I had lunch at the Town Crier, and as I was ordering my ham baguette one of the staff there noticed my Con badge and asked me what was going on across the road. They'd seen several customers with the same badges. Now I had my official Con programme, I was able to give her the printed sheets for the weekend's programme, so they knew what was happening. I saw her pinning them up in the kitchen area.
I also had time to go round the dealers' room, where I treated myself to lots of things - well, mainly books.... I got a Christmas present for my sister from a lady who made jigsaws. I'm not sure now how the topic came up - possibly talking about historical re-enactment, and she mentioned an axe making workshop. I know someone who would love to learn to make his own axe, so she gave me the details. The chap from Elsewhen Press, at the stall next door, said: "That's what I love about these Conventions - a person mentions something random like making axes and someone else has the details for doing it!"
I also treated myself to a pewter pendant of a stag done in the style of the Uffington white horse. Apart from the jigsaws, jewellery, a t-shirt stall, and a Japanese Steampunk in full costume selling Japanese SF memorabilia, most of the stalls were for books. Even the artist from Ireland was selling some of his work in the form of picture books. He belongs to a group of artists who live and work in the top corner of the island of Ireland, "further north than Northern Ireland!" on the Inishowen Peninsula.
At 4pm I went to the Disraeli Room, upstairs, where authors were reading from their work all day. This particular session had Tasha Suri, who I'd seen in the Religion in Genre Fiction panel earlier in the day. I wanted to see what her work was like.
I also was treated to extracts from the works of JA Browne and Suzie Wilde - I really want to know what the heroine of the YA story saw by the side of the car in the storm. The author left the audience in suspense with "Oh. My. God!"
The other author had written what she felt was a historical novel about Vikings (with lots of research) but it had somehow been chosen as one of the best fantasy novels of the year by a newspaper columnist. She read an extract about a dam about to break and drown a village.
At this point, more or less, there was a mix up in the printing of the programme so that the Edward and Albert rooms were swapped over, so when I got to the Albert for What's Changed in Worldbuilding, the room was full. I was told I could stand at the back if I wanted, but I decided to head for the hotel bar instead.
It was a bit disappointing that the two handpumps on the bar were out of action all weekend (or at least, every time I went in), but at least they had Brooklyn Lager in bottles.
6pm, and time for Women in Genre Fiction in the Gladstone room, upstairs next to Disraeli. There were doubts about the usefulness of the microphones for this panel, so it started with the moderator, Teika Bellamy, asking "Can everyone project?"
"I'm American - I'm really loud," said Tiffani Angus.
All the members of this panel were newish authors, and the only note I have about this panel is that there was some discussion of 2D characters and how to avoid them.
Then it was down to the Jubilee Room (down that really long corridor with the Romans) for the Guest of Honour interview with Farah Mendelsohn - who turned out to be absolutely fascinating. Farah has written about Diana Wynne Jones and Children's Fantasy, and was also involved in organising the whisky exhibition in honour of Iain Banks at LonCon in 2014. Iain Banks was going to be one of the Guests of Honour at that WorldCon, but died a few months before. The exhibition got together whisky bottles representing every single whisky mentioned in Iain's book Raw Spirits. Most of them were empty, donated by fans, but they had to go out and buy the last few to complete the exhibition. Asked which whisky was Farah's favourite, they said "Strathisla - it's what Southern Comfort wants to be when it grows up!"
They also talked about Geoffrey Trease (one of my favourite children's novelists), and how to write a historically accurate Regency lesbian romance - which Farah has also done. It's called Spring Flowering.
As part of the research for this, they found that a theatre they wanted to use in the book had been quickly closed down by the local Quakers. Apparently, Quakers had no problem with performance - music hall was fine. Theatre, on the other hand, involved people pretending to be another person, which was lying, and so frowned upon.
They also talked about black people in British history. During the Napoleonic Wars, the French brought over black Caribbean soldiers to fight for them, some of whom were captured by the British and imprisoned in Devon. When the war was over, these prisoners were released, but they didn't go back to the Caribbean. They stayed in Devon.
The Regency period was also the time when the marriages of daughters was fraught with danger. Before this, there was a good chance the family knew the suitor and his family, so no problem, but by the Regency period the suitor was likely to be a stranger to the family, who might abuse the daughter and have control of her inheritance. This is why cousin marriages became more common, and also marriages to the friends of the bride's brothers.
Farah was also fascinated by historical diaries where the clothing allowances of the writers were discussed in minute detail - it seemed almost like anorexics counting calories, until they realised that this was the only money that the women controlled themselves, so of course they were fanatical about exactly what they wanted to do with it. The other area women had legal control over was the tools of their trade, which often meant kitchen equipment - which is why gifts of toasters, electric mixers and vacuum cleaners were so popular at one time.
There was a brief digression about the Times Literary Supplement "Who reads that anymore? It's increasingly pompous!" Leading to the comment: "Most of us are sitting here because we ignored people's ideas of respectability."
They also mentioned a book called Glorifying Terrorism, which was written as a response to the Terrorism Act, and underwritten by Iain Banks - I think the reasoning was that, if the authors weren't prosecuted for writing this book, it undermined any other cases for prosecuting people under the act.
And finally, a recommendation: Robin Stevens, who writes books which are basically Agatha Christie crossed with the Chalet School!
The final panel of the evening for me (my brain was full by this time!) was Writing and Representing Queer Characters in Genre Fiction, in the Edward room.
This panel got off to a fairly rocky start, as the moderator had to excuse herself and leave - she looked quite upset about it, but said she really couldn't carry on. However, the rest of the panel had the list of questions they had been going to discuss between them, and carried on quite well.
PR Ellis described themselves as gender-fluid, and writes detective fiction in which the detective is a trans person in the process of transitioning.
Joel Cornah said he was asexual, and added: "In this world of beautiful people doing amazing things who would want to be straight?"
Powder is American and grew up on a cattle ranch in Texas - he didn't meet another gay person till he got to university. When asked about including homophobia in his work, he said, to applause, that "we deal with enough phobia - sometimes I just want my awesome gay knight on a dragon!"
While talking about writing historical fiction with gay characters, someone said that it shouldn't be a case of "parachuting a gay Edwardian in!"
The response being: "It should be an emergency service!"
At the end of the panel (which started with more panel than audience, but ended with about 20 in the audience), the panel asked for any more questions. After a short silence, Powder suggested: "We can do an interpretive dance?"
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