Fantasycon 2018 Roundup

That’s it, it’s all over for another year. I’ve found that it takes some time to settle back into normal life after the magic and glorious chaos that is Fantasycon. I arrived home at 8pm on Sunday but I’m only just starting to feel that my head is back home.

My weekend kicked off by participating in a panel on Crowdfunding and Publishing with Allen Stroud and George Sandison. It was a great panel and I’ll be sure to pick both of their brains for more crowdfunding tips when I prepare to launch Ashael Falling with Unbound, hopefully before the turn of the year.

Then it was a quick whizz around the dealers room (so many great books on offer as well as jewellery, art, clothing …) before meeting with the rest of the committee for a quick catch up then on to the Flash Fiction Death Matches panel with Gillian Redfearn which was absolutely hilarious. I hope she does it again next year.

The rest of the evening was spent catching up with friends.

Saturday saw me in the first reading slot of the day where I gave the first reading from Petra MacDonald and the Queen of the Fae. I also got to meet the lovely Steven Poore face-to-face after being online pals for the last year, as well as Adele Wearing of Fox Spirit, my friend for a couple of years and now also my publisher.

Most of the day was spent bouncing from panel, to reading room, to chatting with friends, old and new. I spoke on a Worldbuilding panel where I added several more books to my reading list, and then a Women in Genre Fiction panel with some truly knowledgeable people who were also charming and welcoming.

Sunday saw the BFS AGM and my first time reporting to the membership in my role as Horizons editor. The BFS is going from strength to strength and I’m very glad to be a part of that journey. Sunday also saw great delight at the announcement that Fantasycon 2019 will be in Glasgow. I couldn’t be happier.

This was a really fantastic event. The thing that struck me most over the course of the weekend was how much I felt like I belonged. Like many others have expressed over the last few days, I am ordinarily a bit awkward, a bit quiet and unsure of myself. I didn’t feel like that for even a moment at Fantasycon. I felt welcome, included. I felt at home.

Which brings me to the one sad thing about my weekend - there just wasn’t enough time to speak to everyone I had hoped to see. Too many people I was only able to say a quick hello to in passing and too many that I missed altogether. I guess for the moment, email and social media will have to serve as adequate contact until we all come together again next year.

Take care, my friends. My tribe.