And so to my final entry for the Con…
Bar-side debates
We ended Saturday night at the bar. Dave Budd and I found ourselves a place to perch and chat while the missus retired to our room, and we drank (or rather I did, while Dave tried his best not to explode on too much cola) and spoke about politics, of all things. Dave works for the news arm of the BBC and it’s great to get Auntie’s view on current affairs, it gives it a different perspective that may yet find itself into my writing, especially Smith. It was also a chance to indulge on the much missed debates on literature and film we had during our university years.
Oddly, the bar was pretty quiet until 11pm, and then it was like the flood-gates had burst, a torrent of fan-con-thusiasts streaming out from the lifts opposite the bar and the door to the conference rooms. Where they all came from, god knows; perhaps they’d hatched from some dank subterranean room deep below the Britannia Hotel, or perhaps the alarm clocks on the inside of their coffins were an hour or so late? Or perhaps Dave and I had missed some meeting we were meant to attend? It’s probably the latter, buy hey-ho…
Anyway, amongst those to swarm in was Conor Corderoy, author of Dark Rain. We had a long chat about his experiences under Macmillan New Writing, debating the whole agent thing, rights and royalties until getting onto the subject of writing itself. Conor spoke of the prequel to Dark Rain, a book that I rather enjoyed, and I eagerly listened to how that would pan out. We then chatted about my follow up to The Secret War and the problems I’ve encountered, before discussing when I should write Smith. I guess the advice given was that sometimes writing a follow-up to the first book (if there is one) should be timed closely to the original, rather than deviating to another genre (which Smith does). For the last few weeks I have been toying with writing Smith before completing The Burning Sands of Time (to give me a fresh perspective) but like a pendulum I’ve swung back to the latter. I think once The Secret Waris published I’ll get a better feel for it’s sequel – there is a lot of work to be done on the 2nd draft and I don’t wish to progress The Burning Sands of Time with my eyes closed.
Overall, it was a undoubtedly a constructive discussion that lasted until 1am; I guess I could have continued chatting until dawn, but Conor looked shattered having risen at 4am to make the journey to Nottingham that very day.
Ah, the things writers do for their art!
A Red-letter moment
Which brings me nicely to a red-letter moment: my very first autographs. On the Sunday we got chatting to two guys, Liam and his mate (apologies for forgetting his name!), and I mentioned I was being published next year – Sarah dashing to the promo table to ferret out a few of promotional cards for The Secret War. They were very interested in the book and asked me to sign the backs of the promotional cards! This was pretty cool, until I realised my moniker is pretty rubbish. My signature is basically a spidery tangling of peaks and troughs with a river running under it, so having signed them – feeling a little pleased with myself – I decided a new “book-signing” signature was in order.
So I spent an hour or so after the Con coming up with something that didn’t look like a drunk arachnid had wondered onto the page. It’s an improvement, believe me…
Final Thoughts
After feeling a little shell-shocked by the whole experience, writing these last four blog entries has made me realise how much I’ve taken away from the Fantasy Con. I’m not just talking about the debate on the perils of genre-labelling (a good closing speech by Clive Barker), nor the perils of trying to compare UK and US fantasy and horror writing; not even the perils inherent in the lure of the silver screen, or what Stephen King called “the glass teat”. No, those discussions have been informative as they would have been on the written page, or on a late night TV debate.
I’m talking about the tangible feeling of being with like-minded people, where the magic does come true in the collective imaginations that surround you. Where you discuss the fundamentals of writing, i.e. where you are going, while reflecting on where you’ve come from. For it is the personal stuff that gets under your skin, not the politics of fantasy versus horror, or who should lead a writing-society. These are but distractions from the positives.
And while it was all overwhelming, that inspiration remains; and like the ancient refusing to die, I’m hanging onto that feeling until next year, when this pandemonium of treasures begins again…
Hopefully, I’ll see some of you there.
Lessons learnt from the Fantast Con last weekend
1)Make sure your budget for the weekend is realistic. And then take more money on top of that.
2)It’s not always a good thing to get a room in the same hotel as the convention. And hotel food isn’t always that good!
3)Be mentally prepared when going to a writers’ convention.
4)Read more.
5)Actually, read a helluva lot more.
6)End your writing for the day mid-sentence.
7)Get involved with other writing groups who are likeminded.
8)And just keep writing. The most important point of all. And I didn’t learn this from the convention either. I’ve always known it. The moment you procrastinate – the moment you put off your writing – is the moment it ceases to be a joy and is now a millstone. Don’t let it be.
Like the saying goes: “use it, or lose it.”