In Which There Is Music (and Half-Pony, Half-Monkey Monsters)

On Saturday night, Jonathan Coulton and Paul and Storm were performing at the Colston hall, in Bristol, and I went along to see them (and to help out with the Merch table)

As anticipated, it was a whole lot of fun. I arrived early and got my very first 'Access All Areas' pass, (sadly not an awesome laminate such as JoCo provided for the Fabulous Lorraine, but one must, I assume, start small and work one's way up, with these things...)

I met up with Kerrin, who is a long term fan, who acts as a roadie for Jonathan and Paul and Storm during UK tours, and with Angela, another hard-core fan, who had travelled from Switzerland for the UK gig, and who was responsible for the whole licorice penises thing, and Angela's friend Lena. We chatted, and ate swiss chocolate, and discussed licorice penises and panties (as one does).

And then we went up to the hall, to find seats and sell T-Shirts, before the gig started.

Paul and Storm opened for JoCo. Appropriately, they opened with 'We are the Opening Band', which was derailed when Angela orchestrated a certain amount of throwing of panties...

They also treated us to the wonderful new 'Write Like the Wind (George RR Martin')

and of course there was a song about pirates . .

After the interval, Jonathan Coulton took over - as always, he was fun and geeky. And soldiered on, despite a broken guitar string (which caused a capella 'Madness' songs by Storm) and Paul's nose-panty incident, and some slightly over-enthusiastic audience participation!

It turns out that the cake is a lie (who'd have guessed?) and I was a little disappointed that no-one seemed to have brought jaffa cakes, but one cannot have everything!

We sold a lot of t-shirts and CDs, and I had a lot of fun, enjoyed meeting some new people, (and some who are not so new) and finally got home, very tired, around 1 in the morning.

I would have preferred it if I had then been able to go straight to sleep, rather than then being kept awake by a very loud altercation between two of my neighbours. I may not have caught all the nuances, but it seems that Emily may have been gossiping about 'her', and apparently this needed to be addressed. At 2 a.m. At great length. *sigh* Still, who needs sleep?

More videos from the JoCo gig are up on my YouTube channel, if the ones here aren't enough for you!

A Night with George

This is a little out of order, as I had forgotten I'd not had time to blog it immediately after the event!
Last Wednesday saw me headed in Bath, to St Michael's Church (St Michael Waitrose, as it tends to be known, due to it's location) in order to hear George RR Martin speak.

George was visiting prior to his appearance as Guest of Honour at EasterCon, and clearly also has a lot of fans in or around Bath!

They had wedged in all the chairs the church could possibly hold, and they were, soon, all full. I managed to find seats for myself and Cheryl near the front, and settled in to wait.

This being a Toppings event in a church, the evening began with the obligatory slightly uncomfortable prayer. This time, the vicar (I think a different one from last time) was a little more aware of the fact that not everyone in the building was necessarily christian, or religious, which I suppose is progress.

Then the meat of the evening! The first half of the evening was George being interviewed, with the second part being a short QandA and a short reading from the newest, and as yet unpublished, book.

George started by taking a little about his childhood, and how he started out making up stories about feuds and intrigues amoug his pet turtles (partly to explain why they so frequently died), then later discovered fiction, and in particular science fiction and fantasy, and Tolkien.

He moved on to speaking about his books, and his inspiration - he explained that he reads historical fiction and popular history, and that he became frustrated that in so many fantasy novels, writers take a quasi-medieval setting, but import 20th C American characters and attitudes, where peasants can give kings a good talking too. He wanted to make fantasy more realistic. He also explained that he is inspired by real events and places - for instance, a visit to Hadrian's Wall led him to consider how much more impressive the wall would be, if it were much, much taller, and made of ice...

In the QandA he revealed that he had a cameo role in the pilot episode of the TV series, (wearing an enormous hat) but the footage wasn't used, as a different actor was cast for the full series. And that he wanted to be a severed head on the wall, but apparently making severed heads of actual people is expensive..
He also talked about killing characters. He said that it was always difficult. He also pointed out that Joe Abercrombie, who, he said, "makes [me] look like Mary Poppins" was in the audience!

It was a fascinating evening. As we were seated near the front I was able to queue to get a book signed without having to wait for too long (and it would have been a very long wait).

In Which There Are Panels & Writers

Tragically, the cake cafe where we had breakfast on Saturday doesn't open on Sundays, so we couldn't hve breakfast there. We ended up in the Boulangerie RF Long and her family,m which was a consolation.

Then, as there was some sort of convention going on at the hotel it seemed reasonable to go to a panel or two...

I started with "Ethics in YA Fiction"; the panel included Michael Carroll, author of the 'Quantum Prophecy' series, Peadar Ó Guilín (the author of 'The Inferior', which I belive involves teen cannibals) Siobhan (who is a knitter and linguist, and may well have other qualifications I know not of) and Clare Hennesy

The panel started with discussions about what can and cannot go into books marketed for children, Michael Carroll explaining that on the basis of concerns about the sensibilities of some parts of the USA, he has had to excise the occasional "damn" or "Bloody" from the books, and has therefore invented his own expletives. There was also some discussion about age banding and labelling and how libraries are (at least in part) trying to cater to those parents who don't know what might be suitable for their child, rather than trying to censor books.

The panel then moved towards issues which I found more interesting - some of the ideas and presumptions that may be found in (some) books - one example given being that in the Harry Potter books, there appears top be the idea that 25% of wizards are evil, based on selection at age 11. I had to leave at this point which was a shame, as it felt that the panel was just getting on the area I found interesting...

My second panel was Lorraine's panel "Neil Gaiman: Behind The Curtain" - which sadly clashed with Brian's horror panel, which I should also have liked to attend. Lorraine talked about her job, and answered questions from the floor, Including revealing that she had initially said No to Neil doing "13 Nights of Fright" (Because he didn't really have time), but relented when he explained he had always wanted to come out of a coffin....!)

I thought it went well, although the room had a bit of a problem in that it seemed to have only two possible settings as far as heat was concerned - very stuffy & overheated, or frigid. . .

I stayed on for the next panel, which was about invented and inventing languages, and worldbuilding, which was fun - wandered on  into issues of Irish accents/language on TV.

As if to make up for no panels yesterday, today was pretty busy. Straight after  the language panel was a panel about the Care and Feeding of writers, which featured Lorraine (of course), Parris, (GRRM's partner) Pat Fanning (R.F.Long's husband) and Ted Lee (C.E.Murphy's husband). Topics covered included The Importance of Feeding Your Writer,  Socialisation and Human Contact, lots of anecdotes  -very interesting to hear about the writing habits of different writers. I think for me one of the most amazing was Ted saying that Catie wrote her first book while on trains commuting to and from work. How impressive is that?.

Parris spoke with feeling about how absorbed and un-distractable George can be - she once got fed up and went in to tell him that that the tyrannosaurs were invading and  the volcanos erupting, and  got a "good...." and "fine, in a minute" reply. . .
I noticed a number of nods of recognition from the other panellists!