This weekend me, the hub and the bub are off to FantasyCon in Nottingham. I'm looking forward to hearing talks from the likes of Dave McKean and discussing where the genre is going wrong - and right! Despite the title it is also to do with horror and SF - though you can tell all the major horror fans, they are either real geeks or goths. The main purpose seems to be getting 150 writers and fans into a bar and seeing how long it takes the beer to run out. Suits me.

Compared to last year it is going to be a bit weird since the bub is only 8 weeks old. It never occurs to you how easy and yet how difficult it is to travel with a baby. Easy because at this age they are quite small and portable and keep quiet most of the time as long as they are happy. Bad because of all the equipment required to keep them clean in the nappy department ane fed. It isn't as simple as just packing up your boobs. I've tried to get prepared. I've bought a special camo-sling for me to heft him about in, but I'm not sure how I feel about whipping out a nipple in front of Ramsey Campbell.

I'll post when we get back....

Having almost finished my first (fantasy) novel, it is heartening to read words like this from Neil Gaiman, initially talking about the JK Rowling court case.

"I wasn't the first writer to create a young magician with potential, nor was Rowling the first to send one to school. It's not the ideas, it's what you do with them that matters. Genre fiction, as Terry Pratchett has pointed out, is a stew. You take stuff out of the pot, you put stuff back. The stew bubbles on."

You try and be original with your characters and plot but in the end, it has all be done before in some way. BTW haven't written a jot for weeks, too busy creating someone else's brain. Wishfully I'm hoping 4 weeks of maternity leave will give me some writing time.

Big news story today about JK Rowling taking a publisher's to court because they were going to print a Harry Potter encyclopedia based on a fan website.

The publisher says it is purely a reference material, and by allowing the website to exist for ten years, precedence has already been set.

As much as it pains me to agree with someone worth 45 million, you can't go making profit by using the characters created by someone else and not getting their permission. J says it is not about the money but about the control and idea rights and she is doing it for other authors. (Guess it would be nice to be in that situation.)

I hope that the result in this case doesn't have a knock on detrimental effect for other websites which are valuable resources on the net for information, especially roleplaying sites which can contain a stack of material that might come into this category.

I've been feeling a bit down recently, health problems and all (don't worry, nothing life threatening). Then I found this online (via Neil Gaiman's very excellent blog, and no I'm not going to post a link, use google like normal people) and reading it made me feel a lot better. Visit, digest and set it up as one of your homepage tabs (if you have ie7 etc.) so you can remember to click everyday. It will be good for your soul. http://www.projecterin.com. Note to self - stop using brackets so much, they aren't big or clever (says you).

I've decided that the fear of failure is my worst enemy. It's why I don't go for jobs, why I am having problems finishing my novel and why I don't dress in designer clothes (ok that's a lie, that's about the cash). I thought I was getting over it until I attended FantasyCon, the premier event for fantasy/sf/horror writers in the UK. Don't misunderstand, it was the most fun thing I've done this year and I'll be going back next year (physicalities permitting), but apart from all the fun getting drunk and telling Michael Marshall Smith that I wasn't sure about his 'thriller' novel concept, it made my fear worse. It is like thinking you are a good artist then going to the national gallery and realising just how far you have to go and perhaps, you may never get there, no matter how hard you try. Some people may be spurred on, inspired even. Me, it makes me want to down tools and have another cocktail. If I never try then I will never fail, and my lifelong dream of being a real writer (the ones who can make a living from it) is dashed. I don't have anyting else in my life that can fill that kind of hole. As the song sadly says, I don't know what to do with myself.