Wednesday, August 6, 2014

What Am I Doing At Geekfest?

It's nearly time for the Nineworlds Geekfest con! Last year was the first time this London-based convention - celebrating all things geeky - ran, and it was a fabulous event. This year sees it a bit more streamlined, but with just as packed a schedule, and I have no doubt it will be just as much fun.

Saturday I and other members of the T Party writers' group will be running an ideas-generating workshop entitled 'How to Beat Writers' Block'. This will be a series of exercises designed to trigger story ideas. Don't really want to say much about it at this stage (spoilers!) but we hope it will inspire people to go away and start writing something. In order for this to work we've limited it to 30 people so if you are attending the Con and fancy it, turn up early - it's on at 3:15 pm in the County A room.

After that I hope I get a chance to catch some panels before I am appearing on one myself - the intriguingly-entitled 'Noir - the Dirty Streets of Fiction' panel at 6:15 pm in County C&D. The only description we've been given of this is a quote from Raymond Chandler: "it seemed like a nice neighbourhood to have bad habits in". I've been thinking about this since I was asked to do the panel and I'm really looking forward to it. With noir finding its way into so many other genres, I think I can find a lot to say on this subject - assuming I don't get tongue-tied from the impressive line-up of Serious Writers on this panel (which include John Connolly, Will Hill, Daniel Polansky and Francis Knight).

I am also quite impressed with the Con's online schedule app, which not only allows each Con-goer to highlight individual sessions to create their own personal programme, but allows participants to see all of their activities all at once (here's mine).

There's also going to be a table for independent authors and small presses in the dealer room, so I shall take along a pile of SOUL SCREAMS to (hopefully) sell.

If you're at Geekfest do come and say hello - it's going to be a Con to remember.

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