Of Grief and Griefcom: Part 2

To briefly recap Part 1:  late last year I sold a story, A Shadow Play, to a magazine called Transfusion, owned by an outfit named Bleeding Heart Publications.  A number of months  passed, in which I asked for the money I was owed for it quite a number of times and was met with a variety of excuses and unfulfilled promises, until, six months after I should have been paid, I explained that if the amount wasn't in my account by the end of that week then I'd pass the matter to the SFWA's Griefcom team.  The money didn't arrive.  I got in touch with Griefcom.

Now, in retrospect I'm not sure what I was expecting ... possibly ninja lawyers to dive through the windows in a shower of glass and contract clauses.  What I hadn't mentally taken into account and in retrospect seems obvious is that Griefcom is a service provided by busy people with many other important things that they could be doing, who are giving up their time in order to help their fellow writers be treated less crappily.  Thus things got off to a slowish start, and it was a little while before I got a response to my request.  Then my designated liaison, Eric, asked for full details of what had been said so far and of my contract with Bleeding Heart, so that it was a while longer yet before we got to the point of his actually get in touch with BH's director and co-founder Gordon Ross.

More time passed.  Eric got in touch to tell me he'd finally heard from Gordon, who'd said that he couldn't discuss the situation with Eric unless he was sure Eric was properly authorized by me to do so.  This seemed like obvious prevarication, since I'd told Gordon in my last e-mail that someone from Griefcom would be in touch and then, hey presto!, someone from Griefcom had been in touch.  But Eric took it in his stride, drafting a simple form e-mail I could send to say that, yes, I did indeed authorize him to act on my behalf.

A couple of more weeks more went by and Eric got in touch once more, to say that Gordon was willing to settle up the monies owed via wire transfer, and could I discuss this with my bank?  Having only heard of wire transfers from nineteen-forties movies, I was dubious, and sure enough the guy in Santander - obscure, regional banking chain that it is! - had never heard of such a thing.  But he guessed it might be what was now an International Money Transfer, and those I knew how to do.  I sent Eric all the relevant details and doubtfully crossed my fingers.

We were at the end of June by now.  A week later Eric told me that Gordon had promised payment for that week.  A week later and no payment had arrived - and a week after that, nothing still.  Eric queried once more and told me that Gordon had told him I'd been "inadvertently left off" their payment run.  I couple of days later Gordon claimed that the money would be in my account on that Tuesday.  It wasn't.  But when I mentioned this to Eric the next day, he told me Gordon had also been in touch, to say that his bank wasn't accepting my Sort Code.  Eric confirmed that the details were correct - and later that day, just under nine months and more e-mails and Facebook messages than I care to count after my story was published, my money arrived.

I never did get my contributor copy, though.

Now it's entirely possible that Bleeding Heart had always intended to pay me.  It's possible that, at worst, settling their debt to me was just low on their list of priorities and they kept getting distracted by shiny things and loud noises.  It's entirely conceivable that there were valid reasons why they couldn't pay via Paypal, as just about every other publisher in the world does, and conceivable too that they had reasons for not explaining those reasons to me, or ever giving the slightest explanation of why they hadn't paid.  All of those things are possible, if unlikely in aggregate.  But here's the thing: I don't care.  Not the slightest bit do I care.  And there's no reason at all that I should care.  Because my relationship with them was as a craftsman selling a product, and the terms of our business arrangement were clearly agreed in the contract we both signed, and that, in the end, has to be where the buck stops with these things.

Which isn't to suggest that as a writer you should be needlessly a jerk about this stuff.  Publishers are people and sometimes people have problems, and sometimes those problems are of cash-flow nature, and not everyone is one hundred percent organised all the time, and if you're selling your work then sometimes difficulties or delays will inevitably arise.  If people play straight with you then a degree of tolerance is clearly a good thing, and much more likely to produce results than wading in with threats and shouty rage.

Then there are the times when people jerk you around for no clear reason, ignore your e-mails,  mislead and obfuscate and keep it up for month upon month, with no clear end in sight ... and on those rare occasions, a service like Griefcom can be an absolute goddamned blessing.  I'm glad they were there to fight my corner, and even more glad that they did such an effective job of it.  And I really, really hope I never need to call on them again.

Of Grief and Griefcom: Part 1

I said a while back that part of my plan for this year was to start fighting my corner a little harder and to be more proactive in the face of injustice.  But ever since I began writing for money there was one fight I had no desire to fight, that I dreaded ever becoming an issue, and that was trying to get payment out of a publisher who wasn't inclined to pay.

It's not a situation you want to find yourself in, not in any line of work, and perhaps it's that little bit worse when it comes to the publishing industry, where remuneration often seems to be viewed as more a perk than a contractual right.  I think on the whole that I've been fortunate, in that I went for seven years without ever having a publisher downright refuse or otherwise seriously neglect to cough up monies owed.  (The one time it did happen it was for a measly ten dollars and I just didn't have the heart to kick up a fuss over the price of a (London) pint.)  But luck only lasts so long, and I knew it was a problem that was bound to come up sooner or later.

Which it finally did when I sold my story A Shadow Play to - at that time - new outfit Bleeding Heart Publications' literary magazine Transfusion.  It's always a risk selling to untried markets, especially when they're as cagey about what they pay as this lot were.  But they were enthusiastic about the story, it meant getting a piece that I liked a lot out into the world, and it turned out that the money was good: $100 for just over 800 words.  They promised payment within a month of publication and were quick to get a contract over, which looked entirely kosher.

Me, but not literally.

This was in August and September of last year, and it didn't take long for things to start going suspiciously wrong.  The issue with A Shadow Play in came out in October, I think, and when December came around and I hadn't been paid or received my contributor copy, or even been told that the issue was out, I sent a polite e-mail with a simple form invoice attached.  (Invoicing was something I'd already decided I'd do when payment was late, to try and subtly enforce the point that this was both my profession and my livelihood.)

When two weeks passed and I'd had no response I resent the invoice.  This time I got an undeliverable receipt back - and the alarm bells that had until then been ringing softly began to clang.  Had Bleeding Heart vanished and not felt the need to settle their debts?  There was nothing useful on their website, but when I checked their Facebook page they were still posting, which gave me the idea of sending them a note via Facebook.  This time I did get an answer, explaining that my "honorarium" would be paid when my contributor copy was shipped "at the beginning of the year." 

A rather vague term that, so I waited until early February before I checked again.  This time I was told that my issue and payment had been mailed.  Curious as to how my payment had been mailed (US cheques being both difficult and expensive to cash in the UK) I suggested Paypal as a possible alternative, and was told that payment was via a money order and that Bleeding Heart weren't able to pay by PayPal.  By this point those alarm bells were positively clattering, and I wasn't surprised when neither payment nor issue arrived.  I gave it another month-and-a-bit and then wrote again, once more via Facebook since that seemed to be the only thing that worked, explaining that nothing had turned up and asking if I might be paid by some other means, like PayPal as I'd suggested.  Within a week I'd had an apology and assurance that another contributor copy and payment by some other means would be arranged.

Two weeks later and I hadn't heard anything.  I queried again and got no reply.  By this point it was abundantly clear that I was dealing with people who, at best, did not consider honouring their contractual agreements to pay writers to be a high priority.  So I gave it one more week and then sent the following, both via Facebook and to every e-mail I could find online for Bleeding Heart or had had any communication from:  

"I'm writing to you once again to ask that you pay me the $100 you owe for the use of my story "A Shadow Play" in Transfusion issue #2.

I was promised payment with 30 days of the issue going to print; that makes it now five months overdue. This will be the sixth time I've had to query, and it's both frustrating and embarrassing to have to keep asking you for this money.

My PayPal account is under [PayPal account details redacted!].  Please can you transfer my payment by the end of this week. If I haven't received it by then I will be passing the matter to the SFWA's legal team* for investigation."

This time I got a response: a same-day response in fact, and from someone I hadn't dealt with previously, an individual named Gordon Ross whom the Bleeding Heart website listed as both director and co-founder.  Gordon's somewhat terse reply said, "Apologies for the delay, we will get it sorted in the week or 2."

I wrote back saying that, as per my e-mail, a week or two would be too late, and got a faintly apologetic reply suggesting that "threatening legal action ... will not speed up the process."  I explained that I wasn't threatening legal action and what exactly the SFWA's Griefcom service was, and suggested that Bleeding Heart had already had ample time to settle the debt, and in fact could have done it in the time it had taken for us to have that particular conversation.  I didn't get a reply.  So five days later, as the night that I'd given as a deadline drew to a close with no payment and no convincing sign of impending payment, I sent Gordon one more e-mail, explaining that I'd be referring the issue to Griefcom as I'd said I would.  Which was exactly what I did the next morning.

Next: More Grief!  Griefcom!  Explosions!**

* Not a particularly accurate representation of Griefcom as it turned out, and I should probably have done my research first, but it does sound impressive.

** Explosions may be of a metaphorical nature, or else an outright fib.

Nine Worlds 2014: Part 2

Part of my plan for Nine Worlds was that I'd make a proper go of the Saturday, according to the logic that the middle day of a convention is invariably the one most worth devoting your energies to.  This was why I'd gone to bed at a reasonable time the night before and this was why I dragged myself out of bed at an entirely sensible nine o'clock in the morning, having slept for precisely twelve minutes due to my misguided attempt to save money by staying in the cheapest place I could find.  So up I got and out I went, arriving just in time for the first program slot. I picked a lecture on Temporal Lobes and Spiritual Experiences, which turned out to be not such a great start: a rather dull and aimless take on an interesting subject.  Not to be deterred, I used the opportunity to wade through the schedule (of which there remained an insane eleven pages worth) and then left half way through and milled until the next slot.  I tried for Writing the Other, which turned out to be advance booking only, despite the program saying nothing of the sort.  In vague desperation, I wandered into Policing the Net, mostly because it was next-door.  Not a bad choice as it proved; Jane Fae offered some intriguing food for thought on the topic of - yes - policing the net, and if I didn't agree with most of her conclusions, at least it was interesting to hear them.

Annie Catling, Emma Newman, Labyrinth, my favourite Nine Worlds photo.

For the first of the afternoon slots there was nothing I was terribly excited about, so I took a stab at If A Woman Was Cast As the Doctor from the Doctor Who thread, mostly because Adrian Tchaikovsky was a panelist.  Having quite enjoyed it for forty-five minutes I began to realise that I'm not that interested in Doctor Who, and since everyone on the panel agreed on every front - yes we need a female Doctor, yes the sooner the better, yes a female Doctor would be best served by a female show-runner - I felt it lost focus a bit in the last half hour.  (I'm not entirely sold on seventy-five minute panel slots.)

By this point I was eager for fresh air and food.  So I wandered back to the nearby pub and ordered lunch, which led to me somehow getting embroiled in a plot by the bar staff to clingfilm the chef's car and after that to a half hour's reading about feral children.   Fortunately at that point Dan came to join me and together we wandered back to catch the Bechdel Test panel - which turned out to be full.  This time at least we were allowed to sit in the corridor and listen, and it proved to be a solid debate, not to mention one I really wished I'd been a part of.

Fortunately I was on the Blurred Lines: Boycotting and Buying In panel that followed, with Dan Hart, Melissa T and my good friend and one-time comics dealer Alasdair Stuart, and, like all my panels really, it turned out to be a lot of fun.  Perhaps in subconscious response to the lack of vitriol on the Doctor Who panel I decided to play devil's advocate, and then quickly found myself questioning my own ethical stance; but it all ended up okay because I got to plug Kathryn Immonen's entirely marvelous Journey into Mystery run.

My plan from that point onward had basically involved passing the remainder of the night and a good proportion of the morning in the bar, something I felt I'd earned after being so sensible the night before.  However I'd run into my friend Flick in the Bechdel Test panel and she'd persuaded me that we should team up and ace the film quiz later than night.  Sadly the quiz turned out not to be a quiz at all but some sort of ... thing ... full of squeeing and shouting and throwing of stuff.  I managed about ten minutes and then made my excuses (which I seem to remember were, "this is my idea of hell"), and fled to - you guessed it! - the bar.  Fortunately Flick chose to follow and we hurriedly invented our own film quiz, which mostly revolved around Disney movies.

Having finally drifted back to my guest house sometime after three in the morning, I didn't do quite so well at getting up the next morning and missed the first slot, but that was okay because there was nothing I'd wanted to go to anyway.  There were a few things I fancied in the late morning slot but nothing that quite managed to outweigh my hangover, so in the end it was half one and the Gamification of Everything lecture that turned out to be the proper beginning of my last day.  It was interesting in that gamification's a fascinating topic, but disappointing in that it seemed to be geared towards a corporate audience that Nine Worlds clearly wasn't.

At any rate it did a good job of passing the time until quarter past three and my last panel, More Than Mild Peril, a discussion on young adults and children in comics with (deep breath) Louie Stowell, Kate McAlpine, Emma Vieceli, Malin Ryden, Melissa T, Heather Wickson, Nat Wilkinson and Charlotte Geater.  Of everything I was doing this was the one I'd been most nervous about, because there were nine of us on there and I couldn't imagine how a panel could work with that many people.  But it did, and it did really well, and in fact it turned out to be one of the best panels I've ever been on; the presence of a couple of young adults in the debate on what's interesting or appropriate for young adults was a stroke of brilliance.  All told it was a great note to end my Nine Worlds experience on.

Now, reading over what I've written I'm aware that it sounds like I didn't have such a great time and that I wasn't overwhelmed by the content I experienced, and thinking about it, I guess both of those things are true.  But they're not really a criticism of Nine Worlds, for two reasons: first, as I said in part 1, I had some personal stuff going that somewhat dampened my enjoyment, and second because, more than any other UK convention out there, Nine Worlds is what you make of it.  It offers an abundance, even an overabundance of content, and then challenges you to do with it what you will.  And not all of it's brilliant, and definitely not all of it's for everyone, but that's okay, because there's just so damn much.  Nine Worlds takes effort, but it also rewards it.

So I guess what I'm saying is, it wasn't Nine Worlds that failed but me.  I definitely wish I'd devoted more time to the Comics strand; looking back over the program there are a few others things I can't believe I didn't manage to find time for.

Oh well!  Next year I'll do better.

Nine Worlds 2014: Part 1

I mentioned in my last post that, although I'd definitely had a mostly-good time, I wasn't entirely sure how I felt about my Nine Worlds experience.  A couple of days on and I'm clearer, though perhaps still not entirely there.  Part of the problem, I think, is that I was just expecting too damn much - the excellence of last year but with the rough edges shaved off, basically - and that was not entirely reasonable.  Part of the problem, too, was that there was some last-minute personal stuff that made the whole experience a bit more stressful that it might have been.  However with a couple of day's perspective I suspect that the remaining part is that it was just the teeniest bit disappointing; probably as good as last year's Con, which lest we forget was pretty damn great, but without those refinements to the formula I'd hoped the intervening year might have produced.

Now out, Germany.

Anyway, I'm preempting myself here, so maybe I should just talk about what actually went on instead.  The day got off to a pretty good start when I traveled from Leeds to London on a freebie first class ticket that East Coast had given me to apologize for once making me two and a half hours late, and I arrived in King's Cross with a proper breakfast in me and my socialist ideals somewhat tarnished.  From there I made a brief trip up the Northern line to visit my agents, Zeno, who were holding some copies of the just-out paperback release of the German edition of Giant Thief for me.  Then, with yet more books in my rucksack - I think I was up to sixteen by this point - I headed back south and picked up the Piccadilly Line for Heathrow.  From there I hurried to Nine Worlds, checked in, rushed on to my guest house, checked in there too, had a quick and much needed shower and dropped off my bag and headed back to the conference hotel - and then kept going, to grab a sandwich from the nearby garage - and finally, finally, properly arrived at Nine Worlds at somewhere around three o'clock.

Thus began a rather irritating trend that would end up being one of my few gripes with the convention, as I dashed to the Archeological World-building talk only to be turned away because the room was full.  (In the end this happened three times over the course of the weekend; as Oscar Wilde famously said, to misjudge the audience size for one panel may be regarded as a misfortune; to misjudge three looks like carelessness.)  Oh and hey, let's get most of the grumbling out of the way right here, shall we?  As someone who believes in sustainability, not to mention not carrying around loads of crap I don't want, I really don't want a plastic carrier bag full of books I'll never read and adverts and booklets and little plastic tokens that don't look even slightly recyclable.  Seriously, I get that everyone does this, Nine Worlds, but you guys know better.  And in fact, what with the millions of plastic cups floating about and a few other things, things were pretty crummy on the giving-the-slightest-crap-about-the-environment front.  Please will someone in the Con scene set a precedent for not getting this so wrong?  And since no one else seems even close to trying, please could it be Nine Worlds?

Okay, done grumbling!  (Well, mostly.)  So, denied enlightenment on the Archeological World-building front, I gave in to my baser Con-going instincts and retired to the bar to meet my friend and bestselling-author-to-be Dan Scrivener, and sometime after that my friend Jobeda Ali.  And both of them were nice enough to buy my drinks, which - not being an oil baron - I would otherwise have struggled to afford.  (Damn it!  Okay, now I'm done.  For this post anyway.)

All of this afternoon drinking was in fact just psychological preparation for early that evening, when came my third-ever stab at panel moderating: the Writing Trans-Media panel.  This time around, however, what with the whole 'writing being the day job' thing, I had one advantage I'd never had in the past: I was shockingly over-prepared.  I mean, 'two pages of questions with sub-questions, having researched my panelists and even prepared specific questions for them' over-prepared.  And having done it that way once I'm convinced it's the way to go in future, because once we got started I wasn't a bit nervous, things went unexpectedly brilliantly, and my panelists - Barry Nugent, Anna Caltabiano, Simon Guerrier and Adam Christopher - were every one of them completely great.  If you happen to read this, thank you everyone, you made a scary thing painless to the point of being actual fun.

After that, of course, it was back to the bar. This being my third Con near Heathrow and my second in that particular hotel, I now know the area distressingly well, so I dragged Dan to a half-decent pub nearby and then back to the hotel bar, where we eventually ran into Adrian Tchaikovsky, Ian Whates and - it being a bar - lots of other people.  But because I was determined to learn the lessons of all the conventions I've made a hash of in the past, I retired at the entirely sensible hour of midnight to my guest house cell.  (I mean this in the monastic rather than the prison sense.  It was spartan, but there were no bars on the windows.)

Thus ended Friday.  Next: Saturday!  Sunday!  Less griping!  More drinking!

Short Fiction News, Mid-2014

I'm currently on the train back from Nine Worlds, which was for the most part a lot of fun, but which I'm at this precise moment too tired, hungover, and not-quite-sure-of-exactly-what-I-thought to try and blog about.  So here's one I prepared earlier...

I remember writing quite a grumbly post when I got my first short story acceptance of 2014, that being Twitcher to the fine folks at Pseudopod, thanks to the fact that it came in goddamn May and four and a bit months is a fair while to go without a sale.  (In fact it had been quite a bit more than that because the tail end of 2013 hadn't been exactly brilliant either.)  Well, it's August now and I'm grumbling substantially less.  In fact if things were to keep on like the last couple of months then I'd be happy indeed ... which of course they probably won't, so I'd better get my positivism in while I can:

- First up I sold Twilight For the Nightingale, the story I'd been unhelpfully referring to as my homoerotic supervillain story, to Resurrection House's forthcoming XIII anthology.  I'm hopeful that this will be one of those rare perfect pairings of story and market, because it sounds like it's going to be a terrifically bonkers book.  I mean, you know when editors normally say they want something a bit like Neil Gaiman or whatever?  Mark Teppo name-checked Kafka, Gene Wolfe, Darren Aronofsky and David Lynch.  I'm really looking forward to getting my hands on this one.

- Out of the blue I got some good news, not to mention a little unexpected cash, when Kat Rocha of 01 Publishing got in touch to say that the previously e-book only Whispers From the Abyss collection, which includes my My Friend Fishfinger By Daisy, Age 7, had done well enough to warrant a print edition.  As I've noted before now, this was a terrific little collection and deserves to do well.  I've since discovered that 01 have run a Kickstarter for the project, which has finished now but remains well worth checking out for its fantastic trailer.  If I wasn't due two copies as a contributor then I suspect this would have been the first Kickstarter I got actively involved with, because I want me a Star Spawn poster something bad.

- Soon after that I got my quickest ever acceptance, when relatively new outfit Eldritch Press got back to me within four hours to say that they'd like to take my story Br(other) for their upcoming Our World of Horror anthology.  I genuinely assumed this was some sort of mistake until the contract came through, because four hours.  That's barely even a real amount of time.  I mean, I've spent that long in the shower before now.  Anyway, if the cover art is anything to go by then this one is going by both great and seriously warped. 

- I realised that I might as well send one of the short comic scripts I've been sitting on for years to Futurequake, who published a couple of my early efforts in that department a few years back.  The one I opted for was a story called Conservationists,which I'm hopeful may be the only occasion of anyone telling an alien invasion story through the eyes of an urban fox.  It's a frankly insane, completely dialogue-free bit of work, and I can't wait to see what an artist makes of it.

- Last but not least, and unusually up to the minute in that I only found out three hours ago, but Jonathan Green, official Nicest Man in Fantasy (and yet, paradoxically, the world's meanest Just a Minute player), let me know that he'll be using my The Shark in the Heart for his forthcoming-next-year-from-Snow Books anthology Sharkpunk. 

Because yes, apparently, now that's a thing.

So there we go.  I'm still way behind on my target for this year, which should theoretically be going really well due to all the additional time I have and in fact is going worse than last year, when I had hardly any time at all.  But a couple of good months surely does take the edge off, and who knows?  There may yet come another surge of goodnewsery before the year is out.

Nine Worlds Schedule 2014

So you're going to be at Nine Worlds this weekend, right?  Of course you are.  If it's anything like last year's debut, it promises to be the Convention event of the year.  And even if it isn't it should be pretty great, what with more programming than approximately eleven normal conventions.

Unusually for me, I'm pretty much going along for the whole thing, from Friday lunchtime onwards.  Below is my panel schedule.  I'm also moderating that first panel on the Friday evening, which threatens to be something of a graveyard shift slot, so if you happen to find yourself with nothing else to do then please do turn up to give your support and ask some transmedia-related questions:

• FRIDAY 8th AUGUST, 6.45pm - 8.00pm 

• Writing Transmedia: ideas that cross formats and boundaries.  Because a story can also be an app, computer game, v-log, fanvid, web series, docu-drama, interactive e-book, diary comic, inter-sensory experience or any other format currently existing or yet to exist not listed here. Kind of against the spirit of the thing, if you ask us. Guess you'll just have to go to it in person.  With, Barry Nugent, Anna Caltabiano, Simon Guerrier, Adam Christopher 

•  SATURDAY 9th AUGUST, 6.45pm - 8.00pm

• Blurred Lines: boycotting & buying in.   What's a fan to do when the people responsible for a comic you love do things you hate? We try to plumb the ethical minefield of purchase-as-support.  With, Dan Hart, Melissa T, Alasdair Stuart, Hazel Robinson

• SUNDAY 10th AUGUST 3.15pm - 4.30pm

• More-Than-Mild Peril: beyond sidekicks.  Young adults and children in comics: from fridges to firefights, legacy, parents and representation.  With, Louie Stowell, Kate McAlpine, Emma Vieceli, Malin Ryden, Melissa T, Heather Wickson, David Tallerman, Nat Wilkinson, Charlotte Geater

Fantastical and Super Relaxed in York

It's been all of an age since I last attended any kind of writing and / or genre-related do in York, and a large part of the reason for that - as organizer of the joint BFS / BSFA / Super Relaxed Fantasy Club event that took place there yesterday, Alex Bardy, was quick to point out - is that there hardly ever are any these days.

No worlds were harmed during this event.

And also, in fairness, that I haven't lived within visiting distance of York in about five years.

But mainly that first thing.  Because it's a fact that where in London you can't step out of your door without tripping over an author reading or a book signing or a convention, here in the savage north it's quite possible to go for whole years without anyone feeling the need to put on any sort of get-together for genre fans.

It's a good thing, then, that Alex took it upon himself to get just such an event together, and a better thing that it turned out really well.  Particularly good for me I suppose, because - along with Janine Ashbless - I was one of the two authors doing readings and answering questions, having been asked to fill in when Adrian Tchaikovsky had to choose between visiting York and Spain.

Janine was on first and did a terrific reading from her forthcoming novel Cover Him With Darkness, sneakily finishing at the point where things were just about to get raunchy.  Then there was a bit of a Q&A and a brief break and I was up, reading a new(ish) and thus far unpublished short story titled Witch House. 

(Side note: it's really tough picking something to read when you don't exactly know the prospective make-up of your audience, even when you've written somewhere around a hundred short stories.  I mean, eliminate everything that's too long or too short, too old, too weird or too sweary (because who knows if someone's going to bring their five year old?) and you suddenly realise you aren't left with a whole hell of a lot.)

Anyway, I haven't done a great number of readings and never to quite so large a group, there being about twenty five of us gathered by this point, and so was a wee bit nervous.  A couple of pints helped, but also didn't, in that I'm hopeless with fizzy alcoholic beverages and kept wanting to pee.  But it seemed to go well enough in the end, though I'm yet to master that thing whereby you read and look at your audience at the same time because that's clearly impossible.

All told, though, everyone seemed to have a good time.  And I succeeded in not winning anything in the raffle, despite there being about as many prizes as people and my picking fifty percent of the tickets - which is actually a good thing because all of the prizes were books and my house is already on the verge of critical mass with those.  So well done to Alex for putting the thing together, for finding an excellent venue and for going to so much effort to make sure that people actually attended.  I'm already looking forward to the next one, which may or may not be timed to coincide with this year's FantasyCon.