Very much looking forward to seeing some old friends and meeting a few new ones.
The highlights, for me, will be the Snowbooks launch (featuring the relaunch of Cate's novella The Bureau Of Them), the awards (where Cate's on the shortlist for Best Novella alongside Nnedi Okorafor, Usman Tanveer Malik, Mark Morris and Paul Cornell, and where both Cate and Priya are shortlisted for Best Short Story with V.H. Leslie, Ralph Robert Moore, Adam Nevill and Frances Kay) - and the launch of Alchemy Press' tribute anthology to Joel Lane, Something Remains.
The inimitable Des Lewis has carried out one of his real-time reviews of Something Remains, available in three parts here, here and here.
Of my own contribution, 'And Ashes In Her Hair', Des says:
Ashes are fragments from many things all made the same thing by fire. This story, from whatever fragment it is made, is overtly the story of a call centre worker under strict employment rules, wringing out, from the results of a soul’s combustion, his own casual relationships with this book’s earlier waifs and strays – and wreaking sustenance from near-poisoned food, as well as eventually becoming complicit with acts of arson-into-ashes taking place in the vacant lot near the office where he works … with a swaddled outcome wrought into being as if for his embracing of a bereavement as well as of a potential birth. Heartbreaking.
I haven't seen Des since my first Fantasycon back in 1999. I believe he's going to be at this one though; it'll be good to meet him again.
For those others going this weekend - see you there!
Have fun Simon, myself, Nadia and Aysha won't be there. Nadia & I did go and see Aliens at the Stockport Plaza, they also showed Duck Dodgers in the 24th & 1/2 Century. Good fun.
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Wayne Mook.