I usually follow up a Con with a write-up, and so here is my take on BristolCon, which took place on Saturday 26 October.
Hubby and I travelled down from London by train on Friday afternoon, as soon as I was able to get away from the day job. It was actually quite a pleasant journey, taking just about two hours on a train we could pre-book seats on. The hotel, we were pleased to find, was a five-minute walk from Bristol Temple Meads Station, and was modern and comfortable. It was also conveniently located for the Town Centre and close to bars and restaurants, for those who want to take a break from the Con.
The Con officially began at 10 am on Saturday morning, running two concurrent threads. I was on one of the opening panels - the panel on Innovative Deaths, moderated by Anne Lyle. We discussed ways of killing people for over 45 minutes. Fortunately we didn't seem to scare the audience too much - or at least that was how I interpreted it, as nobody ran out screaming.
After that I caught some of the 'My World is Not Your Sandpit' panel, about fan fiction, in which a rather energetic debate took place. I have to say I missed the beginning of this panel, but what I saw clearly defined the two sides of the argument. One side was that if the fan fiction writer is not making any profit from their writing, and the original creator of the world is done writing books about that world, should they not be flattered by enthusiastic fans wanting to play in their sandpit? The opposing viewpoint was that anyone other than the creator is not going to get the world right because so much of a created world never makes it into the book, and a writer is never really done with their world. It was an interesting discussion and I must confess I can see the point of the writers who say they don't want anybody else playing in their sandpit, because it's theirs. Though the chance to be adored enough for someone to want to play in my sandpit would be a fine thing. It was also pointed out in this panel that fan fiction is an evolutionary stage of the young writer, and this spoke to me as well. Fortunately my Star Wars fan fiction was written in the days before the Internet and will never be aired in public.
After that I stuck around for the panel on the Evolution of Genre, where among other things the influence of 'real-world' problem on genre was discussed. Apparently zombies do well during periods of high unemployment and financial restraints. Vampires apparently do well during periods of affluence. What this says about us I don't know.
After taking a break from watching panels I joined the other authors for the 'mass signing', for which we'd all been encouraged to bring books to sell at the committee table. A member of the writing group who'd bought a copy of SOUL SCREAMS a while ago came to get it signed, but unfortunately I sold none of the copies I'd brought with me. Which was a bit crushing, frankly. Obviously I need to step up my promotional efforts.
My final programme item was to moderate the small press panel at 4 pm. I had done some homework on this, and I already knew I had a fantastic panel. Cheryl Morgan, who runs Wizards Tower press. Chrissey Harrison, independent film maker and small press publisher. Jonathan Wright, journalist and editor. David R Rodger, self published science fiction writer. I think we gave the topic a good airing, all my panel members engaged in the conversation and we had a reasonable number of people in the audience. And to be honest, I quite enjoyed moderating. I think I'd like to do it again some time.
With my commitments over with I sat back to enjoy a couple more panels, venturing into the larger programme room for the 'Beyond Arthur' panel, moderated by Gaie Sebold, and then the panel saying farewell to Iain Banks, moderated by Cheryl Morgan.
And then it was back to the bar, to see out the day with more chat, more food and more wine, and to relax before our train home Sunday morning.
BristolCon is a small local Con, running for a day to be deliberately attractive to people in South West England who can attend without having to book hotel accommodation. Although small I found it a very well run and friendly Con, especially welcoming to small press and self published writers.
Next year's Con has been set for 18 October 2014 in the same great location. I am intending to come back next year.
If you can get to Bristol I thoroughly recommend this Con. It's a fantastic experience.
1 comment:
I definitely would have been interested to the hear the panel on fan-fiction. While I think it would be a lot of fun to take a world and characters that someone else has created and do with them what I thought best, I would also not like someone presuming to know enough about the characters and world I've created in my own book. Said book will hopefully (crosses fingers) be finished next year. So much time has been put into creating, getting to know, and loving my characters, I wouldn't feel comfortable with anyone else writing about them. Though I have to agree, it would be flattering if someone considered writing a fan fiction about my own book.
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