Controversy at the Con

It always follows that when a large group of friendly writers pour their weary bones into their going-home transport, someone is busy writing what seems to many to be a sour grapes blog. And so it is for this year’s British Fantasy Society’s annual bash, FantasyCon 2011 in Brighton. In spite of luminaries such as veteran SF writers being in attendance and readily accessible, the plethora of awards for both mainstream and independent presses and their authors / artists, Stephen Jones has poured scorn. In a peanut shell he raises a kind of nepotism in the way the awards work. That is: there was an unhealthy relationship between the winner of best novel and short story – the beautiful erotic-vampire-writer, Sam Stone, her feller, David Howe, and the means of award voting. There is no perfect democracy and if you have nothing better to do you could devise a better way to award points and votes to books and artists. However, I have read and reviewed Sam’s books and know that in spite of the abundance of vampire literature, she manages to pull off original concepts and exhilirating three-dimensional characters. I haven’t read all the other books in the category so I cannot say if Demon Dance is better than the others. But I have been a fiction judge, and have been judged, and know how subjective the whole process is – not just for novels but for all art. If another book won the awards I know from the stochastics and probability theory I have applied to my climate stats that you can accuse any system of not being fair. If Stephen Jones (his argument here) is saying that an officer of BFS (David Howe is this year’s chairman and Sam’s partner) should not be involved as an award nominee then he may have a moot point. However, it is not disallowed at present. Stephen should move such a move in the proper channels instead of picking on the recipients after the event.

It’s tempting to say awards don’t matter. Many of us have entered for them and come away empty-handed / headed and won a few, with the feeling that it was sooooo objective that the importance is lessened. However, readers note them, publishers use them on back covers so it is best if an award is seen to be honest and as objective as possible.

With regard to FantasyCon 2011, Sam Stone should keep her awards. Her work is worthy. Change the system for future awards if the feeling Stephen has is shared, but don’t diss the winners.

New pals at NewCon5

I’ve just returned from NewCon5 in Northampton – a convention for lovers of science fiction. I had a nice long chat at what in many conventions are called Kaffeeklatsche (German – sort of – for a coffee chat about almost anything with Paul Cornell: author of many SF books and graphic comics including Dr Who novels, Captain Britain, and the recent Young Avengers series. I had a good chat with Jaine Fenn, successful author of Principles of Angels. We discussed the possibility of Adventure Books of Seattle (I am the British branch) being a distributor of Sam Stone’s books. Also with Juliet McKenna, who has graciously accepted to read my Xaghra’s Revenge novel with a view to endorsing it. I have an endorsement for it already from Jon Courtenay Grimwood, who was born in the Maltese Islands where the novel is set.

While there it was a pleasure to meet up with old friends such as Ian Whates. who organised the successful NewCon, and with others such as Sam Stone, her publisher, Terry Martin, and with my old friend, Terry Jackman of the BSFA Orbiters. It was my pleasure to read and review a pre-published version of Sam Stone’s Demon Dance. Also from BSFA (British Science Fiction Association) Orbiters but whom I’d not met in person before, was Robert Harkess and his wife. Robert is a skillful writer and has helped me with critiques of many of my short stories. At the con was Northampton’s jester, Kevin Burke, on his modern bendy stilts. Always a friendly chap – remember he was with me at NewCon4 helping me sell Exit, Pursued by a Bee. Which reminds me that it was a pleasure to hear Robert Harkess say he’d just finished reading Exit on his Kindle. Excellent!

On my train homeward journey I’ve been planning the science fiction workshop session I am doing with the Llandudno Writers’ group. I did a session with them earlier in the year on how to win short story competitions. A creative and appreciative bunch they are too. Brian Lux, writer of excellent children’s stories, is my contact with them.

My nephew, Ben Bamber, is in the papers again. His dystopic novella, The Vast and Gruesome Clutch of Our Law is now out as an ebook at the innovative site, Smashwords, and an article about it has appeared in the Gloucestershire Echo.  The text of the piece is on the Echo’s site here.

Another link for you is my review of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale at Compulsive Reader. Is it Science Fiction? I don’t think so: just because a story is set in the future it doesn’t make it SF automatically unless the change in the future features intrinsically. Nevertheless. I enjoyed reading the book. My review.

Fancy that at FantasyCon

FantasyCon is a bit like a writers’ club, one that specialises in fantasy and science fiction. In spite of writing about things that hit the back of readers’ minds, scaring the hell out of them and stirring the ordinary into the extraordinary often with ghouls and black moments, those writers are wonderfully warm and friendly. Take Sam Stone, who writes about nothing but vampires, who want to rip out our necks or create the undead from the innocent: she is an effervescent blonde (this time with intriguing purple edges). Her fiction is edgy and sometimes eye-watering yet her hugs and welcoming eyes are so inviting. I couldn’t help noticing her hand stroking a thigh while she talked to me yesterday – pity that thigh belonged to her husband! Hah. Then she told me that her latest novel, Demon Dance, had my name on the back cover blurb. Yeay! I rarely offer to read pre-published books on the computer: I much prefer a printed version since my eyes spend too much time already scrolling and rolling on the small screen.  I made an exception for Sam and her publisher, Terry Martin – again a friendly soul and publisher of Murky Depths that won an award this year – congrats! So my few words of favour won a place on the back of her book. To order Demon Dance here.

At FantasyCon 2010 – held in Nottingham where fortuitously my granddaughter, Amy, lives with son Rob and daughter-in-law, Tracey and her so cute daughter, Liddie Ann – I met up with good friends Steve Upham of Screaming Dreams; Ian Whates, who is a man of so many writing talents (including having a story in our Escape Velocity issue #4), organiser of NewCon5 in October in Northampton, and publisher of NewCon press - and who owes me £20 !; David Tallerman - extraordinary writer who will go far; Nick Wood – psychologist (yeay I spelt it right first time for the first time) and award-winning short story writer; Pauline Morgan, Andrew Hook and many other good ‘horrific’ people.

At FantasyCon is a table groaning under the weight of second-hand science fiction / fantasy paperbacks. I looked for a particular author, Christopher Priest, because Graham Weaver, the new member of the Chester Library SF book group is a fan of Priest and I felt ignorant. That is I am sure I have read his work in the past but couldn’t remember. So I asked the second-hand book owner for a Chris Priest book. He found one then told me how the author’s first wife, Lisa Tuttle, was standing in the room behind me! Coincidences? I have to believe in them. The SF / F writing world is a small world even with so much varied talent.

Steve Upham organised the art show this year. Andy Bigwood is an artist I have admired in the past and would pay good money to have his blend of photo-realism and creative painting (digital and paintbrush) grace the covers of my books. Chatting to him he wondered if I would be part of a project in which writers would add a 300-word-story to one of his paintings. I readily agreed. I recall doing something similar for Ultraverse. I wrote a story in which time changed velocity with height. Here it is. Ah, that reminds me, I must sketch out a draft for Andy. His website is here.

I only stayed at FantasyCon for a few hours on Saturday – so much packed in. Brilliant.

Murky Depths

Murky Depths is deep but in my opinion not murky. In fact it is the 21st century graphic literature’s coruscating must read / own fantasy. The story lines and art are leading edge with art by such talent as Leonardo M Giron, Martin Deep,  Nancy Farmer and Paul Drummond; writers such as Juliet E McKenna, Gareth D Jones and Jon Courtenay Grimwood; and both art and writing from the multi-talented Richard Calder.

I love our own Escape Velocity magazine, but Murky Depths is a gem and undoubtedly the best illustrated adult mag of all time. Sample it at

http://www.murkydepths.com/

Congrats Terry Martin for running Murky Depths and for taking the bold step of publishing talent in paperback novels such as Sam Stone with her vampire stories. Her Futile Flame is now out adding to the fang-curling success of Killing Kiss. (both available here)

Killing Kiss by Sam Stone

I met Sam Stone for the first time at FantasyCon in Nottingham this summer. She is stunning and many of us males hid behind our piles of unsold books in case we were spotted ogling her ample assets. So it was a pleasant surprise to attend her excerpt reading to discover she is entertaining and a fine writer. Her publisher is now Terry Martin at the House of Murky Depths, a producer of excellent adult graphic fantasy comics.

Killing Kiss is available at the main online stores such as at Amazon and also from Murky Depths website - go to the Murky Shop and find paperbacks.

Here is my review

Review of Sam Stone’s Killing Kiss

Reviewed by Geoff Nelder

 

Paperback: 240 pages

Publisher: The House of Murky Depths

Date of publication: September 2008

ISBN-10: 1906584079

ISBN-13: 978-1906584078

 

Vampire Gabriele has to move every few years in case his agelessness turns too many suspicious heads and because young women tend to die after his feeds. He cannot develop relationships but desires them, one in particular with Carolyn. However, his urges take a twist with a different woman and he feels he is losing control. In addition the woman who initiated him into the vampire existence centuries earlier crosses his path several disturbing times.

 

This is not just another vampire novel. Sam Stone takes us into the mind and body of the four-centuries-old young man. We are treated to a tour de force of dramatic lives, gruesome deaths through seventeenth century Italy to cruise ships, Goth clubs, and we participate in present day student life.

 

            One of the dilemmas with vampire stories is with the continuity of the vampire with respect to his contemporaries. Imagine if you didn’t age beyond your twenty-fifth year, how your friends and colleagues would react as the years passed. Add to that Dorian Gray scenario the need to kill for blood, and our vampire has a credibility problem. The world is too small to hide in a new life, especially these days. Sam Stone doesn’t hide from this problem, indeed it becomes a feature. Gabriele shows us how he has to avoid former acquaintances or terminate them, and when he inadvertently creates another vamp, he has the unenviable task to tell her to say goodbye to her family. Therein lies a neat plot twist, but I’m not going to spoil it.

 

            In spite of the novel creeping us out successfully there is room for the occasional gag.  When Gabrielle takes his vampire protégé to seek fresh input of blood in a student restaurant district of Manchester he says: ‘Do you fancy Indian or Chinese?’ Excellent vampire joke!

 

            The writing style is beguilingly easy but you are left with intriguing and deep aftertastes. I particularly enjoy the borderline ESP that Gabriele discovers as if by accident. For example he sees the dissipating heat signature left by a lover on a door handle. Sam Stone is gifted at following her writerly instincts in the attributes of other-being characters. Some aspects of the plot, however, elude me. Perhaps it is because the novel uses flashbacks to show Gabriele’s development, and his significant lover-victims’ lives. Not that the snippets intrude, on the contrary they are skilfully interwoven with the present day. However, because Gabriele ‘is’ 25 in all but the earliest flash backs and he is making stock investment and invention-backing decisions that are always spot on, I felt he was acting on information from his future. For example how did he know Laker Airlines were going to fail before it happened? Vampires are not usually into time travelling and I don’t think Gabriele is either. (A possible sequel as his abilities develop?) It must just be that the vampire is so superior he made wise investment choices. He should have been a banker in 2008.

 

            Some literary techniques that I enjoy reading include the juxtaposition of opposites. For example: ‘The quiet deafens me with the roar of doubt…’ Invoking musical references are used to good effect in this novel, adding to the atmosphere with all of our senses.

 

            One of the aspects of Killing Kiss that elevates it is the way the past catches up with Gabriele in the form of his own nemesis: the vampire that transformed him. These scenes are particularly salivating as she is Lucrezia, an Italian timeless beauty with a sanguine appetite beyond mere feeding.

 

            Read this book and change the way you feel about vampires for the rest of your so short life.

NewCon4 aftermath

Northampton is only 150 miles from Chester but it took me 3 hours to drive there and another half to navigate the town to the venue. The old fishmarket has been refurbished nicely and though I worred that the angle of repose and low coefficient of friction of both marble and shiny book covers would see books slipsliding, it rarely happened. In fact having music, cafe, book dealers, readings, signings and discussion more or less under one roof is a benefit.

I sold a dozen copies of Exit, Pursued by a Bee and Escape Velocity magazines and a few Dimensions anthologies of mine and Robert Blevins. I felt good about those numbers until Mark Robson talked to me and author Toby Frost about how he sells hundreds at each of his signings and readings. He writes Young Adult fantasy and is invited into schools. Maybe I should take out the ‘steamy sex in space’ bit in the blurb of Exit, Pursued by a Bee. The sex inside is envigorating rather than perverse.

At the NewCon4 I’d met successful authors such as Storm Constantine (she wirtes erotic horror including the Wraethful Chronicles,Grigori Trilogy, Silverheart),

 Iain Banks (a scifi biggie with Consider Phebas, The Algebraist, Matter, The Wasp Factor, The Crow Road, Simplicity),

Ken MacLeod (Newton’s Wake, The Execution Channel, Learnng the World, The Sky Road

Paul Cornell (Script writer for Dr Who, Torchwood, Primeval)

And then there were those of us on the brink of such fame as me (hah), Toby Frost, whose Space Captain Smith books in which the 25th Century British Empire takes on the menace of he evil ant soldiers of the Ghast hive. The hero wearing lookalike 19th best dressed British uniforms – red tunic, brass buttons, is extraordinarily popular with book buyers at the con, and his books are already on the shelves in our UK book shops.

Mark Hobson too, who is amazingly successful going around schools with his Young Adult scifi / fantasy adventures.

The gorgeous Sam Stone thrust her cleavage at me and left me a copy of her Killing Kiss vampire-with-a-diffrence for me to review. Allyson Bird did readings and selling her scifi anthology Bull Running for Girls. Women were well represented at the Con – nearly forget Juliet McKenna who gave a long chat with me while her son ate nearly all my white maltesers – a prop for my Exit, Pursued by a Bee stall (you can see them on the fish slab in the photo)

Many of the wandering visitors had heard of our magaziine, some bought all three issues on the spot, and others took a flyer and came back later to buy a copy.

I swapped books with the deliciously clever Jaine Fenn – I had the better of the swap with Jaine’s ‘Principles of Angels’ – Khesh CIty floats above an uninhabitable world. I also caught up nattering with agent John Jarrold, writer Sue Boulton, fellow Orbiters Nick Wood (short story award winner!), and Tim Taylor.

Nick Wood signing

Nick Wood has met other EV authors on his travels so it is good to know we are REAL people too!

Renewing aquaintances sent vibrations of pleasure too, Ian Whates – big chief of teh BSFA. Alex Davies who steers Derbyshire’s Literature, Kim Lakin-Smith is a literary fantasy writer and I look forward to beingv tutored by her in a November residential. Good too to re-meet friend, Terry Martin who runs Murky Depths – a cutting edge science fantasy magazine with amazing cartoon with lateral thinking.

The venue was served with handmade local ales, Kevin Burke – the Jester, and excellent feet tapping music by Invocal, Cerridwen, Jonny Webster & Friends. Congratulations to Ian Whates and his wife, Helen, for a marvelous event.

One aspect that hit me full on was reading a poster about the history of the British Science Fiction Association (BSFA). see part of poster below. It’s isn’t the words that matter but the picture. I stagged back as I recognised his face. Eric Jones lived at 44 Barbridge Road. I lived at 43. When Was a kid my dad would create black pen and ink illustrations to be meticulously pinpricked onto Gestetner skins for the Cheltenham science fiction magazine, Sidereal. I though all dads did that! I also thought all streets had their own sci fi mags! So this is Eric Jones, neighbour, who became a leading light in the formation of the BSFA. Coincidences. My other claim to this one degree of separation with the BSFA is that I saw the same UFO as Eric one afternoon 50 years ago. Hit the papers. It could have been light on a airplane wing but the rest of the plane stayed hidden from one horizon to the other and local Staverton airport said no planes were in the sky at that time – umm. If anyone knows how Eric Jones and his wife, Margaret is and where they now live, I’d be grateful to know.

Eric Jones, founder member of BSFA

On my long journey home along a congested M6, I turned off the Satnav when it told me to ‘continue along this road for 103 miles’!

So much going on

October 11-12 Northampton Fishmarket, at NewCon4 I’m selling & signing Exit, Pursued by a Bee, and Screaming Dream books with Ally Bird (Running Bulls for Girls) , and sharing a table with author Toby Frost( Chronicles of Isambard Smith). I’m also meeting up with the gorgeous Sam Stone to acquire her Killing Kiss book for review.

October 23rd Bear & Billet pub, Lower Bridge Street, Chester. As part of the Chester Literary Festival and subsection, Chester Writers, I’ve been allocated 5 minutes to read an exciting bit of Exit, Pursued by a Bee.

November 16th, Sunday, 1-4pm at Cheshire Oaks Borders, I am doing a signing of Exit. Please tell everyone so I am not a Billy no mates there! I know I can’t match the enormous queue generated by Abi Titmus when she signed there last, but it would help pass the time if someone came to talk to me.