Last Saturday saw the return of Edge-Lit, a fantastic convention of horror, fantasy and science-fiction writing held in Derby. Here's some things I learnt from the day - as with going to university some of the real 'lessons' took place in the bar...
1. Pablo Cheescake, of the Eloquent Page review site, is an easy person to recognise from all angles even if you've never met him before - and a thoroughly decent chap, to boot.
2. Suntan lotion would have been of more practical use than a bloody coat. (Next year I'll take lotion, no coat, and it will obviously piss it down.)
3. I must read some more of Conrad Williams fiction, and try some from Tom Fletcher too, as they both had really interesting stuff to say in the Fear Today panel.
4. The guys & gals at Fox Spirit books are all lovely, despite the fact that I gate-crashed their evening meal at a pizza place.
5. Holding a newly purchased book in one hand, a glass of wine in the other, and trying to eat a cupcake is not a skill I posses.
6. Any raffle that Sarah Pinborough hosts (ably assisted by Conrad Williams) is a thing of strange beauty and crude, crude jokes - so much so that not actually winning anything doesn't seem to matter that much.
7. That if you sit ten more random writers together at a table, at least two of them will have appeared in one of Luca Veste's Off The Record anthologies - hello, Vincent Holland-Keen!
8. That the perfect time to ask Gary McMahon to sign a book would never come, and I should have just been a rude twat and interrupted him in the bar. (Hmmm, maybe not.)
9. That my capacity to remember the names of all the cool/interesting/friendly people I met may have been addled by heat and the odd beer, but that it certainly includes Vicky Hooper, Damian G Walter, KT Davies, RJ Booth, Selina Lock, Jay Eales, Alasdair Stuart, Charlotte Strong and Sam Strong plus all those mentioned above. (If I've forgotten to mention you, rest assured it's due to my crapnness.)
10. That despite reaching my mid-thirties, I still get inordinately excited by a bag of free books.
