Alt.Fiction 2008 and other news

Hi All,

Another rather overdue posting. I'm hereby making a resolution to post on this blog more regularly with all the latest updates about Alt.Fiction and perhaps going into a few other genre news bits from the local area.

It's been a really interesting time for me personally as I've recently gone jobshare in my role as Literature Development Officer. This won't have any direct impact on Alt.Fiction, which as a project will remain in my hands, but it has freed up some time for other SFF and horror projects around the region, a few of which are kicking off relatively soon. Chief among them is a planned East Midlands tour for Comma Press' Phobic, an excellent horror anthology featuring writers such as Ramsey Campbell, Matt Holness, Paul Cornell, Paul Magrs, Chaz Brenchley, Frank Cottrell Boyce, Nicholas Royle, Conrad Williams and many more. It's an anthology I really enjoyed and hopefully we'll be seeing you at a venue near you. The tour itself will be taking place (suitably) in the lead up to Hallowe'en...

Alt.Fiction is in its early stages but I suppose the biggest discussion point to date is that 2008 will remain a one-day event. I am conscious this flies in the face of a lot of demand for a weekend event but in my defence this is the first year Alt.Fiction will be looking to meet its costs. We've had some pretty generous support from funders to date which we can't guarantee in 2008 and as such I've had to err on the conservative side. 2008 will really be an acid test for the future of the event and if we can make ends meet I think things will be looking healthy. There are a whole host of surrounding issues which I can't/won't go into here, but it's an event that's very close to my heart and as such I want it to continue long into the future, and I hope it can carry on making a contribution to the genre and its event calendar.

We also have the rather big news of early writer bookings for 2008 and on that note I'd like to thank Orbit, Solaris and Hodder Headline for their very generous support of the event. So I'm pleased to announced our confirmed authors so far are Christopher Fowler, Mike Carey (returning after two very popular slots this year), Charlie Stross, Philip Palmer, Brian Ruckley, Eric Brown, Adam Roberts and Simon Spurrier. Expect plenty more names to be confirmed in the near future.

I'm currently in the process of booking the Derby Festival of Words, which runs in October, but after that I'll be focussing fairly heavily on the Alt.Fiction event.

Of course before any of that I'll be along at the FantasyCon event (www.fantasycon.org.uk) at the Brittania Hotel and look forward to seeing some of you there. It's a really good weekend event- I had a great time last year (despite having about four hours sleep total for the weekend!!) and I'm looking forward to it thoroughly this time around.

So keep checking back for all the latest Alt.Fiction news- if you'd like to express any opinions, thoughts, ideas or musings feel free to get in touch at alex.davis@derby.gov.uk

Thanks a lot

Alex