FantasyCon 2011: Where It All Began

Many many moons ago, my friend Richard (writer of the Heresy and Hearsay blog) proposed a trip to the British Fantasy Society's annual convention. So we packed our bags, got on a train, and headed to FantasyCon 2011 at the Royal Albion Hotel in Brighton. 

There I met all kinds of lovely people, attended fascinating and often hilarious panels, and encountered enough free-flowing creativity to launch a tactical warhead at the creative block that's plagued me for months now.

And that was just on the first day.

Friday, 30th September

I've never been to Brighton before and simply walking to the hostel from the train station gave me a pretty good idea what to expect. Brand spanking new sports cars, dusty old family sedans, classic Rolls Royce convertibles, Army APCs complete with camouflage netting, and countless Volkswagen vans filled the streets; I never did learn why so many vans were flying a Union flag or a Jolly Roger from their radio antennae. 

It was apparently the hottest October weekend on record and while the sunshine was pleasant, being crammed into conference rooms with crowds of people when the thermometers hit 27 degrees wasn't much fun. Fortunately the hotel bars stocked a lot of ice and even the occasional drink.

The hostel we stayed in deserves a separate write up because it was such a fantastic place, but suffice it to say that the place was fully booked all weekend. Fortunately it was only a few blocks away from the Royal Albion, so we didn't have far to go when we staggered back from the convention with our books and our swag bags.

Neither of us were terribly familiar with the authors expected to attend the convention, but in the end we didn't have much time to socialise in between attending as many panels as we could. The panellists boasted a variety of writers, editors, agents and publishers who offered great advice in between endless comedy moments and banter. Questions were raised, answers were offered and I left each panel with pages full of notes and a head buzzing with ideas.

On Friday night, we briefly stopped at the film show before the trivia quiz but soon left. The quiz taught me that even Dr Who novel writers can flub a Dr Who question, and the appropriate response is a walk of shame; invaluable knowledge for the less-than-savvy Dr Who viewer. Our quiz team may not have won any prizes, but we did meet some great people and earned some bonus humour points. 

The raffle, on the other hand, showed me how seriously some people take an opportunity to win free books. Forget purchasing one or two tickets, these people were laying out sixty or more tickets on the table. Given that there were close to 5,000 tickets in the box, 60-odd tickets didn't improve their odds much.

Saturday, 1st October

FantasyCon isn't just about listening to experts talk. Sometimes it's about actual books! The Solaris book launch on Saturday gave us the chance to pick up free copies of some of the books we'd heard mentioned in panels, talk to the authors and get our books signed. The solution to having a name that few people can spell is apparently to wear a name badge on your belt loop.

Prior to the Solaris signing, the panels once again raised some interesting questions. It seems that e-books and e-readers aren't necessarily the death knell for the print novel market that was once predicted, largely due to self-confessed bibliophiles and their need to touch (and smell, and rub their faces on, according to one panellist. Hmm) a physical book. Young Adult fiction apparently defies definition as a genre and raises questions about whether it fills a niche between children's and adult fiction, or prevents young adults from making the leap into adult fiction. Everyone agrees, however, that the publishing world would be happy with fewer manuscripts about shirtless sparkling vampires. After such intellectual debate, we all needed to rest and recover, at which point Saturday evening took an already great weekend and turned it up to eleven. (Brace yourself for twelve...)

Writers + burlesque show + disco = recipe for an amazing night. 

Read it again if necessary. There is zero exaggeration in the above statement.

Theatro Proberto, a two-person theatre troupe, kicked off the burlesque show with a short play starring Satan himself!!! (their emphasis). Sadly I didn't have my camera with me, because they were a fantastic example of using minimal cast and careful story telling to gain maximum laughs. Hollywood could learn a lesson from these guys.

Then we were treated to the opening bars of Miss Lilly Banquette's My Secret Love with a Lovecraftian twist. Yes, I watched a librarian dance with a copy of the Necronomicon and slowly strip off to reveal a Cthulu-inspired outfit. At which point the go-go music kicked in and things really got strange. Overall it was a highly entertaining show; doubly so if you saw the hotel staff's faces when the clothes came off and tassels started whizzing around.

The disco overlapped the burlesque show's two acts but the dance floor in the bar was soon packed. Turns out some authors and publishers are incredible dancers. Some were just there to have fun (self included) and some were plain inconsiderate, but sooner or later "everyone was dancing like spanners", as the MC put it the next day. Even the hotel manager couldn't resist the urge to party hard. Richard and I finally stumbled back to the hostel after 2am, but apparently the party carried on until 5am.

Sunday, 2nd October

Sunday was fairly quiet compared to the bustle of Saturday, so we spent parts of the day on the beach and wandering the seafront in the search for geocaches. We attended a couple of FantasyCon discussion panels in the morning and our early afternoon was spent chatting with other attendees in the hotel bar. 

Saturday had included a panel on comic books and a lengthy conversation in the artists' alley about comic book super-heroes and –heroines, so it seemed like fate to look out the window and see a group of spandex-clad men walking down the street. No idea what they were supposed to represent or why they were wearing neon-colours and sunglasses, but the average response seemed to be to take a picture or to shrug and say "That's Brighton for you." And yet that sighting still wasn't as strange as some of our conversations in the bar.

Afterwards were the awards ceremony, the closing ceremony and the Dead Dog party, which largely consisted of the remaining attendees hanging around the bar and chatting. Despite having the best intentions of socialising and introducing myself to people, I ended up chilling out in one of the chairs while Rich explained the finer points of Downton Abbey, which was showing on the bar TV. 

All too soon it was time to bid farewell to Brighton and walk to the train station to subject ourselves to the hell that is Britain's public transport, but at least it led to some ideas for a short story.

Overall I'd say it was a resounding success. We met all manner of fantastic and witty people, learned some new things about writing and publishing, danced like tools 'til the small hours of the morning, and discovered that the average backpack can hold more books than you might expect. 

So, anyone up for FantasyCon 2012?