Empire for the Legend!
As I may have mentioned in my last post...Empire has been shortlisted for the David Gemmell Legend Award... Well, the Shortlist polls are now open, so I need YOU to click here and vote for Empire. If we rally enough support, we could do something pretty special for the world of tie-in fiction, so get on over to the DGLA website and vote for Empire! Remember that Empire also appears in the Ravenheart Best Fantasy Cover category, so be sure to give Jon Sullivan your vote too!
Eastercon
I went to Eastercon at the beginning of May, and it was a
bit of an odd day. For starters, it wasn’t a signing event and I wasn’t
particularly down to do anything, so it was an excuse to go as a fan and see
what sort of stuff was out there. I got to the Heathrow hotel and met up with
BL’s Alex Davis, where we did what most folk do at conventions. We went
straight to the bar. Beveraged up, we bumped into Ian Watson and (a few other
writerly types that Alex knew) before we met up with Jenni – an editor from Solaris,
and Catherine – Alex’s former partner in crime from organising the Altfiction
convention (which I’ll be attending later this year…). We had a great natter –
including one with a random guy who came up to talk to us about geoengineering
and how we could solve the climate change problem by breeding white seals to
reflect energy back into the sky…
I attended a panel discussion Writers and the web –
blogs, Facebook, Twitter Amazon etc. Another
BL stalwart, Mark Charan Newton, was on this panel, along with Joe Abercrombie,
Maura McHugh and John Meany. I felt a lot of this panel was taken up by John
Meany’s painfully unfunny grandstanding and fans using their opportunity to ask
questions as a way to talk about how great they were. Despite that, Mark and Joe made some good
points about how a writer needs to utilise these new tools at their disposal to
achieve real longevity, but how that needs to be tempered by the reality that a
writer needs to actually, you know, write… And that the number of folk you’re reaching and being lauded/hated by
is – relative to the number of people who read your books – actually very
small. Joe’s point about picking your level of involvement and sticking to it
was a point that struck home, as was Mark’s that it’s a medium that isn’t going
away any time soon and needs to be embraced.
I embrace it in a cautious way, using my blog to chat to my
readers and let them know where I’ll be, what I’m up to or any other random
bits and pieces I fancy writing down. I loathe Facebook, though will probably
have to create a fan page at some point, as too many people have told me ways
in which I can make that work for me, as opposed to having it dictate to me how
often I do things with it. I had a Facebook page when I first went freelance,
but found it quickly came to dominate my inbox, prompting me to be back
checking it so often that days went by without any work of real substance
getting done. That got deleted sharpish.
Later I buckled and got a Twitter account, which lasted all
of a couple of weeks, as I realised I wasn’t writing anything I thought was
even vaguely interesting. I mean, why would folk care about this tiny snippet
of ephemera I’m posting about what sandwich I had for lunch? I know it’s a
useful tool, but I always feel like I’m skiving if I write a blog
entry/tweet/Facebook update. I sweat and think that I should be creating, propelling the latest novel to its thrilling climax
instead of wittering on about something else (or, in this case, wittering on about wittering on…). I’m gradually coming round to the
idea that this is part of my job too, but that my main job, the one that pays
the bills, and buys travel cots etc is writing novels. I’m an author and that’s
what I do. It’s what I need to do
if I want to stay an author without feeling like a fraud.
Like all things, I think there’s a happy middle ground where
90% of my time is writing books, and the rest is divided up between doing
signings, blogging and other bits and bobs connected to my work. The little and
often pattern of blogging seems to work for me (this post excepted) so I’ll
keep that up more. Anyway, back to Eastercon…
So, with that panel over, I went to Swordplay for Writers, hosted by the magnificently named, Mr Killbane. To
my mind, this was an over-earnest discussion where someone who knew a lot about
swords tried to tell us the history of swords, rather than anything to do with
how to make the people who use them in our books more realistic. I imagine him
sitting in front of the tv shouting that you’d never use a hand and a half
sword like that, or that it’s completely unrealistic to show a five foot man
with a two handed sword in one hand and a magic wand in the other. Still, there
were some cool swords to touch and swing around, so it was fun in that regard.
With those panels done (the only two I really had time for)
I wandered to the Dealers’ Room, where – after Alex told me he’d spent £200 the
weekend before at World Horror Con – I had high hopes of acquiring something
cool. By accident I’d taken £300 from a cash machine at Heathrow, so was
worried I might blow the lot. It turned out that my money was quite safe, as
this room was a massive disappointment. It looked like the various dealers had
just emptied their basements and attics of all the second/third/fourth hand
books they could find and tried to flog them on from soggy cardboard boxes.
Absolutely nothing tempted me, so I left with my wad of money unbroken and went
back to the bar. I bumped into Alex briefly, but didn’t stay too long after
that, as there wasn’t a lot else to see or do that appealed to me, and I had a
three hour journey back home.
So, was Eastercon worth it? As a one day visit, I’d say not
for me, but I think that’s a function of my level of involvement more than any
failing of the con. Being there for a few hours is no way to get the best out
of a convention; you need to be there for the weekend (at least) and probably
go with some pals, or know folk there. I got the impression that plenty of
people there were regulars at these conventions and that by attending lots of
them regularly, you’d get an exponential amount of enjoyment back out it.
Sadly, I can’t make that kind of commitment, so will have to look at events
like this as fun things to do if I can, but not as anything I think I’ll get to
regularly. Though, having said that, Eastercon is in Birmingham next year, so
perhaps I could be there for longer and
make more of a day/weekend of it.
Stuff
In other news, Iron Warrior is selling well and, as I write
this, there are thirteen copies left, so if you want to get one for the very
reasonable price of £30 instead of the no doubt astronomical prices you’ll be
charged on ebay once they’re all gone, get on over to Black Library to pick up
a copy.
In short, loving the new Doctor Who. David Tennant left some
big shoes to fill, but Matt Smith is doing a bang up job of making the role his
own. And Karen Gillan is just cute. And Scottish, so it’s Win Win.
In Guilty Pleasure Corner, we’ve been watching Pineapple
Dance Studios, where the runaway star is Louie Spence and his outrageously camp
performance. I say performance, but I suspect (and hope) that’s who he really
is, as it’s tremendous fun to watch. The whole studio looks like it’d be a fun
place to work, though you’d have to be okay with days where you got absolutely
nothing done. On this week’s show there was a guy from Nottingham who wanted to
run a sword fighting course at the studio, and the moment I heard where he was
from I cringed, just knowing that the
show was going to take great relish in showing that he liked to play toy
soldiers and read lots of fantasy books. Sure enough, the camera pans along a
line of Death Guard Terminators, an unpainted Fire Warrior and a shelf stocked
with fantasy novels, vampire books and so on. Hell, those could have been my shelves! The trouble was, he appeared to take
himself far too seriously, and when Louie started taking the mick out of his
proposed class, you could see he wasn’t happy about it. I’ve long since made
peace with my geekiness and wear it as a badge of honour, though this guy, as
much as I’m sure he’s a lovely guy in person, came across like the worst
stereotype of fantasy fan imaginable. Still, we got to see some 40K miniatures
on tv, so it’s not all bad.
Right, that’s enough for one morning. As I mentioned
earlier, a writer’s job is to write, so I best get doing some of that then.
I’ve a tribe of the Empire to destroy. Speaking of which, did I mention that Empire needs YOUR vote in the Gemmell Awards? Click here to go and vote for it!