Eastercon diary pt. 2

It’s been amazing, the last couple of days here in London. It’s such a vibrant scene of writers and readers and everyone in the field that’s worth saying hello to and having fun with in the bar. Book deals aren’t made in offices. Book deals are made after meeting good people and drinking lots of beer.

Here’s a little teaser, that makes all you Dutch folks wish you were there:

I attended panels on pushing the boundaries of genre, alien markets, mainstream published F&SF, and the art literary agents. And I actually moderated a panel myself. For the first time *gasps*. But it was a lot of fun. We had writers from Israel, France, Germany and the Philippines that showed you strange island people how our own mythologies create genre fiction, and how we can cross boundaries to share it with each other.

And after that it was just meeting lots of people. I had fun conversations with Lavie Tidhar, an Israeli writer who’s with PS Publishing, an Italian translator, a French publisher, all the nice people from Orion Books (basically spent the last hours in the bar with their publicity manager Jon Weir), got some great advice from Ms. Jo Fletcher (undoubtedly the greatest genre publisher in Britain), a great invitation from Patrick Nielsen Hayden (a great American editor), chatted with Joe Abercrombie (who’s been to Holland a couple of times) and George R R Martin (who remembered Elf Fantasy Fair, like everyone does) and… simply loved every bit of it!

This weekend has been the most useful and inspiring weekend of 2012 so far. Probably even more inspiring than eating Banana Blossom Salad in Thailand.

Or… well.