SFSF#5 -Patchwerk Foxy Moonlit Fun

The 20th February saw our 5th (yes 5th – doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun!) Social event. We had a nice mix of familiar and new faces, and for me, it’s especially nice to see people travelling from a little further afield than the suburbs of the People’s Republic of South Yorkshire to come and join us for what is rapidly becoming a semi-regular hoot!

Hosted once more at Eten Cafe, our guests for the day were David Tallerman, with multiple books currently arriving on the genre scene, and Adele Wearing of Fox Spirit fame.

David hails from West Yorkshire, and brought not one, but TWO new books with him to the days’s festivities. First up was Patchwerk, published by Tor.com’s novella imprint tells the story of Dran Florrian and his machine Palimpsest. David read us a section involving a flashback as to Dran’s revelation as to how the machine could be brought to life and the beginning of the adventure true, which I am looking forwards to reading to see what happens; not least as the story involves a multiverse, for which I have a soft spot conceptually  (although it might not be a while as my TBR pile is slowly shrinking… it’s still too big!)

David Tallerman reading from Patchwerk

After questions and a short break, where people had a chance to say hellos, get a drink, stretch legs, browse the shop (yes, we had a shop as a new development!) we returned to meet Aunty Fox.

Adele Wearing runs Fox Spirit – a small press who in the short time it’s been up and running have managed to find and publish some wonderful authors and stories whether solo books or as part of the Fox Pockets series of anthologies (several of whom have attended events with us – including Jo Thomas, K.T. Davies, and Steven Poore) and also last year won the Best Indie Press award at the BFS awards. Not afraid to diversify, you can find everything from centuries old translations of Italian language books, right up to apocalyptic flash fiction. She proceeded to give us the run down on what it’s like being a publisher (you’ll remember we’ve also had other guests at previous events from the ‘other side of the fence’) and the journey Fox Spirit has taken so far, before opening up to questions, which were many and varied! I felt this was a really interesting talk, as at the end of the day, without small press and genre publishing there would be no-one willing to take a risk on something the least bit unconventional, so it was really refreshing to hear from that side of the world!.

Another break followed, before David returned with the second of the two books he’s recently gotten out into the world – ‘The Sign in the Moonlight‘ being a collection of fully illustrated short stories, with a nod to authors past including Lovecraft, Doyle and H.G. Wells and brought out with Digital Fiction Publishing after a bit of a bumpy journey, by all accounts. David read one of the short stories from the book and explained a bit about the journey of creating and collating the works and his inspirations behind them (or not, as may be!)

David Tallerman reading from Patchwerk

Finally, of course, was the raffle! I have to say that I did begin to worry as we bundled books together whether we might have (dare I say it) too many books! And the number kept growing, as Adele kindly donated Fox Spirit’s soon to be launched ‘African Monsters’ and it’s predecessor in the series ‘European Monsters’, Adrian Tchaikovsky snuck in a copy of his book ‘Guns of the Dawn’ (which he read from back at our first event) which quickly became highly coveted by those browsing the tables stacked high, and there were several others drawing attention as well. So many (if not most) left with more books than they arrived with!

As I’d also mentioned earlier, we also had a shop at this event, as Fox Spirit brought several of their books along for perusal and for sale – which seemed to go down well with the guests – if you were there, I’d be really interested what you thought to this – would you like more of this? If so I’ll see what we can do!

So all that remains, is to thank our guests once more for coming and talking with us, we really hope to have you back to future socials! And those who turned up to support us – we really hope that everyone enjoyed it and to see you at the next one!

 

 

 

SFSF Social #1 – In the Aftermath

Hello everyone!

This is my first post on the SFSF Social Blog, which is rather exciting! For those who were there, I was the quiet hobbly one (not to be confused with Hobbity, as I am the tallest of the three of us behind yesterday’s (Okay, I started this the next day…. but things happened) and future events!) For those who weren’t, I’m Sara, and I do lots of stuff, and one of them is helping with this!!

Your Hosts here at SFSF

As you’ll know, yesterday (Okay.. yes it’s a couple of weeks now… ) was the first SFSF Social (huzzah!) And from what I can see, we all loved it. All in all we had over 30 people from not just Sheffield, but as far as York and Stafford and other places too, gathering at Eten Cafe to get together, chat, network, and listen to our guests of honour for the day, Adrian Tchaikovsky and Jo Thomas.

After a bit of time for people to arrive, get a drink and have a perusal of the surroundings we kicked off with introductions. I will admit happily this was the hardest part for me, as I’ve not really done anything social in a few months since injuring my leg so the idea of having to address a room of people absolutely terrified me, and I *nearly* managed to get out of it, had it not been for Jo sneakily realising!

 

Introductions!

 

After introductions, Steve then gave a brief introduction to the event, and we all gathered round for Jo’s reading. Jo (for those who don’t know) has written a book called 25 Ways to Kill a Werewolf, which is published by FoxSpirit, and we were treated to a portion describing one such method; namely the Nailgun. Written as part instruction manual, part diary and very down to earth, the book talks us through the main character Elkie’s repeated dealings with werewolves. After finishing and a hearty round of applause, we moved onto a Q&A session which was enjoyed by everyone.

 

“everybody laughed in the right places” – Jo Thomas

Jo Reading her chapter on Nailguns

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After a break for refills and a stretch, we gathered back for Adrian’s reading. Known for his series Shadows of the Apt, we were both surprised and excited to hear that he was reading from his new stand-alone book Guns of the Dawn. Pseudo-historically set (Napoleonic age), we heard the story of the female protagonists first kill on the battlefield. I’m not going to say much more on that, as I really think that you should read it yourself! Then followed another Q&A session where there were a lot of interesting questions!

On paper no less!

Then we moved onto the raffle. We had some generous donations sent in, including a full set of Adrian’s Shadows of the Apt series (which we split into three) so lots of bundles of books to be won! I hadn’t really looked too hard at everything on there, as it’s rare I win things when I’m in person, but I was lucky enough to walk away with the “nazi flying saucer” book, as it was aptly described, along with another one. I think everyone enjoyed this part, and the banter was flying thick and fast.

A few of the prizes..

And that was that! People then quite happily went and talked to one another, made new connections, and friends, caught up with old ones, had another pint and generally had fun, and whilst I had to nip off to another event (that frankly was a waste of my time) I know that come 8pm, the location had changed as Eten was shutting it’s doors, but other places were explored!

The final moment of the evening for Steve and I though, was the last pint in what is to be our next venue, The Old Queen’s Head.

I’d given up on The Waste Of My Time ™ and come back into town, as Steve had wished the last person goodbye from Cavell’s and we wandered down to the familiar setting of the Writer’s group, and had a pint which took us to midnight and talked about the day, and how we’d definitely be organizing another… which we are!!

Sara

The Authors and organisers

 

All photographs (C) Sara Smith 2015