I’ve had two weeks to recover and I’m ready for my close-up… so here’s what I got up to at Conflux 14 (theme: the unconventional hero) over the October long weekend.
Panels!
Hero cliches and how to make or break them: I had fun talking clichés with Leife Shallcross and Sam Hawke, ably chaired by Ion ‘Nuke’ Newcombe of Antipodean SF. I may have pulled on my ranty-pants, mentioning the gendered nature of the etymology of ‘hero’. Which segues nicely to…
Abusive alpha males and sassy Mary-Sues: when heroes go bad: I chaired the feisty panel of Keri Arthur, Annabelle McInnes and K J Taylor who discussed self-indulgent author inserts, alpha jerks, and why male Mary-Sues aren’t seen as entirely unbelievable. (Hint: it’s because of the patriarchy).
The Unconventional Romance: I enjoyed this genre-bending, boundary-pushing session with Freya Marske chairing Leife Shallcross, Keri Arthur and Jane Virgo.
Session on Pitching: There were plenty of dos, don’ts and for-the-love-of-God-nos in this session with Abigail Nathan of Bothersome Words, editor Lyss Wickramasinghe and Paula Boer.
Unconventional Hero’s Journey: The panel of Gillian Polack, Dave Versace, Simon Petrie and Abigail Nathan, chaired by Rob Porteous, took us over Campbell’s Hero Journey and discussed other ways of looking at a hero.
Workshops!
I ran a sparsely populated workshop on the hallmarks of heroism on the Monday morning after the conference dinner. Alas, many of the registrants decided another hour of sleep recuperation trumped the appeal of discovering the secrets of how to write protagonists a reader would love.
I went to a fabulous workshop on writing fight scenes with Aiki Flinthart. Not only was it full of fantastic information on the differences between men and women fighting, both psychologically and physiologically, and the differences between trained and untrained combatants – all of which was super useful – I also got stabbed. Well, I volunteered to pretend to be someone who had no combat training and no experience of body contact sports. I was very convincing in the role. My reaction was entirely typical of a clueless victim – shriek and flail uselessly!
I also enjoyed a workshop on worldbuilding with Russell Kirkpatrick looking at maps and how the inclusion of a map in a book influences the way readers see the world.
Book launches!
The Book of Lore by Rob Porteous: Rob did a great job of being the convention’s unconventional MC and also launched his book on writing speculative fiction. This is the distilled wisdom from several years of running the CSFG Novel Writing Group which can be used as a ‘how-to’ guide to writing your own novel.
80,000 Totally Secure Passwords that no hacker would ever guess by Simon Petrie: Simon is a master of puns, cool book titles and thought-provoking science fiction. He launched this best-of collection at Conflux.
Iron by Aiki Flinthart: I can’t wait to get the chance to read this first in a trilogy tale of a world without iron and fossil fuel… and what happens when someone discovers an iron ore deposit. Plus (squeee) everyone who bought a book at the launch got a lovely little sword bookmark.
A Hand of Knaves: In a fittingly dangerous crowd of ne’er-do-wells and ruffians the latest CSFG anthology was introduced by Rob Porteous, launched by editors Leife Shallcross and Chris Large, illustrated by Shauna O’Meara, read from by Dave Versace, Eugen Bacon and myself and sold to the heaving masses by Angus Yeates and Simon Petrie. As well as that hand of villains, other contributors wielding pens for the signing included Helen Stubbs, Maureen Flynn, C H Pearce and Claire McKenna. It was a lot of fun.
But perhaps the best part of any convention (and Conflux 14 was not so unconventional as to be an exception) was meeting the most fabulous writerly peeps: I spent time with my tribe and made new friends. Thanks to the Conflux team for pulling everything together. Glorious stuff!
Well, perish my bonnet.*