I meant to get to this last week, but just had too much going on. Anyway, here it is: a final round up of the other fun events and panels I attended, and a few notes from each.

Bad Story, No Bikkie

Just to prove that some published writing should never have made it past the editor.

Along with some (excruciating) readings, this event centred around Thog Ping-Pong

‘What?’ I hear you cry.

Yes, so did I before attending this hysterical event that I wish I could share in full with you, but you had to be there.

Two contestants, several boxes of pieces of folded paper with quotations under different categories (body parts, naughty bits, pseudo science…you get the idea), and a pile of cookies for the winner, decided by who could read their chosen quotes to the end without corpsing.

I offer you a small sample:

“He stood tall; taller than he usually was.”

“It was a Victorian shilling, worth five pennies in its day.”

“Steam rose from the five bodies in the room, as if each person was percolating.”

Need I say more?

World Building Workshop

In complete contrast, while this was also fun (picture a world built by a committee), it also made me think. When we talk of world building, we (I) usually think of social structure. Well in this workshop, we collectively built a world from conception upward, asking  such pertinent questions as:

• Is the world round or flat?
• How many moons, suns, rings does it have?
• How about axial tilt and day length?
• Temperature?
• Seasons?
• Water?
• Location/time in the galaxy?
• Size of the planet and gravity? (If heavy, no flying creatures unless inflatable!)
• Atmosphere – contents and density?
• Land masses/seas?
• Species – intelligent or not?
• Do they compete for resources or have a symbiotic relationship?
• How many genders, and what reproductive strategies?
• Language/s?
• Religion?
• Technology or magic?

At the end here, we started to get into the points I would usually consider, but there is one heck of a lot before that that I might think about another time, when constructing a world from scratch.

Other delights

– included a panel on fairies, (with Jim Butcher admitting that his first fairy was Disney’s Tinkerbell, leading to him being somewhat startled when he discovered Narnia and evil fairies), a discussion about Doctor Who, and if he would ever re-generate in female form (the opinion was yes, but only if it was the right actress), and the gloriously named: ‘Not for the Squeamish’, which saw Seanan McGuire revelling in being on a panel with real life doctors who had ghoulish tales to tell.

I also did (gulp) my first video interview which is due to be released soon on The SciFi Fantasy Network, a great new professional site, for which I recently wrote an article on horses in fantasy – post on that coming up shortly too. I’ve just watched the first of their series of interviews, and now I’m thinking of all the things I should have said, but didn’t.

Ah well, next time…