Local Events Roundup

Hello everybody!

We thought you might like to know about the following genre-related events over the next couple of months. You’ll certainly see us in the crowd at most of them – we’d like to say hi to you all too!

• Robin Hobb will be signing copies of her latest FitzChivalry novel, Assassin’s Fate, at Waterstones in Orchard Square, Sheffield, on Tuesday 2nd May, at 12.30pm. Be sure to turn up early!
• Ben Aaronovitch, author of Rivers of London, and the other PC Grant books, including last year’s The Hanging Tree (and writer of Remembrance of the Daleks too!) will be in conversation with Professor Jane Hodson as part of the University of Sheffield’s Festival of Humanities, at Yellow Arch Studios, on Wednesday 10th May at 7.00pm. Tickets are free via Eventbrite.
• Our good friends over at Humber SFF have a barnstormer of an event planned for Saturday 27th May at Hull’s Central Library. None other than genre giants Peter Crowther and Ramsey Campbell! You seriously cannot miss this one. And again, the tickets are free via Eventbrite!
• There’s no confirmed event page to link to yet, but Saturday 1st July sees Waterstones in the spotlight again, with Adrian Tchaikovsky and Anna Smith-Spark visiting the shop. This looks like being a full-on SFSF-style event from what Anna has told us (oh, we name-drop…), with more names planned in too – so keep your ears to the ground for more news!

Of course there’s the small matter of SFSF #6 on Saturday 24th June too – and more about that in the next post! 🙂

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: Update Time!

Hi folks! We’ve been quiet, but we’re still here – and we’ve got (hopefully) all the details you need in advance of the first Social on the 24th.

If you haven’t already registered at Eventbrite (free) can we please ask you to do so, so we can give the venue a good indication of numbers? (see the panel to the right, or go here)

If you’re travelling into Sheffield by car, we apologise for the inner ring road in advance. There are several car parks near the venue – including two NCPs in the Cathedral Quarter (S1 2EF and S1 2EL), ’round the back of the city centre. There’s also a Q-Park (S1 2NJ, known affectionately as the Cheese Grater – you can’t mistake it) just outside the Peace Gardens, which is only a five minute or so walk away up Fargate.

If you’re coming in by train, the easiest option is to grab a tram connection from the station and get off at the Cathedral stop – Eten Cafe is a literal stone’s throw from the tram stop.

Eten serves food, as does the Blue Moon Cafe (vegetarian & vegan specialists), on the other side of the Cathedral square, and there will be a bar in the upstairs room at Eten from 4pm.

The event is scheduled from 4pm, but we’ll be a bit relaxed about that to give everybody a chance to turn up. 🙂

Our timetable looks a bit like this:

• 4.30pm     Introductions all-round SRFC-stylee
• 5.00pm     First Reading by Jo from 25 Ways to Kill a Werewolf, followed by a Q&A.
• brief pause/break for refreshments
• 5.45pm     Second Readings by Adrian from Guns of the Dawn, followed by a Q&A
• 6.30pm     Free raffle for various goodies/book bundles
• 7.00pm     General chat & social

We look forward to seeing you there! (I’ll be the one hiding under a cardboard box….)

–And a quick note in advance: while we’re looking to host a second event around the end of April this year, there may be one or two readings – mini-SFSFs?! – popping up inbetween. Keep an eye of the site and our Twitter feed for more details…

We Are SFSF Social

Hi. We are the Sheffield Fantasy & Science Fiction Social Club. It’s nice to meet you.

Earlier this year we went to the York Pubmeet – held, obviously, in a pub in York – inspired by London’s own Super Relaxed Fantasy Club. Authors David Tallerman and Janine Ashbless wowed a packed room with readings of their work, the BSFA’s Alex Bardy gave away lots of books, and everybody had a damned good time with drinks and a lot of constructive conversation.

And we thought: why isn’t there anything like this in Sheffield?

So now there is.

Adrian Tchaikovsky

On 24th January 2015, at 4pm, you can join us upstairs at Eten on York Street in Sheffield for the very first SFSF Social. Our guests will be the following wonderfully talented authors and swordfighters:

• Jo Thomas, author of 25 Ways to Kill a Werewolf, available now from Fox Spirit Books.
• Adrian Tchaikovsky, author of the Shadows of the Apt series, available from Tor UK.

Jo Thomas

As well as readings, there will be plenty of opportunity to ask questions, and to win some goodies – and, of course, to have a good old chinwag, in relaxed surroundings, about anything SFnal.

We’ll have more details over the course of the coming weeks, but if you need to get in touch sooner, pop over to the Contact page, or ping us on Twitter – @SFSFSocial.

You can also find SFSF Social on Eventbrite – it’s a good way for us to gauge how many people we’ll need to cater for, so please do register (free!) if you will be popping down!