the situation is going to rob you of any control until you do. I was the perfect storm; physically large, over articulate, teacher’s kid, glasses. Add in the fact that when I hit Secondary School I was sharing a classroom with my friends, my enemies and a parent and you start to see the size of the target on my back.

Continue reading “Not The Fox News: The Bully Pulpit is not the Moral High Ground”

Not The Fox News: The Superfan Delusion

(‘Son, you need to stay indoors! Burn some books! Don’t worry about the symbolism just do it! There’s a Bad Science Front sweeping towards you!’)

You know that scientist who always turns up in B-Movies? The one who figures everything out, and goes in front of The Board (Of…Science, presumably) to beg them to do something and they don’t?  And then THE AWFUL happens and they’re all ‘Oh save us!’ and the scientist, or Ripley as she does this too, is all ‘…FINE.’

Hi, I’m Doctor Stuart and I’ve worked out two of the things that are killing genre fiction.

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Not The Fox News, January 2014: Memeoriam Day

(With special thanks to Saxon Bullock for looking at early drafts and helping me untangle the rat king of stuff I wanted to say.)

 

Let’s talk about what’s going to happen when I rule the world. Being a global dictator isn’t easy and, these days, it’s all about the PR. So, in addition to the social media push and viral ads that will shortly spring up, I intend to mark my coronation with the creation of a new national holiday; Memeoriam Day

Memeoriam Day will be the day that we say goodbye to all the tired old running jokes that have barnacled the hull of the good ship Pop Culture across the last decade. Festivities begin at the start of the year as the jokes start their long trip across the world. As the months pass, retrospectives will be aired, the talking heads who always get wheeled out will be allowed a day pass from their secure reserve somewhere on the Norfolk Broads to pass comment and, quietly, the countdown website will mark time.

Then, the final stage will begin. A huge, open air party will begin as the jokes, carried by members of the public or, perhaps, their original writers, will process to the Tower Of London. There, they will be interred in a vault far beneath the ground where tearful monks will recite them one last time. On the final, whispered ‘lol’, the monks will withdraw and the vault door will shut. It will not open again before the next ceremony. No one has the key to it, not even me and the plans were destroyed once it was constructed.

Finally, Jules Holland will lead the planet in a rousing chorus of ‘Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life’ because for some reason that one’s bullet proof. Once it’s concluded, we’ll all go on with our lives, stumbling out onto the freshly mowed grass of pop culture to explore it anew. The jokes interred will be remembered but never spoken of again, at least, not in public. Of course there will be speakeasies, places where the old jokes flow freely. They will exist because every society needs a pressure valve and, more importantly, because I allow them to exist.

 

For Now.

 

So, what will be the first batch of jokes into the Vault, and why? Hypothetically? Because clearly I’m not planning on executing this plan this year…

Ahem.

 

-JJ Abrams and lens flare, because even he’s admitted it was a touch out of hand.

-All Michael Bay movies are awful, because they’re just not. Oh, certainly, some are and Revenge of the Fallen is legitimately one of the worst films I have ever seen. But this is also the director behind the original Bad Boys, The Rock, Con Air and Pain and Gain. There’s more to him than incomprehensible action scenes and a deep profound love for military hardware.

Shut up.

There is.


Some of the time.

Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey as arbiters of bad writing. This one is a straight up public service because the only thing you’re proving every time you make this point is that you haven’t paid enough attention to modern popular fiction. There is much, much worse out there. Waiting. Testing the fences. Looking for weaknesses. It remembers…

-Jar Jar. Please, baby, for all of us. Let it go.

-Joss Whedon shows are always brilliant and always fail. Because they aren’t and they don’t. Worse, believing either perpetuates the underdog myth that continues to surround the writer and director of one of the most successful films of all time and the disproportionate and massively tedious backlash against his most recent projects.

-Waiting to the end of the credits just in case Nick Fury shows up to recruit the character into the Avengers. I’ve done this one myself. I love this one. But it’s time. It’s just (sniff) it’s time…(whimpers)


-Summer Glau kills shows. Because Summer Glau is not the show-killer. Summer Glau is not the little death that brings total obliteration. We will face Summer Glau’s body of work. We will permit it to pass over and through our minds. Perhaps even in Arrow. And when Summer Glau has gone past we will turn the inner eye to see her path. Where Summer Glau has gone there will be something. Her work on The Sarah Conner Chronicles in particular will remain.

-‘Hate-Watching’. The entire concept. Seriously. What the Hell is wrong with you?

 

Should this be successful, a second scheme would be introduced the following decade. A global holiday entitled ‘Never Going To Happen Day’, it would be a sad day of remembrance dedicated to laying to rest those cherished fan dreams that will forever remain so. Doctor Who fans will observe this as ‘Sally Sparrow Day’.

 

Finally, every day really will be the first day of spring. I’ve seen the blueprints for the satellites. This is going to RULE.

 

Anyway, those robot armies won’t build themselves! See you next month, citizens!

Not the Fox News: The First State of the Union

I’ve been thinking a lot about the future recently. It’s sort of my job, but it’s also something that we can’t avoid at this time of year. 2013 is calling time and putting the chairs on the tables whilst 2014 is trying not to look too nervous as it takes its tracksuit off and warms up. This is a time of year where reflection isn’t just expected it’s almost compulsory.

That leads to some really kick ass writing by the way. Paul Cornell’s 12 Blogs of Christmas are always really good value but this year he’s been on exceptional form. 2013 has been what my amazing girlfriend would call ‘burly’, an intense, bruiser of a year that’s worked hard for all 365 days and is only reluctantly showing signs of slowing down. There have been times, and anyone who was reading my blog in the top six months of the year would know exactly what times they were, when it’s been deeply, profoundly unpleasant.

Thanks for having my back this year, Phil.

That lack of pleasant hasn’t just stemmed from the profound professional frustration I’ve felt for a good chunk of this year. A lot of it has stemmed from the realization that a lot of the time, geek culture enables and encourages misery. The whole concept of geek/nerd/counter culture is so wrapped up in being the underdog that even when we aren’t, we’re conditioned to act like we are.

It’s not just that there’s always something wrong with a movie or a book or a comic or someone’s blog post either, although God knows that sort of stuff has been endemic this year. When we’re not complaining that something’s been done wrong, we’re complaining it’s been done at all and we absolutely will not stop until the same nine people agree with us, argue with us or passive aggressively block us on Twitter.

Again.

I’ve seen things, to misquote Roy Batty, that would make you go ‘…Wait, you’re supposed to be a grown up? You’re the industry leaders whose standards we all have to aspire to? SERIOUSLY?’

I’ve seen authors ignore some of the first people to beta read their first book as they pass in convention hallways. I’ve seen authors pick fights they had no business being anywhere near or comport themselves on Twitter in a manner that suggests their ASSHAT UNION membership card has arrived and they’re just so pleased they can’t wait to show it to everyone.

It’s not just authors either. Bloggers who’ve picked fights for no reason other than they can, journalists who’ve started fights they can’t finish then played the victim card and run. I’ve seen celebrity authors pampered and sucked up to by the same editors who let out streams of invective as high pitched as they were ineffectual at people who they thought beneath them. I’ve seen ‘fans’ race to pour scorn on anyone who dared to like something they didn’t, or sneak pictures of an old, tired, ill man because it might be the last time they were in the same room as him and God forbid they should treat him like a human.

I have so much more. I have an amount you wouldn’t believe of stories of people being dicks. Objectification by both genders, high school cliquery, bullying, the sort of cult of personality bullshit that makes you want to not just leave these people’s company but shower and not stop until you feel clean again.   Fandom, and I actually cringed writing that word, has shown the world it’s ass over and over in 2013.

It’s been pretty depressing at times. You may be able to tell.

Here’s the thing. I have an outsider complex the size of a small moon at the best of times and there’ve been months this year that I’ve felt like a man without a country. Times where I’ve looked around at the conversation and the people leading it and frankly wondered if it wasn’t too late to learn enough about football and soap operas that I could fit effortlessly back into the general population, sort of like Bruce Campbell at the end of Darkman.

I didn’t for three reasons. Firstly because simply making that comparison tells me this is where I should be, secondly because Bruce Campbell already had that exit sewn up and thirdly because when it comes down to it, I’ve seen what comes next. And it’s BRILLIANT.

Seriously, the dusty cults of personality, the grudges held for years, the ludditery and celebration of the past at the endless, endless expense of the present and the future? It’s being replaced, person by person, con by con. What’s replacing it, Commander Bowman?

See, Dave knows.

But surely publishing is dying? I pretend to hear you cry. Publishing isn’t dying. Or rather it is in the same way that comics publishing was dying a decade ago when I ran a comic store. Numbers are down, prices are up, electronic retail is squeezing it dry and the sky is falling.

But the sky is always falling.

Comics endure. Books endure. We endure and survive and, ultimately, evolve. Look at the indie press scene in this country and don’t use small press as a term, please. It belittles the hard work of everyone involved in companies like Anachron, Jurassic and Fox Spirit. These are groups of people whose invention is matched only by their lunacy at working so hard for so little financial gain. Colin Barnes, Jared Shurin and Anne C. Perry, Aunty Fox, all the others have stepped up and MADE something whilst everyone else has been busy doomsaying and remembering how drunk they got at We Like A-Line Flares and The Bay City Fucking Rollerscon back in 197aeons ago.

Authors, editors and agents are the same. Lou Morgan, Andrew Reid, Joan De La Haye, Jennifer Williams, Liz De Jager, Alec McQuay, Dan Sawyer, Vincent Holland Keen, Adam Christopher, Colin Barnes again, Steven Saus, Scott Roche, Jared Shurin and Anne C. Perry again, Tim Maughan, Kate Laity, Mhairi Simpson, David Barnett, Nayad Monroe, Sarah Hans, Mur Lafferty, Lee Harris, Amanda Rutter, Den Patrick, Will Hill, Kim Curran, Guy Adams, Tom PollockDjibril al-Ayad, Matt Wallace, Jacqueline Koyanagi, Juliet Mushens and all the others have built their careers from the ground up. Brick by brick by author by book these people have hand sold, promoted, represented appeared on podcasts, written blogs, submitted work, read slush and slowly and surely they’ve made ground. Slowly and surely they’ve changed the game. Slowly and surely they’ve won .

You know the coolest thing about that list? I added to it twice and I know it’s not complete, even now. These people, and the legions I missed, are building the future with a combination of grim determination and total empathy. The con organizers are the same, and anyone who thinks different hasn’t looked at Nine Worlds, the plans LonCon 3 have or what Lee Harris and Sophia McDougall are building at FantasyCon ’14.

It won’t be overnight, because it never is, but the change that’s coming isn’t just one of talent, it’s one of atmosphere. At every level of every element of genre fiction publishing, the culture is changing from one of tradition and exclusion to one of individuality and inclusion. Yes the support structures are smaller, yes the work is harder to do but the rewards are all the sweeter if you can do it. Like the man says, it’s a good life if you don’t weaken and everyone I mention here can attest to that. These people love what they do so much they teach other people to love it too. No whining, no backbiting, no psychological games. Just the agent, the editor, the publisher, the writer, the reader and the text and, yes, they’re all walking into a bar.

This is a wonderful time to be anywhere near fiction. The step change that’s coming will echo up and down for decades to come and it’ll be so much more positive and interesting than so much of what we’ve had to put up with in recent years.

What do you think, Josh?

Good boy.

What’s next? That’s easy. It’s the future. And this time everyone’s invited.

Happy New Year

 

Jacqueline Koyanagi

Not The Fox News: World FantasyCon 2013

As my friend Saxon Bullock says, always open on a song. This played in my head for four straight days in Brighton and Hugh Laurie in spats became my unofficial spirit animal. That combination of jovial, charming and slightly intense served me very well during my Redcoat week.

The problem is, conventions are impossible to write about. They’re the ultimate embodiment of the ‘come in alone’ response to media, with everyone’s experiences being different, often contradictory to, but never less valid than, everyone else’s.

World Fantasycon 2013 is a perfect example of this. Go take a look at the numerous blogs that have been published about the con and you’ll see that first hand. From parades of photos of the same people who took photos together last year to detailed breakdowns of why the con’s programming was great/awful/indifferent/delete as applicable, there’s two things these blogs all agree on; their authors were present.

So was I. Here’s my take on it, including special guest starts Hugh Laurie, Jan Hammer, Jed Bartlet and Urdnot Wrex.

*

One of my very first experiences on arrival is seeing someone asking a female colleague of mine a question. She answers him and he repeats the question. She answers him again, slightly differently, and he repeats the question. She answers him a third time, and he repeats the question. It’s like she’s speaking Teflon.

She catches my eye and introduces me, the question is asked a fourth time and this time, between the two of us, it sticks. After he’s gone I ask how many times she has to repeat her answers in any given conversation. The average is three

*

I am wearing my jacket for the first time. It’s red and dapper and magnificent. It’s also completely huge, to the point where it’s slightly baggy even on me and I am by far the broadest shouldered, largest Redcoat. Several of my colleagues look like they’re wearing tents. One, Ewa, looks like she’s just stepped out of a particularly great 1980s cyberpunk fashion shoot. We all roll the sleeves up. The concept of Brighton Vice is born and this plays in my head for five straight days.


*

I’m working the reading rooms. It’s a good job, make sure the authors are in place, give them a five minute wrap up signal and hang around if you’re interested. I am, as Guy Adams is reading. Guy is an old friend, a fiercely talented author and a former guide with the same ghost tour my Dad works for. He’s also a former customer, and once memorably pursued an unpleasant card gaming customer out of the store yelling ‘EXCHANGE THOSE CARDS FOR PUBERTY!’

He’s reading a Holmes story and it’s absolutely brilliant. Watson is invited out for dinner by Holmes and a case unfolds across the three courses. It’s smart and funny, a rigidly paced, beautifully designed engine of a story and I almost lose track of time.

But, the 5 minute warning has to be given, and so it is and… Guy keeps going.

Four minutes.

They’re not quite at dessert.

Two minutes.

Almost there.

Forty seconds.

He brings the story in like a Russian gymnast, landing perfectly, precisely on time and with a killer final line. Then looks at me, chuckles and says ‘Blimey that was close.’ Doesn’t matter. It’s an amazing piece and he nailed it.

*

Standing guard at the back of the main hall, during the mass signing, my brain full of bad wiring from earlier. There was a seating plan for the signing but, much like no plan survives contact with the enemy, no seating plan survives contact with authors. So we’ve got people sitting with their mates, sitting with people the same nationality, or who have the same agent, or the same publishing company.  The crowd find their way to who they need, and I stand watch over crates of books and try very hard to not be angry about what I saw earlier today.

*

Terry Pratchett did a one off panel for the con, and Andrew, Pixie and I were the three redcoats asked to help security get him in and out of the building. It was, make no mistake, an honour. My own emotional connection to Pratchett’s work has never been especially high but his intelligence and talent, the endless years he’s put into popularizing and legitimizing multiple genres of fiction, can’t be overstated. He’s a titan. Without him, the current idea of Geek as cultural default, would be a good five years less developed than it is.

But he’s dying and there’s no getting around that and we saw it up close. He’s still him, still vital, still fiercely clever but he’s getting further away. I saw that up close as we walked him in, and out of the con. He’s still working and has a great team of people around him but seeing him as reduced as he is was difficult.

Seeing people choosing not to notice it was worse. On the way out of the con, someone came up and asked for a picture. We said no as he was very tired and had to leave and she smiled, nodded and said ‘Oh I’ll just take it surreptitiously then.’

Just a little photo.

Earlier we’d stood at the back of the con hall waiting for his panel to start. A crowd had formed about twenty feet away, all taking pictures, no one approaching him.

Just a little photo. Nothing much. Don’t engage, don’t ask, just take the shot from a distance.

I left. I left and I came apart at the seams for a minute or two. Lou Morgan, the head Redcoat, put me back together and apologized but she had nothing to apologize for. I got to help get one of the greatest genre writers of the last thirty years in and out of the building. I got to help a man whose work helped me and others. That’s something I cherish, even under the ghoulish elements of the audience, even under the organizational snafus that the redcoats had to both deal with and bear the brunt of.

No, the problem was embodied by a moment I didn’t see. The panel was hijacked by someone who gave Pratchett a Grand Master award from the European Science Fiction Association.  He did this because they’d decided Pratchett needed the award ‘before he died’. His words.

Just a little photo. Just a little plaque. You know, before…

*

Back in the hall,  I am not in the best of moods as I watch people get books signed, it seems, by the yard. I wonder darkly how many are actually being read, how many are treasured possessions and how much of this is just increasing the value of an investment. I’m thirsty, I’m hungry, I’m grumpy. I am, as a friend of mine would say, embracing my Inner Krogan.


On Tuchanka, Slam Poetry involves actual Slamming. Of Rocks. Into Other Poets.

I’m watching a pink book crate wheel up to me. The switch flips, I talk, I’m charming, I’m professional and I can feel every cog turn as I do it. You see, I’m at the back of the hall guarding these crates because we can’t have them on the aisles. Authors can sit where they like but some of these crates and cases are so big it would get ugly. Like, ‘Ben Hur, with sharpened copies of Atlas Shrugged on the hubcaps levels of ugly’. So I guard the book crates and chat to the lady with the pink one. Lucy Coats is completely friendly, completely grateful for me being there and hugely fun to talk to. Slowly, I feel better.  Ashley, a Pseudopod listener asks me to sign her Kindle (I’m on a Kindle! That’s got my book on it! That’s weird and cool!), Joan De La Haye and friends bring me an emergency baklava transfusion and Andrew, Lou, Ewa, Naz and I help bring the event into land.  It’s a bit like crawling from the wreckage, but a win’s a win.

*

I’m late. Lou’s doing a reading and she asked me to introduce her. Part of me, the part that sees fat but not muscle, failure but never success tells me it’s because she knows I had a bad day and wants to throw me a bone. The rest of me politely tells it to get fucked. She asked me because she’s a friend, and I used to be her editor, and it’s awesome and I’m late.

But I have something many people in this hotel do not; a red coat, and the strange architectural wisdoms that come with it. Or, to put it another way, I know where the staff lifts are and they come out right by the reading rooms.

Where I should have been.

Five minutes ago.

Because I’m late.

The lift doors open, I walk out and Martel, who’s running the reading rooms, looks at me and nods and…something odd happens.

This plays in my head.

 

 

The frustration of the last day or so stills and lowers and I know exactly what needs to happen next.

I am going to run for re election. And win.

But first…

I open the door, walk in, start talking as I move. It’s cheap theater but Mick Foley never met a cheap pop he didn’t love. I go up to the stage, explain how I was the editor of Hub and what was bad, and good about that and freelancer life. The good, I say, was most definitely in giving authors like Lou, and Joan De La Haye and Danie Ware, a turn in the spotlight. I’m articulate and funny and I make people smile and I never, ever hesitate or ‘umm’ once.

I finish, take the red jacket off, sit down and watch as one of my dearest friends reads one of the best short stories I’ve heard all year.

*

I sit and watch Joan De La Haye nail a reading from Oasis, and marvel that she’s been able to find something genuinely new to say about zombies.

*

I have a long, two part conversation with Saxon Bullock in which we fill each other in on the various things that have happened in our lives over the last two years, the scars they’ve left and what we’ve learned. Also about Star Wars. And bookshops. And writing.

*

Applauding my friend Nad, who’s Halloween costume (Corpse Bride meets ’50s bopper complete with full facial make up) blows every other costume on Halloween out of the water.

*

I get the most polite trash talk ever from an American author. I walk her to her reading and as we chat, she mentions she lives in the Bay Area. I mention I lived in Fremont in 2012 and she says ‘Never mind dear, I’m sure you had fun when you got to the Bay Area.’

*

I narrowly miss a party and, reveling in my Manx ability to walk along Brighton seafront in a gale and not die, refuse to let myself go back to the hotel room. Instead, I go find a party and, in short order, run into Jayson Utz and Nina Niskanen, both Pseudopod fans. I hang out with them, and spend three very happy hours chatting in the international language of geek.

*

On Sunday we launch Tales of Eve, the new Fox Spirit anthology. I suddenly find myself on the opposite side of tables I’ve been helping run all week. I’m not there as a Redcoat, I’m there as an author.

And people are coming to see me, and the other authors. Several of them are clearly people we don’t know! And they’re giving us money for books!

For close to an hour, we sign books. We shift 27 copies of the anthology, including several author ones. I sign each one with ‘THANK YOU’ and try not to look incredulous.

It’s official. I’m an author now. Which means I maybe need a bibliography…

*

Conventions are impossible to write about. They’re the ultimate embodiment of the ‘come in alone’ response to media, with everyone’s experiences being different, often contradictory to, but never less valid than, everyone else’s.

World Fantasycon 2013 was a perfect example of that and if you want very different perspectives on the convention, check any of the numerous other reports. I’d recommend starting with ALittleBriton not only because her work’s great, it is, but because she’s done a couple of really good round ups of other posts.

For me though, these are the moments, and the people, who mattered.

. So to Lou, Andrew, Ewa, Naz, Jen, Boo,  Joely, Joan, Vinny, Den, Lucy, Jayson, Nina, Ashley, Mhairi,  KT, Moses, Saxon, Emma, James, Guy, Paul , Sullivan and friends, Anne, the unknown techie who I officially became bros with and all the others, thank you.  My red coat is handed in, and I’m back in civilian life.

Until next year….