A Few Thoughts on Fantasycon 2018

Fantasycon this year took place in Chester, and was once again a wonderful, hectic, stimulating, scary, exhausting and uplifting weekend celebrating genre fiction - not to mention celebrating friendship, great curries, and the odd drink too. It's hard to do these posts each year without a sense of repetition, but that's part of the charm: Fcon is a fixed point of the year, always different but always the same.

This blog is really only my selected highlights of the weekend; there's so much going on, so many people and books and conversations, so much laughter, that it's hard to fully take in at the time, never mind recall it all afterwards (mind you, Mark West always seems to bloody manage it). So, a few things:

Book Launches: I bought a one , a few, many, um, 'quite a lot' of books, again, including The Dark Masters Trilogy by Stephen Volk, The Alchemy Book Of Horrors, the third volume of Great British Horror, and not one but two books by Ramsey Campbell. The launches for the two books I had stories in were two of the best I've been involved in. Early Friday saw the launch for The Black Room Manuscripts IV which was staged as a mock-funeral, and then on Saturday NewCon Press launched Best British Horror 2018 where at least half of us contributors were there to sign copies: the launch seemed to go well, seeing the book in the flesh was wonderful (the hardback is beautiful), and overall it was a huge thrill.

Black Room Manuscripts IV Launch

Readings: I saw lots of fine readings over the weekend, but my three favourites were George Sandison at the Shadowbooth event, Eliza Chan's reading from her forthcoming novella during our fantasy reading slot, and of course John Llewellyn Probert's restrained, hushed, and sombre reading from his new Doctor Valentine novel...

I read my story 'Drones' from Falling Over, a piece I've never read live before (and only decided to do about an hour beforehand). As ever, I was nervous doing it but it seemed to go okay and hopefully my naturally dull monotone deadpan reading style hid any nerves from the audience (the glass of wine helped too, apart from the moment mid-reading I accidentally inhaled some of it).

My Fantasy reading slot with Mike Chinn and Eliza Chan 

Panels: I was on two panels: Being BFA Nominees (aptly, for Imposter Syndrome) and Strange Fiction. The latter especially was both huge fun and intellectually stimulating (or maybe that was just the bottle of prosecco Georgina Bruce cracked open at the start). Of the panels I attended as an audience member, my favourite was probably Fantastic Inspiration, which explored mythologies, tropes and narrative forms from cultures and traditions other than the usual—every year, I try and see something that broadens my horizons, that talks about books, authors, and fictional approaches that I'm unfamiliar with, and this one really hit that spot. More like this next year, please.

Georgina Bruce opens the 'Strange Fiction' panel in style.

The People:
God, where to begin? Or more accurately, where to end as I'm sure to miss out some of you out. But, cliche or not, it's the people who make Fcon what it is, so I do feel it's important to try and mention as many of the you who made my weekend so special. So, in no particular order:

Friends I bumped into 30seconds after arriving in Chester station: Jim McLeod, Marie O'Regan & Paul Kane
'The Reverend' Justin Park, Tracy Fahey, Duncan Bradshaw, Penny Jones & the rest of the SHC crew
Charlotte Bond (great cake!)
Birthday Boys CC Adams and Ross Warren
Andrew Hook (finally we had our Fall conversation)
Ray Cluley (finally we had our poetry conversation)
Jess Jordan (a bad influence, frankly :) )
2am Saturday buddies Eliza Chan & Tim Major
Morning-after breakfast buddies Dion Winton-Polak & Lisa Childs
Laura "award winning" Mauro, Mr. Mauro, & Keith
G.V. Anderson (*waves from across hotel room*)
Neil Williamson (super-sub who never was)
+ Tom Johnstone, Dan Coxon, Mark Morris, Gary Budden, James Bennett, Geogina Bruce, Kit Power, Alison Littlewood & Fergus, Simon Bestwick, Cate Gardner, Chris Jones, Ren Warom, Steve Shaw, Ian Whates, Stephen Volk, Priya Sharma, Richard Farren Barber, Terry Grimwood, Ben Jones, Maura McHugh, Jan Edwards...

And last but never least, fellow Crusties Mark West, Phil Sloman, Steve Byrne, John Travis, Timothy Jarvis, Linda Nagel, Peter Mark May and Stephen Bacon

Dion Winton-Pollak, Mark West, Ross Warren, Steve Byrne, me

BRM RIP 

Chester - really quite lovely

Sober and dignified at the Best British Horror 2018 launch

Fantasycon 2017 Schedule

I'll be at Fantasycon again this year, and I can't wait. It's being held in the Bull Hotel in Peterborough 29th September - 1st October.

I'm doing a couple of panels and a reading; other than that I'll be chatting with friends old and new, drinking in the bar, eating nice food, and of course talking about books, buying books, holding books, carrying books, selling books, admiring books, thinking about books, dreaming about books etc. etc. etc....

Hope to see loads of you there!

Friday 7pm - Readings Horror (Sandringham Room)
Jonathan L. Howard, Kit Power, James Everington

Saturday 10am - Horror: Mastery and Apprenticeship (FitzWilliam Panel Room 1)
Helen Armfield (mod), Ramsey Campbell, Phil Sloman, Mark West, Nina Allan, James Everington

Sunday 12.30pm - Building Anthologies (Burley Panel Room 3)
Colleen Anderson (mod), Peter Coleborn James Everington, Stephen Jones, Peter Mark May
The full Fantasycon 2017 programme can be found here.

Edge-lit 4

Edge-lit 4 took place on Saturday, and as usual I went across to Derby for the day. I remember when I first went to the first Edge-lit (my first ever convention) I was pretty nervous as I didn't know anyone. Okay, very nervous. And yet somehow, in the intervening three years, I've met so many in the horror community that this post is mainly just a list of people I spoke to. I include as many people as I remember not to name drop, but to sincerely thank them all for being such a friendly and inclusive bunch. (And if I've forgotten to mention you, sorry - it was a hectic day!)

Things started well when Phil Sloman and I continued our habit of arriving in cities within 60 seconds of each other – despite having been travelling for hours, he was loitering outside the station when I arrived, so we headed up to the venue, talking about The Quarantined City, dodgy cafes and publisher foibles. Once at the venue we quickly bumped into Dion Winton-Polack and Lily Childs – the first of a number of Facebook friends I met for the first time in the flesh that day.

In the bar I went for drinks, spying Graeme Reynolds in the queue, and then in quick succession spoke to (deep breath) Paul Holmes, Neil Snowden, Adele Wearing, Mark Morris, Kit Power, Vicky Hooper, Ross Warren, Lisa Childs, Steve Byrne, Alison Littlewood, Stephen Bacon, Richard Farren Barber, John Travis and Terry Grimwood. I made a valiant attempt to actually get upstairs to the venue itself, but then bumped into Dan Howarth and his partner Jenny so we had a chat in the lobby. I must have been back to the bar and decided the sun was past the yardarm at this point too, for I definitely had a pint of Pedigree in my hand.

I tried to get upstairs again but ended up talking to Andrew David Barker (author of the fantastic The Electric) instead. Moving closer, right at the foot of the stairs, I bumped into Simon Bestwick, Cate Gardner and Rosanne Rabinowitz – Cate and I have been saying we’ll meet up at a con since 2012 but the fates have always been against us before, so it was fantastic to finally do so.

Shortly  before my first aborted attempt to leave the Quad bar.

And then it was lunch time, and I’d not even made it to any panels or events. A group of us went to a café which served lovely ‘artisan sandwiches’, although quite how they took so long to prepare I’ll never know. After lunch, Mark West lead a contingent to a local second hand market stall, but I figured I’d better go back to The Quad and actually try and make it upstairs – which I did, sort of. I stopped to chat to Theresa Derwin of Knightwatch Press about a 'Top Secret Project' (TM) myself, Dan Howarth and her have been working on… After that, I saw Hic Dragones had a stall so I went over to talk to head honcho Hannah Kate and posed with a copy of Hauntings. Then back downstairs, and I bumped into Ross Warren again who was talking to Ray Cluley who I’d pre-order a copy of Probably Monsters from. Ray signed it for me and with a cry ‘pick any card’ he flourished some old school horror postcards which he’d wrote mini one-off stories on the back. What a guy.

Pimping Hauntings

Finally at that point I went up to an actual to goodness Edge-lit event, a panel on Monsters – along the way bumping into Tim Major, who came and sat with myself and Ross. The panel was hosted by Adam Nevill and featured Sarah Pinborough, Mark Morris and Alison Littlewood. Then it was straight over to the Spectral Press launch event, where books by Stephen Volk, Mark Morris and Cate Gardner were being launched. I've already had the pleasure of reading Stephen's Leytonstone to review for This Is Horror, and was chuffed to see a quote from my review appears in the front of the book. Cate and Mark's books sounded great too.

In the audience I spoke to Paul Feeney (later on buying a copy of his debut novella The Last Bus), met Dean M Drinkal and Tony Cowin for the first time, before catching up with Dan again, passing on the info from Theresa about the Top Secret Project' (TM), which as it turns out wasn't to remain fully top secret for much longer...

Book (and CD) haul for the day.

Next up was the Knightwatch Press event, which was truly one of the most entertaining launches I've been to. Dion was there to launch Sunny With A Chance Of Zombies, and his daughter was dressed up for the part as a brain eating zombie (with an actual brain to scoff in her hands). She was brilliant and never broke character once. The readings for Sunny... and Chip Shop of Horrors were all funny as hell (deliberately so) and Phil knocked his reading out the park, especially when he did a mini song and dance in the middle. Then there was brain-cake, some free wine, and Theresa letting slip to the audience about the 'Top Secret Project' (TM) I mentioned above. So I guess I'll be mentioning it on here too soon...! All in all, a fantastic launch.

Then a group of us now including Fiona Ní Éalaighthe heading out for the traditional convention curry - after a walk in the rain we ended up in the same restaurant as last year. Because of course we did. Lovely (if very spicy!) food though and some great conversation about just what made conventions such fun. Which in short, was the people. (And the shit loads of books, too).

Handsome people eating a curry. If you're wondering where Fiona is, like a gentlemen I'm blocking all sight of her save ear.

We headed back for the raffle, which was a bit of a blow-out as far as our group was concerned - I did win a signed copy of some fantasy book so I suppose I shouldn't grumble... plus with Sarah Pinborough and John Connolly presenting it was full of laughs (many of them filthy ones). And then, too soon, the day was done (and hay-fever had about killed any chance I had of saying anything coherent anymore) so I headed back to the station. It felt especially bittersweet on the train back this time - I met great people some of whom I count as genuine friends, but I only get to see them a few hectic days a year like this one. But still, it was a great event, maybe the best Edge-lit to date and I for one can't wait for the next one.

(One of those good friends is Mark West, who has written his own take on the day here. I have also shamelessly nicked a few photos from him...)

The Quarantined City Episode 1: Cover Art & Blurb

Here's the cover art and blurb for the first episode of my monthly serial for Spectral Press.

The Quarantined City: sealed off from the outside world, with only the sight of the ocean to remind its inhabitants of life beyond. No one knows why the city has been quarantined and conspiracy theories abound.

But for Fellows life continues largely as before. He walks the streets, hunts out rare books; the sun continues to shine and the gulls circle above.

There’s the small matter of the ghost haunting his house, but Fellows doesn’t let himself think of that.

But when he tracks down a story by the reclusive writer known as Boursier, his old certainties fade as he becomes aware that the secrets of the city, the ghostly child, and the quarantine itself, might be more connected than he thinks…

The Quarantined City Episode 1: 'The Smell Of Paprika' will be available very, very soon...

Edge-Lit 3...

This year's Edge-Lit was a convention of firsts for me for a number of reasons, the main one being that I was actually on the bill, albeit in a small way - Worms from Knightwatch Press was being launched at the convention, and I was scheduled to read from my story The Place Where It Always Rains. Of which more later.

It was also the first convention where I'd specifically arranged to meet people there - indeed within 2 seconds of walking through the door I'd bumped into Phil Ambler. After signing in and getting our goody bags we went to the cafe at The Quad where we briefly caught up with Paul Holmes from The Eloquent Page. 

Phil and I then headed up to the first panel we liked the sound of - Ghost Stories Today with Andrew Barker, Johnny Mains, Marie O'Regan and Niki Valentine. This was certainly interesting, with the conversation referencing many of my favourite stories and authors, including The Turn Of The Screw, Dark Matter, The Willows and Afterwards. For me, those was a slightly awkward part where members of the audience were invited to share whether they had ever seen a ghost in real life, and one lady told a story about her child dying, but moderator Johnny Mains handled it really well.

After that, we finally meet up with Mark West and Steve Harris/Byrne, who introduced us to Alison Davies, John Travis, and Christopher Teague. Phil, Mark, Steve, John and I headed down for a few drinks, and we exchanged stories about the worst rejection letters/emails we'd received in the same manner as that scene in Jaws when they're talking about shark bites.

Mark West, Alison Davies, me, and Phil Ambler.

Then back upstairs for a slightly unusual event - Theresa Derwin (who runs Knightwatch) was having her head completely shaved to raise money for a cancer charity, as well as auctioning off a few books.The fact that she had the guts to do this, not even getting in too much of a flap when the cutters ran out of power, certainly put any nerves I was feeling about having to do my first ever reading into perspective.

Then a few of us went out for a quick lunch, our gang now including Richard Farren Barber and Ross Warren. Somehow we ended up in a cafe that did pensioner specials and cheap liver & onions. Myself and Phil then had to hoof it back to The Quad in order to be in time for our reading - it was also Phil's first time, reading from his story in the Potatoes anthology. The Worms launch and my own reading seemed to go really well, at least as far as I could tell. Phil did a good job too, although I think we both felt upstaged by KT Davies (who it was lovely to meet again) and her excellent reading from Worms; she did different voices and funny swearing and everything. Now the reading was done I helped myself to the free launch wine and olives, as well as signing a few copies of worms. My handwriting is truly shit, so I drew a little worm cartoon character in each copy too.

Then it was back down to the bar again for more drinks and chatting - we met up with Paul M Feeney, and I also had a nice talk with Andrew Barker about his book The Electric. Then it was time for the raffle - we didn't win as many prizes as at Andromeda One, but on the plus side that meant we weren't scared of being lynched on the way out this time.

Phil had to leave at this point, which left the rest of ready for 'Operation Curry' - we found somewhere that had been recommended and had a lovely, if slightly pricey meal. It was a nice end to the day, talking about books and drinking beer and eating nice food, with friends both old and new.

'Operation Curry'

Despite not having superhuman luck in the raffle this time, I still came back with a fair few books, including The Electric by Andrew Barker, Best British Horror 2014, Potatoes, a Gary McMahon novella The Harm, and of course Worms.

The Horror Genre and Cardamom Ice Cream

As I mentioned in my last post, Alan Ryker posted a pretty interesting piece about the horror genre the other day. Which got me thinking about the whole 'genre' concept in general. Some people have really strict definitions of horror, of sci-fi, etcetera, sometimes subdividing to a lunatic degree. It's essentially a book seller's view of genre, as opposed to a book writer's one.

Me I think of genre as more like food flavourings and spices. True, you get some books that are like, say, a curry. One flavour dominates. These are your true genre novels, if we have to call them that. But some of the most interesting cooks are those that use flavours and ingredients in new and exciting ways. Which is why we have cardamom ice cream nowadays, as well as curries.

The books below are all ones that I think of as being like cardamom ice-cream; they might not say 'horror' on the back, but they sure as hell have some of the tang of a horror story, at least to my palate. I've started with one where the flavour is strong and the case obvious to me, and moved on to some where there's a merest after-taste and you may disagree with me entirely; let me know in the comments.

Kafka - Metamorphosis and Other Stories

Now if you don't agree this tastes somewhat of turmeric, garam masala and cardamom, then you should probably stop reading now. While this is, from one angle, the surreal, modernist classic it's always talked up to be, stories like Metamorphosis, The Penal Colony and The Judgement have had an obvious impact on horror writers since they became well known. The obvious literary successor to Kafka would seem to me Robert Aickman more than anyone - The Swords or The Trains being blinding examples.


Doris Lessing - The Fifth Child



I studied this one at university. There was a lot of talk in the lecture halls and seminars about how it comments on modern nuclear families, on the media's obsession with either protecting or demonising young people, about autism maybe. And I agreed. And I said it was also a horror novel.

Notice the "also". I wasn't disagreeing with them that what they saw in the book was there, just that, look, here's something else too. Some cardamom, if you will. I mean, 'evil' children are a cliché in horror fiction and films, probably more so at the time the book was written than now. And it seemed a textbook example of how to get round the 'reveal' - that sometimes dreadfully clumsy moment where an author undoes pages and pages of suspense to reveal just what his or her monster is. Lessing doesn't do a reveal, the book seems to deliberately play with that expectation and then not satisfy it, in a way that I thought was interesting if not, well, fully satisfying.

I didn't think any of this was controversial or unjustified by "the text" as the lecturer insisted we call it, but you should have seen some of the looks I got. Some of the self appointed guardians of literature really don't like you sullying their word-view with genre fiction. Fortunately Lessing, with this book and the sci-fi of some of her others, ignores such philistines.

Philip K Dick - Time Out Of Joint

But of course, science-fiction readers don't always like it when you suggest there's an overlap between sci-fi and horror, either. I mean they'll accept Alien, which is basically Lovecraft in space, but not some of the genre's more intellectual output like that of Philip K Dick. I mean there's no monsters here, like there (arguably) are in The Fifth Child. And that's what horror is, right? Monsters?

No. Horror is an emotion, a spice... And often what it tastes like is this: the nagging, persistent feeling that although the world seems okay, something, somewhere, is horribly wrong. You can taste it in The Haunting of Hill House, you can taste it in The Shinning, and you sure can taste it in Philip K Dick's books. Again, I'm not arguing Time Out of Joint isn't sci-fi, it absolutely is. I just argue that doesn't mean it hasn't also got a tang and whiff of horror to it.

Tom Stoppard - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

I suspect a few of you who were with me up until this point may be doubting me now. For a start, this is a play, not horror's most natural medium. And it's a play about plays, more specifically Hamlet, and two little people caught up in the action without understanding why. It's very funny, full of slapstick and philosophical humour, but also poignant too - the ending has always stuck with me. It's very British and a bravura display of word power and stagecraft. 

Horror?

Or, to describe R&GAD another way, it's about two people who begin to suspect that something, somewhere, is not quite right in their world... Sound familiar? Taste familiar? 

Seriously, read it again (or read it, if you haven't - it's a play that works well on the page too). Aren't the initial signs a little bit, well, unnerving (those coin tosses)? When the characters try and reassure each other and themselves all is well, isn't that sinking feeling that they're wrong familiar? 

And they all die at the end, which must count for something.

Now, after that post, I really fancy a curry...