Conducting myself appropriately at the Alchemy Press launch.
...was an absolute blast.
I always love Fantasycon, but this was a cracker by any stretch of the imagination. There was a huge amount going on, and huge numbers of lovely people - and I only got to talk to a fraction of the ones I would have loved to catch up with! - but here are a few highlights.
Getting to talk to Frances Hardinge, whose work I've become a huge fan of, and catching her interview with Kim Lakin-Smith. Amazing writer, lovely person and very, very funny.
Meeting Catriona Ward, author of Rawblood (which won the August Derleth Award for Best Horror
Novel at the British Fantasy Awards.)
The panel 'Girls Just Want To Have Fun', about women in genre fiction, with Catriona, Maura McHugh, Ann Nicholls, Heide Goody and Priya Sharma. Which got left off the printed programme - a source of some sardonic amusement! - but was the best panel I saw that weekend.
The launch of Snowbooks' novella line, resurrecting novellas from John Llewellyn Probert, Ray Cluley, Mark Morris and, of course, Cate Gardner, that were originally published by Spectral Press, together with new work from Gary Fry and Andrew Hook.
Getting to meet Keris McDonald/Janine Ashbless properly IRL - and to sign her copy of Hell's Ditch! Keris has new stories out in The Private Life Of Elder Things, along with Adrian Tchaikovsky and Adam Gauntlett. That one's out from Alchemy Press, along with the Joel Lane tribute anthology Something Remains. Massive kudos to Pete Coleborn, Jan Edwards and Pauline Dungate for making that anthology happen.
Getting to meet the force of nature that is Georgina Bruce. Also getting to meet Emma Cosh, Sarah Dodd, Miranda Jewess and many, many other new people.
Catching up with other friends like Lynda Rucker and Sean Hogan, Alison Littlewood and Fergus Beadle (who we stalked and were stalked by en route to the Con...) Helen Marshall and Vince Haig, Gary Fry, Gary and Emily McMahon, Stephen Volk, Steve Savile, John Llewellyn Probert and Thana Niveau, Anna Taborska, Andrew Hook and Sophie Essex, Laura Mauro, Victoria Leslie, Ray Cluley and Jess Jordan, Adrian and Annie Czajkowski, Phil Sloman, Des Lewis, Jon Oliver, Dave Moore, Lydia Gittins, Nina Allan, Jim Mcleod.... the list goes on and on and I'm sure I've missed important people off....
Seeing the Karl Edward Wagner Award go to the Redshirts, past and present, who make the whole thing happen.
And best of all, seeing the lovely Priya Sharma win the Best Short Story Award for the superb 'Fabulous Beasts'.
I was on the jury for Best Collection with Carole Johnstone and Emma Cosh - the shortlisted collections were all superb, and picking a winner was a very, very tough call to make. Nonetheless, we were all unanimous in our vote: the fantastic Ghost Summer: Stories by Tananarive Due. It's a beautiful, powerful collection, and hugely recommended.
Big, big thanks to everyone who pre-ordered Highway and Feast, by the way. According to Amazon, they're actually my top-selling titles right now.
*tries not to think about how this probably actually means that the already published stuff isn't selling at all*
*fails*
*thinks about how this probably actually means that the already published stuff isn't selling
at all*
*cries*
*drinks*
Um, where was I?
Seriously, folks - if you did pre-order either title, thank you. That's lovely of you, and I hope you enjoy the books when they arrive.
Books are wonderful, aren't they? I hate to admit it, but I haven't been reading as regularly as often as I should have - that's Facebook for you. Since I started keeping myself off FB during the week, though, that's begun to change - and I've been reading some particularly cool stuff over the last couple of weeks.
The night before, US children's author V.E. Schwab was in conversation about her new novel, This Savage Song. I hadn't realised - colour me slow on the uptake - that it was the same Victoria Schwab who wrote this blog I shared a while back. Victoria's funny andf interesting, and since she's published by Titan, PR whizz Lydia Gittins was there. (Last time I saw Lydia, at Eastercon, she told me that if she wasn't wearing her pink coat, people didn't recognise her. She wasn't, and I didn't.)
Anyway: This Savage Song is urban fantasy, and YA fiction - but it never talks down to its audience
or is anything less than satisfying to a reader of any age.
This Savage Song tells the
story of two teens in a broken world, where violent acts start breeding
actual monsters. Some are shadows with teeth that feed on flesh and
bone. Some are corpses that feed on blood. And some can pass for human.
Those rare creatures feed on souls.
It’s the story of Kate Harker, the only daughter of a crime boss, and
August Flynn, the son of a man trying to hold his city together. Kate
is a human who wants to be a monster, and August a monster who wishes he
were human.
It's that simple, and that good. Half crime-thriller, half low fantasy, with vivid characters, sharp prose and an absorbing narrative. The story is due to conclude in a second volume: I'll be picking it up.
Bryony Adams is destined to be murdered,
but fortunately Fate has terrible marksmanship. In order to survive,
she must run as far and as fast as she can. After arriving in Seattle,
Bryony befriends a tortured musician, a market fish-thrower, and a
starry-eyed hero who is secretly a serial killer bent on fulfilling
Bryony’s dark destiny.
Schwab's book is a tough and streetwise: Yardley's is fey, whimsical, wide-eyed and wry, but with a sinister edge. It has an almost fairy-tale feel - but is most definitely not for kids. It's funny, charming, and dark. You'll laugh... but don't get too comfortable.
And that brings me to the third read of the week: Frances Hardinge's Cuckoo Song.
The first things to shift were the doll's eyes, the beautiful
grey-green glass eyes. Slowly they swivelled, until their gaze was
resting on Triss's face. Then the tiny mouth moved, opened to speak.
'What
are you doing here?' It was uttered in tones of outrage and surprise,
and in a voice as cold and musical as the clinking of cups. 'Who do you
think you are? This is my family.'
When Triss wakes up after
an accident, she knows that something is very wrong. She is insatiably
hungry; her sister seems scared of her and her parents whisper behind
closed doors. She looks through her diary to try to remember, but the
pages have been ripped out.
Soon Triss discovers that what
happened to her is more strange and terrible than she could ever have
imagined, and that she is quite literally not herself. In a quest find
the truth she must travel into the terrifying Underbelly of the city to
meet a twisted architect who has dark designs on her family - before
it's too late . . .
I'm loving this one. More urban fantasy for young adults, this one set in the fictional city of Ellchester between the wars. It features a cunning twist on the changeling myth, and some great characters. Cate has a copy of Hardinge's latest book, The Lie Tree, which won the British Fantasy Award last year. My main memory of Hardinge's acceptance speech is of her standing at the lectern in her customary black fedora, describing a typical pitch to publishers: "Now, this might sound a little bit mad..."
And I realised the other night I was once in a magazine with her! Her first short story, 'Shining Man', appeared in issue 8 of Paul Bradshaw's The Dream Zone way back in 2001, alongside a bit of fluff by yours truly called 'The Flower And The Labyrinth.'
Katie Norris and Sinead Parker continue to conquer the world, or at least Edinburgh, chalking up another review, this time in the Guardian. Hopefully they'll be touring after this - hope so, and that I can get to see them.
One review compared them to another comedy gem I recently discovered: Phoebe Waller-Bridge's bleak, filthy, hilarious series Fleabag. It manages to showcase a bunch of wonderfully unlikeable characters and make you give a damn about them (well, except for Olivia Colman as Fleabag's saccharinely hateful stepmother.) Fleabag herself is self-loathing and self-destructive; pathos and sadness are never far from the surface. It manages to be touching when you least expect it; the highlight of one episode is an incredibly tender and beautiful monologue from Hugh Dennis (not an actor you necessarily associate with that kind of performance.) Really worth checking out, if you haven't discovered it already.
