The Inevitable 'What I'm Doing At Fantasycon' Post For Anyone Who Missed It On Facebook

Last year's FCon, with Priya Sharma, Lynda E. Rucker and Sean Hogan/

My Fantasycon 2018 Schedule: I'm a little on the busy side this year.

Friday
5.00 pm
Panel: Writing The Immortal Enemy
Simon Bestwick (m), Powder, Ren Warom, Clint Wastling, Den Patrick
A panel tribute to those villains who refuse to submit, lay down and die. Maybe you wrote an evildoer and you couldn’t let go? Maybe you’re a fan of one that we all know? Our panel talks about those recurring nemesii who we all love and hate.
 
7.00 pm
Readings (Horror)
Stephen Laws, Simon Bestwick, Tina Rath
Stephen and Tina are both ace writers. I don't know what they'll be sharing with the audience, but I'll be reading one of the tales from Singing Back The Dark.

Saturday
1.00 pm
Black Shuck Books Launch
Black Shuck's FCon releases include John Llewellyn Probert's The Last Temptation of Dr Valentine, Colleen Anderson's A Body Of Work, and Great British Horror #3: For Those In Peril. This sea-themed anthology of horror fiction includes my story 'The Bells Of Rainey.' So I'll be there.

7.00 pm
Writing Warfare
Simon Bestwick (m), Danie Ware, Andy Remic, Anna Stephens, Anna Smith Spark
From Homer to Warmaster Horus, the battle scene has been a mainstay of epic fantasy and space opera science fiction. Our panel discussion battle scenes, whether up close and personal, from a tactical  perspective or looking down from the god’s eye.

Sunday
12.30pm
Dead Bodies
Simon Bestwick (m), Steve Toase, GV Anderson, James Brogden, Simon Clark
Many good stories involve a mystery. Whether the case at hand has remained unsolved for hundreds of years, or happened in the first chapter of the book, a good puzzle provides the writer with an opportunity to engage the reader’s brain in finding the answer. Our panelists discuss unsolved conundrums, consider the role of accurate research, and look at a range of tools that are at the writer’s disposal to create intriigue for the curious reader. 

Things of the Week: 15th July 2016

This week... has been a bit rough.

For the past few weeks I haven't been feeling good at all - a growing sense of hopelessness, of everything feeling like too much effort, constant nagging anxiety.

Earlier in the week, some old social media bullshit flared up again. That was the final straw; by the time Cate got home that evening, I was practically a wreck. I just about managed to cook dinner for us. At which point I decided Facebook and I needed a break from one another.

I thought it might just be stuff on the news - Brexit and so forth, and all the worries that go with it - and they probably helped tip me over the edge, but ultimately this is just the return of an old enemy. The black dog: depression. It's a bloody horrible thing that I hoped I wouldn't see again - but it's back, worse than before.

After a lot of prevaricating - too bloody much of it - I'm going to see my GP on Monday. Hopefully get something sorted.

I think I've said this before, but it bears repeating: do not suffer in silence with this. Men, especially, seem to, believing you're supposed to 'man up' and soldier on. And all too often that makes it worse - and more likely to kill you. I could have saved myself a lot of pain by ringing the surgery on Monday. There's no shame in antidepressants, if they're what you need. You wouldn't think twice about taking painkillers if an injury was causing serious pain; they help you function as normally as possible while you heal. This is no different.

My friend Ren Warom, in addition to being a smashing writer, has blogged and vlogged candidly about mental health issues and recovery. I heartily recommend her blog posts on the subject. And indeed the rest of her blog.


Cheers to Ren, Sarah Pinborough, and a few other people for kind words and cyber-hugs this week. And to Cate, without whom I really don't know how I would have coped. Love you, hun.

*clears throat following embarrassing schmaltzy bit*

Otherwise, what things have there been this week?

Steady progress on Devil's Highway; hopefully the beast will be finished soon. It's taking shape, and I think I'm going to be pleased with how it turns out. Hopefully the publisher will too.

Tomorrow we're off to Edge-Lit in Derby with Priya Sharma - some good company and laughter will, I hope, do me a lot of good.

Saving the best till last, though: I am very, very proud to announce my inclusion in an anthology that will be released at Fantasycon By The Sea this September.

When Joel Lane passed away in 2013 - Jesus, nearly three years ago now - he left behind him a wealth of notes for stories he'd never found time to write. Last year his old friend Pete Coleborn of the Alchemy Press invited me to contribute to an anthology he was editing with Pauline E. Dungate, another of Joel's friends: a number of writers, each working with a different set of notes, would set out to complete the stories.

I've blogged previously about the tale I wrote, 'And Ashes In Her Hair.' This week, Alchemy published the table of contents for the tribute anthology, Something Remains. All proceeds from the anthology will be donated to Diabetes UK (Joel suffered from Type 1 Diabetes since his teens.)

Here's that TOC in full:

• Foreword by Peter Coleborn
• Introduction by Pauline E. Dungate
• Joel by Chris Morgan (Verse)
• Not Dispossessed:  A Few Words on Joel Lane’s Early Published Works by David A. Sutton (Essay)
• Everybody Hates a Tourist by Tim Lebbon
• The Missing by John Llewellyn Probert
• Charmed Life by Simon Avery
• Antithesis by Alison Littlewood
• Dark Furnaces by Chris Morgan
• The Inner Ear by Marion Pitman (Verse)
• Broken Eye by Gary McMahon
• Stained Glass by John Grant
• Threadbare by Jan Edwards
• The Dark above the Fair by Terry Grimwood
• Grey Children by David A. Sutton
• The Twin by James Brogden
• Lost by Pauline Morgan (Verse)
• Through the Floor [1] by Gary Couzens
• Through the Floor [2] by Stephen Bacon
• Bad Faith by Thana Niveau
• Window Shopping by David Mathew
• Clan Festor by Liam Garriock
• Sweet Sixteen by Adam Millard
• Buried Stars by Simon Macculloch
• And Ashes in Her Hair by Simon Bestwick
• The Pleasure Garden by Rosanne Rabinowitz
• Joel Lane, Poet by Chris Morgan (Essay)
• The Reach of Children by Mike Chinn
• The Men Cast by Shadows by Mat Joiner
• The Winter Garden by Pauline E. Dungate
• Natural History by Allen Ashley
• The Second Death by Ian Hunter
• The Bright Exit by Sarah Doyle (Verse)
• Blanche by Andrew Hook
• The Body Static by Tom Johnstone
• You Give Me Fever by Paul Edwards
• The Other Side by Lynda E. Rucker
• Of Loss and of Life: Joel Lane’s Essays on the Fantastic by Mark Valentine (Essay)
• Shadows by Joe X Young
• I Need Somewhere to Hide by Steven Savile
• Coming to Life by John Howard
• The Enemy Within by Steve Rasnic Tem
• Afterword: The Whole of Joel by Ramsey Campbell (Essay)

I'm very proud to be in this one. Hope you'll all buy a copy.

The Lowdown with... Ren Warom

Ren Warom is a writer of the strange, dark and bizarre, not known for an ability to fit into boxes of any description. She's repped by the fabulous Jennifer Udden of Donald Maass Literary Agency and has two cyberweird novels forthcoming in the UK and the US with Titan Books - ESCAPOLOGY in 2016 and VIROLOGY in 2017. She Tweets here, waffles on Facebook here, and YouTubes over there.

1. Tell us three things about yourself.

I think the movie Tremors is perfect and I’ve seen it in excess of 100 times; I’ve also inducted my spawn into this obsession – sorry not sorry.

I left school at 15 with no GSCE’s but went on to hold a first class degree in writing and English.

I have never broken a bone, despite riding from the age of 6 and generally being a clumsy idiot.

2. What was the first thing you had published?

I had stories published in a few anthologies but the first story I was paid for appears in This Is How It Ends, the second Machine Of Deathbook, published by Grand Central Press. My story is called In Sleep.

3. Which piece of writing are you most proud of?

In terms of persistence and dedication I am most proud of the serial fiction I wrote for four years because I feel that was a hell of a thing to commit to and I did it every two weeks for all that time (it’s on my blog). A specific piece of writing though? Perhaps The Lonely Dark, my psychological horror SF novella published by Fox Spirit Books. It’s deeply personal, dealing with some of the feelings surrounding the loss of my sister and my struggle with mental illness and it was incredibly difficult to write in places. I’m proud that I wrote it and very proud that I was brave enough to put it out there in the world. There’s a lot more of me in that novella than in anything else I’ve ever written.

4. ...And which makes you cringe?

Oh Hades! So much. SO MUCH. I have written a terrible amount of unbearable dross.  Thankfully none of that will see the light of day. As for things I have had published – well, you can always see things you’d change in old work but I see no point in feeling embarrassed by it. At one point that was the best you could do and it’s great to look back and see a clear arc of improvement.

5. What’s a normal writing day like?

A challenge. I’m a single mum of three kids all in their pre-teens and teens on a writing deadline whilst starting her own business and running a YouTube channel. This is a house of drama and noise and chaos and whilst I love it, I often find it hard to steal quiet moments. I try and write when the kids are at school and college but I have to do everything else I need to do in that time too, so it can get a little crazy. Typically if I can get bum in seat or anywhere with my laptop and a internet connection (it’s a chromebook) I try and write until I have to move – that can be anything from ten minutes to three hours. You make the most of any chance you get basically.

6. Which piece of writing should someone who’d never read you before pick up first?

They could read The Lonely Dark, or my story Unravel in the BFS nominated anthology Tales of Eve. Or they can wait until next year and pick up my debut novel Escapology, which is a cyberweird and more indicative of what I usually write given ten minutes at a laptop or computer and some inspiration. :)

7. What are you working on now?

At the moment I’m working on edits for Escapology, then I’ll probably have to start working on Virology, but I’m also tinkering with a cyberweird novella dealing with cloning and thieves and awesome women called Peonies and planning another couple of novellas. One a grotesque, hallucinogenic, Burroughsian tale of personal metamorphosis and horror set in 1960s New York, the other an SF serial killer thriller slice of weird.

Thanks for having me!