The most recent BFS London Open Night saw the launch of Where Are We Going? from Eibonvale Press, edited by Allen Ashley. The publisher ran a “Write a Postcard” competition which was judged on the night by Allen Ashley. The winners were: Martin Roberts, Tina Rath and John Forth, and each won an Eibonvale prize. The winning postcards – and all the other entries that Allen Ashley and David Rix were able to salvage! – are now on display at the Eibonvale site. Just follow this link HERE

Although his short story writing workshop on 19 May 2012 is now fully booked, award-winning writer, editor and competition judge, Allen Ashley, will be holding another similar workshop on Saturday 16 June 2012 from 2pm to 5pm at Trinity-at-Bowes, Palmerston Road, London N22 8RA.

This is your chance to improve your short story writing with guaranteed personal feedback from a specialist in the field. The afternoon will consist of a practical workshop for all short story writers, whether beginners or published writers. Topics covered will include: getting started; generating ideas; beginnings; middles; endings; useful writing exercises; practical tips; avoiding pitfalls; and preparing your work for submission.

The fee for the workshop is £20 and booking is essential. To book your place please email Allen at allenashley-writer [at] hotmail [dot] co [dot] uk

Award-winning writer and editor Allen Ashley will be running a short story writing workshop on Saturday 19 May 2012 From 2pm to 5pm. The venue is Trinity-at-Bowes, Palmerston Road, London N22 8RA.

This is your chance to improve your short stories with a specialist in the field. It’s a practical workshop for all short story writers, whether beginners or published writers.

Topics covered: Getting Started; Generating Ideas; Beginnings; Middles; Endings; Useful Writing Exercises; Practical Tips; Avoiding Pitfalls; Preparing Your Work for Submission; and other subjects, in what will be a thoroughly practical session with guaranteed personal feedback from the tutor.

Fee for the workshop is £20. Booking is essential. Please email allenashley-writer@hotmail.co.uk to book your place.

This years’ BFS Short Story Competition will be judged by award-winning editor and BFS stalwart Allen Ashley.

Allen Ashley is an author, editor, poet, critic and writing tutor as well as a long-standing, active member of the BFS. Allen is a regular contributor to The BFS Journal and attendee at FantasyCon. Allen won the BFS award for Best Anthology in 2006 as editor of The Elastic Book Of Numbers (Elastic Press).

Allen says: “Judging a competition is something I have wanted to add to my accomplishments for a long time, so I’m really pleased to be given this opportunity. I’m sure it’s going to be a tough decision to choose the eventual winners as I know that the standard is always very high. There’s just me judging – no filtering committee or anything like that. Also, this year it’s not anonymous as that was felt to be an unnecessary complication. Word limit is 5000 words and all the usual rules apply. Submission window opens on 1 March 2012 and closes on 30 June 2012.”

Entry is free for BFS members and just £5 per entry for non-members. Further details and full submission guidelines HERE

For enquiries please email Allen on shortstorycomp@britishfantasysociety.org

The next BFS Open Night is on Friday 2 March 2012 at The Mug House, 1-3 Tooley Street, London Bridge, London SE1 2PF (tel. 020 7403 8343). If you are travelling by public transport to London Bridge station, look for the exit that says “Duke Street Hill” or “Tooley Street”. The evening starts at 6pm. There are two main events happening. These are: An Eibonvale Press launch and a silent charity auction run by Quercus Books.

Further details:
Eibonvale Press are launching a brand new anthology edited by Allen Ashley, entitled Where Are We Going? Several authors including Allen Ashley, Joel Lane, Douglas Thompson, Marion Pitman, Terry Grimwood, Jet McDonald, Andrew Kirby, Gary Budgen and cover artists David Rix are expected to attend and sign copies of the book. Where Are We Going? will be selling at the special low price of £7 paperback and £16 hardback on the launch evening.

At some time between 6.30pm and 7pm, Allen Ashley will be announcing a “Postcard Competition”. This is a free to enter competition with simple rules – write an interesting postcard and win an Eibonvale prize. Postcards and pens will be provided on the night. The competition will be judged by Allen Ashley and the results will be announced at approximately 9pm.

Eibonvale will also be launching Jeff Gardiner’s debut collection A Glimpse of the Numinous.

Nicola Budd from Quercus Books will be running a silent auction on a selection of desirable Quercus publications from approximately 6.30pm onwards. Nicola will announce the start of the auction and how to take part. The books will be displayed on a couple of tables and people are invited to write their bids on a sheet of paper. The winning bidders will be announced at approximately 9.30pm. The auction is in aid of the charity Have A Heart.

The night will finish at about 11pm or when the BFS has drunk the bar dry (don’t laugh – it happens quite a lot).

So, get along to The Mug House on 2nd March. Buy a book or three. Give some money to a good cause. Meet up with pals old and new. Have a great time.

Further details: email Allen Ashley on editorwherearewegoing [at] hotmail [dot] co [dot] uk

The first BFS London Open Night for 2012 has been booked for 2 March 2012 at The Mug House – just under London Bridge, opposite the London Dungeon.

Doors officially open Friday night from 6pm onwards. Festivities planned so far include a book launch for author/editor Allen Ashley‘s new anthology Where Are We Going from Eibonvale Press. Also, Quercus Books will be hosting a charity auction – Nicola Budd, Editorial Assitant at Quercus Books, explains:

“As part of the BFS open night on 2nd March 2012, we will be hosting a silent auction to raise money for the charity Have A Heart, supporting children’s hospices in the UK.

The auction, in conjunction with Jo Fletcher Books, will include signed first editions from across the SF, Fantasy and Horror genres, as well as some signed original artworks.

All the money contributed will be going to help build a better future for children who are vulnerable, face adversity or live with a disability or illness, so prepare to dig deep! For more information on the charity go to www.heart.co.uk/have-a-heart/ “

It seems a long time since that hot weekend in Brighton. So now, with the days growing shorter and colder, here’s a reminder of FantasyCon 2011, courtesy of Allen Ashley. Further recollections of FantasyCon will follow in the next issue of the BFS Journal …

The morning of Saturday 1st October – unseasonably sunny and warm – finds me and the wife on Brighton Pier when we should be at FantasyCon. Well, actually we are but having reaped the benefit of a seafront view – i.e. cars and clubbers frolicking noisily outside the window all night – a little break and a lungful of fish and chips flavoured seaside air is called for.  But what’s this? A ghost train ride suitably entitled “Horror Hotel” and only £3 a go. Sarah dutifully screams and I reflect that the next time someone tells me that they don’t know what to write about, I’ll suggest that they borrow some characters from this switchback selection. It’s fun.

But not as much fun as the Saturday night double bill from Teatro Proberto. John Probert and the versatile Lady Probert offer up a delightful, pantomime inflected take on a couple of 1960s horror films. With several knowing winks to the rapt audience, the performers demonstrate a mastery of comic timing. Highlights include a savaging by a canine glove puppet, rapid costume changes, unconvincing wigs, cheap props and deliberate overacting. Someone should have filmed this show and put it up on You Tube.

Blood on Satan’s Claw and Corruption are followed by a quintet of burlesque dancers who begin life as characters from a Dark Horizons illustration but then take it right down to the nipple tassel. Top exotic stage names, too, like Baby Bones and Esmeralda Underwood. One of the performers is actually a man in drag. He runs into the audience and mock bites me on the shoulder. By Sunday evening I have a streaming cold. Is there a connection?

My convention is bookended by two events. On Friday night I host a poetry soiree where the standard is very high – one of the pieces is in Full Fathom Forty and another is up for an Aurora award. My last major contribution to the weekend is to present the British Fantasy Award for Best Magazine. A few things have been written about the awards since then and I don’t wish to become embroiled. I’ll only repeat what I said at the time: Many of us owe a lot to magazines so I was thrilled to give a little bit back.

For many people, the big draw to FantasyCon is the quality of the guests of honour. With all due respect to the other luminaries, for me the most exciting visitor to FantasyCon was Brian Aldiss. Witness the spontaneous standing ovation this genre great received after his speech of thanks at the banquet. On the Saturday afternoon, Brian was interviewed by Christopher Priest in the Russell Room – a venue so stifling that the missus had to leave before the show started. The loquacious and loveable Brian is not your standard interviewee – feed him a starter and he’ll regale you with a selection of entertaining anecdotes without further prompting. The tale concerning Agatha Christie is the one that I shall remember always.

Later, I turn the tables somewhat on Chris Priest as we sit opposite each other in a Brighton curry house and I gently quiz him about his early books. He tells me that he edited an anthology back in the 1970s. Really? That had slipped my mind. When he reveals that it was called Anticipations, however, I instantly remember buying the paperback edition. I used to find time to read everything in those younger days.

FantasyCon is, of course, all about the people and with this year’s attendance put at 539, it’s no wonder that I spent much of my weekend saying hello and catching up with people in corridors and on the stairs. These locations were partly determined by that fact that the hotels’ tiny lift broke down at least twice in 24 hours. Must be all those five volume trilogies in hardback that folks are carting up to their rooms.

One moment it’s Friday afternoon and I’m in a massive queue to register, with Ian Whates and Simon Clark ahead of me and Nina Allan, Sam Stone and Frazer Hines behind me; the next moment it’s late afternoon on Sunday and I’m wondering when the turquoise and white taxi will eventually turn up to whisk us off to the railway station. Sensibly, I’ve spent the last of my cash in registering for next year’s FantasyCon.

Sarah and I arrive at Brighton terminus and guess what? Yep, it’s Sunday so there are engineering works and a replacement bus service. I picture us back on the pier. “Sorry, mate, no ghost train today just a replacement bus service…!”

Until next time.
-    Allen

Allen Ashley is an award winning editor and writer as well as a keen BFS member. Allen’s next book will be as editor of Where Are We Going? a themed anthology of SF/Fantasy/Horror/Slipstream stories with the uniting feature of “journeys”. This is due from Eibonvale Press (UK) within the next 6 months.

The new issue of Dark Horizons should be on its way out to members fairly soon. I’m very pleased with this one…

It features fiction:

• Colonies, Jim Steel
• Moonlight on the Northern Seas, Malcolm Laughton
• The Other Side of Silence, Stephen Bacon
• The Apocalypse Has Been Good to Us, Charlotte Bond
• Resistance: a Love Story, Zachary Jernigan

And articles:

• Mark Charan Newton, interviewed by Louise Morgan
• The Sign of the Unicorn’s Head: the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series, Mike Barrett
• Aliette de Bodard, interviewed by Jenny Barber
• Catastrophia: Allen Ashley, interviewed by Stephen Theaker

And poetry:

• TWTMC, Allen Ashley
• Pretty Little Things, and Blood Pearls, J.R. Salling
• Folded in Darkness, Graylin Fox
• Circe Poisoning the Sea, Sarah Doyle
• The Giftshop Off the Multiverse, Ian Hunter
• Younger Gods, Roy Gray
• Witnessing’s End, Alessio Zanelli
• Addendum, Rick Coonrod

And more illustrations than ever before, from:

• Martin Hanford (who provides the stunning cover)
• John Shanks
• Inna Hansen
• Alf Klosterman
• David Bezzina
• and Les Edwards (whose cover artwork for Catastrophia is included).

From editor Stephen Theaker and poetry editor Ian Hunter, it’s Christmas, your birthday and the time you found a ten pound note on the street, all wrapped up in one hundred and twelve pages…

Eibonvale Press will be releasing two brand new works at Fantasycon: Blind Swimmer, an anthology on the theme of creativity in the wilderness, with an introduction by Joel Lane, and Douglas Thompson’s second novel Sylvow, from which the author will be reading on the Saturday morning 10am in the dealer’s room.

Blind Swimmer

Isolation is a subject that humans have a tricky and contradictory relationship with. On the one hand we fear loneliness, seeking to banish it with contact with others and suffering considerable negative effects from it sometimes. Fundamentally we are a gregarious species. But on the other hand, a contradicting force often sends us desperately seeking isolation. Maybe this is a symptom of the world we live in that creates the need to escape from it in order to actually achieve things. Or maybe it is a deeper dichotomy in our own psyches. Writers in particular feel this dichotomy, which must be why it is quite a prevalent one in literature. Lovecraft, for instance, wrote about little else. Blind Swimmer is an anthology of stories and novellas that seek to explore this isolation, especially in terms of creativity and in terms of how that isolation relates to the outside world.

The anthology is also a kind of “sampler” and snapshot of Eibonvale Press itself at this key moment in time, featuring all of its writers to date, past, present and near future, in a fascinating experiment in collaboration, with various contributors playing off each other and all giving their best towards a sum greater than its parts. Featuring: Joel Lane, Nina Allan, Gerard Houarner, Rhys Hughes, Brendan Connell, David Rix, Allen Ashley, Jet McDonald, Douglas Thompson, Terry Grimwood, Alexander Zelenyj, and Andrew Coulthard.

Sylvow

In the city of Sylvow, brother and sister Claudia and Leo Vestra made a childhood promise to each other: he would look after the plants and she would look after the animals. Unlike most promises, both of these were kept – each in their own way. Claudia is now a vet – looking after pampered pets or putting down strays and leading a mundane life in the city. Leo, on the other hand, disenchanted with modern urban life, has abruptly abandoned his wife and disappeared into the surrounding forest, his only contact with the outside world being a sequence of dramatic and prophetic letters –increasingly convinced that a semi-sentient natural world is preparing to rebel against its human irritants.

Nature is a strange thing – although we have done an amazing job of cataloguing and observing it, we still know very little about it. Nature always surprises – and always changes, especially under an external influence such as humanity’s devastating effect on the environment. This book follows its cast of characters through a spectacular clash between everyday life and life on the evolutionary scale – as society dissolves and is stripped away under the onslaught of surreal environmental disaster. Douglas Thompson has dug deep into the inevitable guilt that we all feel, as a culture/species, for the disastrous state of civilization and its effect on both ourselves and the world around us. Sylvow incorporates elements of literary surrealism, philosophy, horror, disaster novel and science fiction into a visionary and highly original work.