Month: December 2014
Wintry Manifestations
As winter draws in, the wild Frances moults its cool summer coat, and grows a new (indistinguishably similar) winter coat. Although shy, it can still sometimes be sighted in urban areas by the diligent Frances-spotter.
Ahem.
On December 10th, I visited Goldsmiths College, London University in order to give a guest seminar for the students of the Creative Writing MA course.
The subject was “strange fictions”, a very broad topic, so I focussed upon a few pitfalls and thoughts for the fantasy writer, with reference to my own work and the books that had inspired me. Many thanks to Maura Dooley for inviting me, and to the students for asking such erudite and well-considered questions!
Swanshurst School‘s second Year 7 Literary Festival was held on 15th December. (It’s apparently the largest girls’ school in Europe, and has a rather splendid model of the solar system spread out across the grounds.)
Aside from myself, the guests included Sally Nicholls, Katrice Horsley, Spoz, Leila Rasheed, Bali Rai, Tony de Saulles, Jodi Anne Bickley and Helen Monks. There were creative writing workshops, storytelling sessions, art classes that produced gleeful pictures of dead cartoon dogs and elephant poo, chocolate-themed rapping, author talks and poetry.
I gave two author presentations and one creative writing workshop. There were some fine character ideas, including a Medusa whose dearly loved family had been killed by humans, and who managed to get her revenge after achieving world domination. (Always nice to see old stories turned around and seen from a new perspective.)
Congratulations to Gareth Beniston, Tracy and the other school librarians on organising such an exciting and varied event. A big thank you also to Ella and Mia for looking after me during my visit!
Kids Lit Quiz National Final 2014
This was my third Kids Lit Quiz National Final, and as usual I had the easy, cushy job of mascot. This year I was mascot-author to two teams. One was King Edward VI Grammar School (as luck would have it I was wearing red and black, and thus was colour-coordinated with their uniforms). The other was Hexham Middle School, who were looking surprisingly chipper despite having got up before 5am in order to travel down for the event. Both teams scored well, and I hope they’re thoroughly proud of themselves.
Here is the winning team from Litcham School, with guest of honour Anthony Horowitz, and quizmaster Wayne Mills in his very fine hat.
Erymsted School came second, an impressive feat given that they arrived late and missed the first round.
Third place went to Comberton School, after a tense ‘sudden death’ round to resolve a three-way tie.
Afterwards there was cake.
Many thanks to everybody who organised the event, and congratulations to all the teams!
FantasyCon 2014
After the impressive vastness of Loncon3 and the London Film and Comic Con, FantasyCon proved to be smaller and more relaxed, with a friendly, approachable atmosphere. It was held in the rather attractive Royal York Hotel, next to York’s railway station.
My first panel was “Gentlemen Thieves, Lovable Pirates and Sexy Tricksters”, wittily moderated by James Barclay, and my co-panelists were Joanne Harris, Kim Lakin-Smith, Libby McGuigan and David Tallerman. We discussed the glorification of criminals, whether they were a gender slant in their depiction, the appeal of subversion and rebellion, and whether sympathic crooks needed to have potential for redemption. A good, thorough description of the panel can be found here.
Later that day, I appeared with Gollancz editor Gillian Redfearn, Tom Pollock, James Oswald, and Joanne Hall in the panel “The Chosen One”. Personally, I’m wildly allergic to Chosen Ones in fiction, and said so at some length. The conversation touched on the inspirational effect of such characters, the class implications of notions of ‘birthright’, the question of who the Chosen One was chosen by, and the fact that quite a lot of ‘Chosen Ones’ seemed to be white males. Joanne Hall has a description of the panel here.
(I realised afterwards that I had neglected to embarrass Tom Pollock by mentioning Filius Viae from Tom’s excellent The City’s Son – both a ‘ Chosen One’ and a really interesting subversion of the trope.)
In the evening, I competed in a live, SF-and-books-themed game of ‘Just a Minute’, skilfully compered by Paul Cornell. Scores were read out by Tea and Jeopardy‘s butler extraordinaire, Latimer (AKA Pete Newman). My fellow contestants were Gillian Redfearn, Kate Elliot and Stephen Gallagher, and we had proper buzzers that buzzed and lit up.
I’d never played it before, and hadn’t predicted how much fun it would be. Several times contestants fell prey to ‘hesitation’ because they or the audience were laughing too much. I learnt two other things as well. 1) I am capable of prescient challenges. 2) Audiences like it if you offer to kill them all.
Stephen Gallagher was victorious, and I came second (with Gillian Redfearn barely a step behind).
Altogether, a lovely convention. On the Sunday I even had time to scamper all over York, like a history-obsessed squirrel…
