Back from Sci Fi London

Back from Sci Fi London, which proved interesting, if something of a flying visit. Someone recorded me  blithering on some probably incomprehensible nonsense about the future of publishing for a podcast to be put online at some indeterminate point. Frankly, I'm bushed after all that traveling and flying.

I was only down as a last-minute shoe-in and, I suspect, a replacement for another Tor author who couldn't make it down, but given the short notice and my only recent return to these shores, that's far from surprising. But the panel on the future of publishing proved to be entertaining, and I had the opportunity to finally meet Paul Graham-Raven, renew my passing acquaintance with Tom Hunter, organiser of the Clarke Awards (whom I last spoke to, as I recall, at the 2005 Worldcon), and also meet the editor of SFX magazine.

I also ran into Gary Erskine the comic artist, who worked in Borders books in Glasgow at just about the same time I did. I think he was mildly flabbergasted to find out I'd managed to publish about five books since I'd last spoken to him.

Mainly I was down to take part in a panel and then do a 'coffee with..' event, but when you discount the publisher's representatives and what I suspect were a couple of journalists from the audience, you're left with maybe, er, ten people for us to talk to. As for the 'coffee with...', it wasn't exactly crowded, shall we say, but I did end up having a rather fascinating conversation with a film director of European provenance - it is primarily a film festival, after all. I'm thinking it's about time me and some other of my fellow authors of the fantastic north of the border put together something of our own again. We've done it in the past, and it's generally proven successful. We shall se.