Merely because one is a penniless, debt-ridden, depressive, ex-actor struggling to get a publishing venture off the ground with little capital to back up one’s efforts doesn’t mean that one cannot have the wherewithal to venture onto the World Stage and attend an historic event in the United Kingdom! No no! Which is exactly why I’m attending World HorrorCon 2010 in Brighton; the 20^th time it’s been held, but the first time a World HorrorCon has been held off the North American continent! The following weekend, I’ll be at EasterCon: Odyssey 2010, the annual Science Fiction event for the UK, which is being held in Hayes, Middlesex… or “Heathrow” as most call it. Both events will see me standing behind a Dealers’ Table promoting my wares: four different, brand-new books from Atomic Fez!

How is all this possible, given the previous mention of my penurious state? It’s quite simple: VISA, and a loving, supportive wife.

Why this is being trumpeted here and not in a post on the Atomic Fez site is because much of this trip’s musings will have little to do with the books themselves, ‘Official Statements’, or the like. Yes, declarations of successful events engaged in at World HorrorCon – such as pitch sessions or panel discussions, for instance – will be found there, for it is appropriate for them to be there. On the other hand, statements such as my father’s question last autumn “why does every breakfast involve baked beans here?” or my own surprise that “not only can I wander anywhere around the hotel carrying a pint, people don’t understand my surprise that it’s allowed even after I explain about BC liquor laws” aren’t really something that has anything to do with the book trade. Some might suggest that alcohol of any sort has a great deal to do with the book trade, but that’s another matter entirely.

The trip involves me being there from the 23^rd of March to the 8^th of April, during which I check into hotels on a total of five different occasions. Granted, occasions number three and five involve the same hotel, but there’s still the ‘registration and settling’ period which takes a period of time to accomplish. Hardly much of a help, then.

There are a few things I’ve planned to accomplish while there, but most of the ‘big goals’ were accomplished last time London was viewed. That said, there are things to be done:

• the other 95% of the British Museum which wasn’t seen due to over-dosing on the Enlightenment Gallery
  • especially important is seeing The Staffordshire Hoard display
• the other 66% of the National Gallery and all of the National Portrait Gallery that were missed last time
• possibly chunks of The Tate Modern as only the Turbine Hall was viewed in the autumn of 2008
• it might be good to see Piccadilly Circus / the Houses of Parliament / Hyde Park / the Lloyd’s Building (at night this time) in order to say one had done so
• if there’s some sort of exciting music gig I might check it out, but the following being held at Royal Albert Hall are unlikely to be seen:
  • The Who, performing Quadrophenia and other ‘classic rock’, mostly due to it being sold out and more expensive than can be comprehensible
  • The Specials, re-formed – unless you listen to Jerry Dammers – and on their 30^th Anniversary tour, because the tickets are £35 and up, plus it just doesn’t seem the right venue to be listening to those up-beat, 2-tone, dance-happy Ska-legends, really, does it…?
• Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club doesn’t have anything exciting scheduled even, which is a shame.
• there are a few pubs which haven’t been seen yet… for their historical merit, obviously.

Mostly, however, the principle thing I want to do during the few ‘off days’ while there is exercise my skills as a flâneur, do things as the mood strikes, and see what happens by chance. This is probably the best attitude to have during any travel, but one of the Major World Cities it’s easy to make lists of THINGS ONE MUST SEE WHETHER YOU HAVE TIME TO APPRECIATE THEM OR NOT. Understandable, yet not something enjoyable in the end, as all one ends up with is a piece of paper with check-marks and little memory of the things they’re marking have been accomplished.

As most of the time will be spent endlessly standing in a large, airless hotel convention room encouraging people to part with their cash in return for books, the few occasions one can do something ‘fun’ oughtn’t to be filled with too much work or ‘expected results within the following time frame’. So it won’t.

It’s certainly hoped that this is the beginning of actually making something of myself as a ‘real adult’. As I’ll be hitting 44-years-of-age the same day of the return flight, that may seem an odd statement, but it’s not. To be this old, yet never having been particularly successful in any of one’s previously chosen professions, and now be seemingly un-able to hold down ‘a real job’ (owing to varying levels of ability on a day-to-day basis), as well as equally relying on one’s partner for supporting oneself… well, it makes one rather sad, even if one wasn’t dealing with chronic and clinically diagnosed depression.

Given the amount of time one has left, plus the amount of money and time spent leading to this particular campaign of accomplishment, there’s a lot riding on this. Good or bad, it’s all up to me.

So… what’s the deelio with me then? What have I been up to? What, if anything, have I been accomplishing lately? What do I want to / will be accomplishing?

Good questions, all.

Well, let’s see… Over at Atomic Fez, I’ve been happily prepping four books for release at the end of March / beginning of April! Read about that here.

That’s… pretty much it, actually. Books are consuming all my daily life, really. Well, waking life, certainly.

Other things have occasionally taken place. Sleep, for instance. That seems to be a once-every-twenty-four-hours pass-time. Food, also, seems to be recurring, but with more frequency than sleep.

The bathroom has finally been completed – hooray! – thanks to the fact we “got a man in”. The final stumbling block to me doing the job was when I realized that today’s tiles are made slightly different a dimension than yesterday’s tiles were, so the new tiles wouldn’t fit perfectly in the space the old tiles were in. The result of that was that all of the tiles needed to come off the wall, with the probable need of repairing yet more wall-board, plus having to trim a big whack of tiles to weird shapes around the window in the wall [image, left], aaaaaand who knows how much else in the way of complications. Merely trimming the tiles to fit around the window was enough of a complication to make my head spin, so we called a guy for an estimate, accepted it, and he started last Monday.

By the time yesterday arrived, he’d re-built some of the wall at both ends of the tub, removed the inner sliding window in the wall and tiled the inside of that hole, replaced all the wall-board, removed the shower doors with a curved rod and shower curtain, replaced the shower head, and repaired some of the wall outside of the existing tile area as well as extending the tiles so they better cover the area which gets wet. End result: what feels like a brand new bathroom!

So that’s excellent.

One of the oddest things discovered during the process of readying the wall for the new tiles was the fact that cardboard was used as a construction material.

You see – and this is starting to sound like an episode of Holmes on Homes, isn’t it – the wall surface of the gypsum board was a bit different than the surface of the wallboard behind the tiles might have been, were the shower wall-board attached directly to the studs. So, behind the thinner shower wall board some 1/4″ cardboard was placed to fill the gap to maintain a flat wall surface.

No, really. That’s what someone did [see image, left]. Probably it was my (now late) Father-in-Law, as this was the sort of “good enough without spending any money” approach his work around the house took on from the mid-1980s or so.

Anyway, it’s all done properly now.

Preparations are nearly complete for attending World HorrorCon in Brighton at the end of March, and then onwards to the SF-based Odyssey 2010 (aka: “EasterCon) the next week-end. How the hell we’re going to pay for it is something we’ve not solved, but it’s nearly impossible to make a go of it selling books without proving to people they actually exist by having them on a table at a convention somewhere, so there we are. There’s a few days I don’t have to stand in a Dealers’ Room selling books, so I’m planning to hit the British Museum and the National Gallery again, plus possibly a pub or two. Look to see daily summaries here again covering that in all its glory.

So… that’s about it for me, I suppose.

What’s new with you, then?

No, this isn’t a book that I’m publishing, sorry.

Hell’s Belles is another novel in the brilliant “Brenda & Effie” series of books written by Paul Magrs (pronounced ‘Mars’, because he’s English and they do that sort of thing to confuse the rest of us). It’s set in Whitby, England, and follows two ladies who have a rather infernal connection to things hell-ish.

The other three books in the series are very much enjoyable, but the new one I know little about, save for the fact I wish very much to read it.

Enter the contest on his blog and possibly be one of the five lucky people to get a copy of the book. All you have to do is explain, in fifty words or less, why you want to visit Whitby to meet Brenda and Effie (note: trip to Whitby, UK or any other locale named “Whitby”, and/or meeting ladies named ‘Brenda’ and/or ‘Effie’ not supplied).

Go here and do it now.

Way back a few months ago you may recall a post about how the old publishing company was part of the Short List for the British Fantasy Society’s annual awards.

Earlier today (a couple of hours ago, I think), it was revealed that Tim Lebbon’s The Reach of Children won for Best Novella.

Congratulations to Tim are very-well deserved. Especially well-deserved as it was some of the finest writing I read last year, probably only second to Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes (which hadn’t been read before).

ADDED LATER:

For those who wish they had been in Nottingham when the award was announced, here’s the next best thing: VIDEO!

For an odd bit of fun, count the number of very un-hairy male heads involved in Horror Writing. No idea what this means, or which causes which to take place.

A bit odd celebrating the achievements of a publishing venture I’m no longer associated with, but the work of my fingers and mind-bones is still there in black-and-white, so there’s something. News of the following reached me awhile ago but as it’s only been announced now, I’ve kept my lips restrained.

The following books and heir contents have received short-list nominations for the 2008 British Fantasy Awards, with winners to be announced at the convention in September of this year in Nottingham, UK.

	Best Anthology: The 2ND Humdrumming Book of Horror Stories, Ian Alexander Martin, Editor
The August Derlith Fantasy Award for Best Novel: Rain Dogs, Gary McMahon
	Best Novella: The Reach of Children, Tim Lebbon
Best Artist: Lee Thompson, cover artist for The Land at the End of the Working Day, by Peter Crowther
	Best Short Fiction: “The Tobacconist’s Concession”, John Travis, appeared in The 2ND Humdrumming Book of Horror Stories Best Short Fiction: “Pinholes in Black Muslin”, Simon Strantzas, appeared in The 2ND Humdrumming Book of Horror Stories

So, get out there! Vote early & vote often via the BFS site: CLICK THIS BIT HERE ! If you are a member of the British Fantasy Society or if you attended FantasyCon ’08 last September, then you are able to cast a vote to determine the winners in each category.