E________ first draft, 51,000 words
Ukraine continues to play havoc with my sense of time. I knew I was a little late with my blog, but it’s been a shock to discover I was last here a month ago. I am definitely losing it!
Anyway, I am super excited to be going to my first live, in person book event as an author. I will also be going home for the first time in three years, so I am super, super excited.
The cause of all this super excitement is Edinburgh, Scotland’s Cymera Festival, which I think is Britain’s only book festival exclusively devoted to SF, Fantasy and Horror. I’m a little vague on the difference between a book festival and a convention, but I think the main one is that you have to pay for a convention by the day, whereas you pay for a festival by the event. If you’re only interested in a couple of panels, for instance, a book festival will save you a ton of money because those are the only ones you need to pay for.
The festival starts on Friday, June 3 and runs through Sunday, June 5. It’s a hybrid event (one of the few positives to come out of our ongoing plague) so, if you can’t physically make it to Edinburgh, you can still attend via Zoom. But it also allows authors who wouldn’t otherwise be able to get there, like the legendary John Scalzi, for instance, to put in an appearance. Totally stoked to watch that one!
My own panel is at 4pm BST/11am EDT and is called Ad Astra. Presumably because the focus of the panel is exploration science fiction. I will be appearing with Scottish authors Ken MacLeod and Harry Josephine Giles. I have been a huge fan of Ken MacLeod’s since stumbling across The Cassini Division back in the day. And his latest, Beyond the Hallowed Sky, is partly premised on what might happen if the theory of relativity turns out to be a teeny bit different than we presently think it is. It also sent me down a Wikipedia rabbit hole in search of Cherenkov radiation, but that’s another story – and one far less interesting than Ken’s. I haven’t yet had an opportunity to read Harry Josephine Giles’s Deep Wheel Orcadia yet because obtaining a hard copy here in the States has proved to be difficult. It looks like I will have to get the e-book version, which I have resisted so far. For a sci-fi writer, I am horribly old fashioned. I like books. For some reason (and it may be a sheer lack of practice) I never seem to remember what I read on an e-book, which would be a shame, because Deep Wheel Orcadia is a verse novel, which will be a first for me. Looking forward to it!
Jo Fletcher, my British publisher has also brokered an introduction to Stephen Cox, so I know at least one person who will talk to me! He is the author of Our Child of the Stars and Our Child of Two Worlds, and I am looking forward to his panel Kith and Kin, which takes place on Sunday at 3pm BST/10am EDT.
But first, I have to get to Edinburgh. I’m driving there from Heathrow. Here’s hoping I haven’t forgotten how to use a manual/stick-shift. On the “right” side of the road.