FantasyCon 2012

I do love a good convention and FantasyCon is one of my favourites. This year, once again, the event was held in Brighton at The Royal Albion hotel. I was lucky enough to be an attendee and I had a pretty spectacular time.

Panels and Launches

The event organisers always go out of their way to try and accommodate as wide a variety of discussions, launches and readings as they possibly can and this year was no exception. It’s great, you can attend as much or as little as you like. I sat in on panels covering topics on book blogging, apocalyptic fiction and interviews with guest of honour Mark Gatiss and Brent Weeks. Every session was fun, informative and in one memorable moment embarrassing enough that my face was the same colour as my hair.

Books

Obviously a big part of FantasyCon every year are the books themselves. I came back with 14 titles that I am looking forward to devouring. Here they are (in no particular order)

• Tomorrow the Killing by Daniel Polansky
• The Red Knight by KT Davies
• Zombie Apocalypse! Fightback edited by Stephen Jones
• Ecko Rising by Danie Ware
• Coldbrook by Tim Lebbon
• Seven Princes by John R Fault
• The President’s Vampire by Christopher Farnsworth
• The Nine Deaths of Dr Valentine by John Llewellyn Probert
• A Red Sky Also Rises by Mark Hodder
• Anno Dracula: The Bloody Red Baron by Kim Newman
• A Conspiracy of Alchemists by Liesel Schwarz
• Blood Oath by Chris Farnsworth
• Anno Dracula: Dracula Cha Cha Cha by Kim Newman
• Poe edited by Ellen Datlow

Photos

Some random photos of events as they unfolded.

My forthcoming New Romantic album will be called “From Cupcakes to Captain Nemo”

Bought, Bartered and Begged

Pablo Cheesecake meets Queen of the Disco, the divine Sarah Pinborough

People

I met a plethora, yes I said plethora, of fantastic people this year. I was going to thank every single one of them individually but then I realised that the list is humongously long and I’d be mortified if I missed someone out. Also, I am essentially lazy. You guys all know who you are, you all rock. Thanks for time, patience and never ending graciousness when faced with a semi-delusional Scotsman talking a near constant stream of utter tosh.

Convention Randomness

Every time I attend a convention there are loads of random moments and thoughts that occur or pop into my head. I like to share them (especially when there is no context whatsoever). Here is the randomness for FantasyCon 2012:

• Argue all you want I have thought about this long and hard, I don’t believe that Liquid Smoke is a real thing. Wikipedia entries can be faked you know.
• I didn’t drink all that much booze but sheesh did I go on one hell of a coffee-bender or what. At one point even I wasn’t sure what I was talking about.
• If you attempt Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon with Gary McMahon does this have the potential to cause some sort of rift in the space/time continuum?
• In Brighton there is an ice cream flavour known only as ‘Experimental’. I am not allowed to divulge anymore than this.
• Apparently I am taller than I appear on Twitter. This doesn’t surprise me really as on Twitter I only appear to be a couple of centimetres tall.
• According to Twitter I may well have been the second best dressed man there. Damn you Den Patrick!

Enough of this nonsense then. I will finish by saying that, from my perspective at least, FantasyCon was great once again.  I’m counting the days to World Fantasy Con 2013 already.