SFSF Social #5 – 20th February 2016

Is it 2016 already? Good grief, the future’s nearly passed!

SFSF Social returns for the first event of the new year on Saturday 20th February, at 4pm, for another afternoon of readings, talks, Q&As, and a couple of freebies. We’re at Eten Cafe on York Street in Sheffield City Centre, and this time our guests will be:

David Tallerman.

Author of the Easie Damasco trilogy, which was released through Angry Robot Books, and also of Patchwerk, the latest release from Tor’s exciting novella imprint. David has also had stories published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Digital Science Fiction, Pseudopod, Interzone, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and the anthology Sharkpunk! amongst many others.

 

 

Adele Wearing.

Adele is the “Auntie Fox” of Fox Spirit Books, the Leicester-based, British Fantasy Award-winning, independent publisher of fine genre fiction such as 25 Ways To Kill a Werewolf (Jo Thomas), White Rabbit (KA Laity), and the anthologies Girl At The End of the World and Tales of the Nun & Dragon. Fox Spirit Books have also published the highly acclaimed European Monsters and African Monsters collections, edited by Jo Thomas and Margrét Helgadóttir.

 

Once again, we look forward to seeing you all there!

SFSF Social 4 – David Barnett & Ask The Agent with Amanda Rutter

It’s time to announce the guests for our fourth Social of the year – and the last until 2016, so do come join us at Eten Cafe on Saturday October 17th, as part of Sheffield’s Off The Shelf Festival, when we shall have:

David Barnett and Amanda Rutter.

Book your places now at this here linky!

David Barnett

David Barnett is an award-winning journalist and author based in West Yorkshire. He was born in Wigan, Lancashire, in 1970 and has worked in regional newspapers since 1989. He is the author of the Gideon Smith alternate history series from Tor Books, beginning in 2013 with Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl. David is also the author of Hinterland (2005, reprinted 2008), Angelglass (2007) and The Janus House and Other Two-Faced Tales (2009), all published by Immanion Press, as well as popCULT!, published in 2011 from Pendragon Press. His work has been translated into Czech, Russian and German. He is represented by the literary agent John Jarrold. His latest novel, Gideon Smith and the Mask of the Ripper, will be released by Tor (US) and Snowbooks (UK) in October 2015.

After training and working as an accountant for over a decade, Amanda Rutter became an editor with Angry Robot, helping to sign books and authors for the Strange Chemistry imprint. Since leaving Angry Robot, she has been a freelance editor, through her own company AR Editorial Solutions, BubbleCow and Wise Ink. She also finds time to write blog posts for Tor.com. In her free time, she is a yarn fiend, knitting and crocheting a storm. Amanda is an associate agent at the Red Sofa Literary Agency, and will be hosting an Ask The Agent session at the Social.

Now, this is an exciting opportunity to get some inside info on the publishing industry, especially for aspiring authors out there, and Amanda has excellent credentials. What we’d like to do, to make the session run smoothly, is ask that questions are submitted in advance as much as possible. You can do this in one of two ways: either by filling out the contact form here on this post (see below) or by emailing AskAmanda [at] kinsmeet.co.uk. All questions received will be forwarded on to Amanda. If you can’t attend the Social in person, we’ll post up answers to your question after the event.

 

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Oh, and as ever, there will be books to be won in our slightly legendary raffle! (This time, I’m afraid, there will be a small charge of £1 for raffle entry to help cover room costs, but the Social itself is still free to all.)

And, lastly, a reminder – the 4th York Pubmeet takes place on Saturday September 19th, with guests Alex Davis and Marie O’Regan. All details are on this linky thingy – we hope to see you there!

SFSF Social – June Report

The third SFSF Social went off with a bang last night – if you weren’t there, here’s a taster of what you missed (and some advance details of the next Social too).

Back at Eten Cafe, where we had the first Social at the start of the year, authors Jacey Bedford and Paul Kane joined an audience of over 30 (including the chap on the bar, who was working the evening because he’s an SF fan), for readings, questions, and general conversations. There was the small matter of a few books to give away too…

Jacey Bedford

Introduced by Darren Johnson-Smith, who bears a rather striking resemblance to that noted teller of spooky Sheffield tales Mr P Dreadful, Jacey kicked off proceedings with a reading from Empire of Dust, a space opera set roughly five hundred years in the future. In answering the questions that followed, Jacey dealt with the history of the book itself, which was originally intended to stand on its own, and the dangers of accidentally committing trilogy.

We also heard an excerpt from her forthcoming historical fantasy Winterwood, which isn’t due for release until next year. Featuring a privateer heroine and witchcraft in Napoleonic times, it has already gone onto my TBR list…

Paul Kane

Paul Kane gave us an excerpt from his Arrowhead series – a post-apocalyptic Robin Hood story, pitting bows and arrows against Challenger tanks. He told us more about the series, about picking up old characters years later, and his new story collection Monsters. And, speaking of Monsters, Paul also read from one of the stories in that collection, the award-winning A Chaos Demon Is For Life. If you’re going to Edge-Lit on 11th July, you’ll be able to hear more from Monsters at the books official launch event there.

There were books to give away too, including copies of Monsters and The Hooded Man (with thanks to Alchemy Press and Paul himself) and Empire of Dust (and thanks to DAW Books) – and much, much more, as you can see below (more thanks to Richard Webb and Phil Lunt, the drinks are on us)! So many in fact, that we still have some for next time!

One for the covetous bibliophiles!

Speaking of which, SFSF #4 will be taking place during Sheffield’s Off The Shelf Festival in October – specifically, Saturday 17th October, so that it won’t clash with FantasyCon in Nottingham the following weekend. We’ll be putting up the page on Eventbrite shortly, but mark the date in your diary now, and spread the word! If there’s a York Pubmeet in the meantime, we’ll let you know about that too. And going forward, we do intend to carry on into 2016 – if you know of a writer you’d like to see as one of our guests, please do let us know…

So, thank you very much to Jacey and Paul for being our guests, and thank you to everybody who came along and made the afternoon a success; we couldn’t do this without you!

And, by way of thanks to Eten Cafe, if you enjoyed their hospitality, why not vote for them in the 2015 EatSheffield Awards? The link to the voting form is here, and Eten is in the Licensed Cafes & Bars category.

SFSF Social #3 – 27th June 2015

We’re back in the upstairs room at the excellent Eten Cafe on Saturday 27th June from 4pm, and we’re proud to announce that once again we will have readings and Q&A sessions with two brilliant authors!

Jacey Bedford is a British writer with a three book deal from DAW. Empire of Dust, a Psi-tech novel came out in 2014. Crossways, its sequel, follows in August 2015 and Winterwood, a historical fantasy, in February 2016. Her short stories have been published on both sides of the Atlantic in anthologies and magazines. She lives on the edge of the Pennine Hills, south of Huddersfield, with her songwriter husband and a long-haired, black German Shepherd (a dog not an actual shepherd from Germany). She used to have children, now she has adults. She’s been a librarian, a postmistress, a rag-doll maker and a folk singer with the vocal harmony trio, Artisan. Her claim to fame is that she once sang live on BBC Radio 4 accompanied by the Doctor (Who?) playing spoons. www.jaceybedford.co.uk

Paul Kane is the award-winning, bestselling author and editor of over fifty books – including the Arrowhead trilogy (gathered together in the sellout Hooded Man omnibus, revolving around a post-apocalyptic version of Robin Hood), The Butterfly Man and Other Stories, Hellbound Hearts and The Mammoth Book of Body Horror. His non-fiction books include The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy and Voices in the Dark, and his genre journalism has appeared in the likes of SFX, Rue Morgue and DeathRay. He has been a Guest at Alt.Fiction five times, was a Guest at the first SFX Weekender, at Thought Bubble in 2011, Derbyshire Literary Festival and Off the Shelf in 2012, Monster Mash and Event Horizon in 2013, and Edge-Lit in 2014, as well as being a panellist at FantasyCon and the World Fantasy Convention. His work has been optioned and adapted for the big and small screen, including for network US television, plus his latest novels are Lunar (set to be turned into a feature film) and the Y.A. story The Rainbow Man (as P.B. Kane). Forthcoming from him are the collection Monsters and the sequel to RED: Blood RED. He lives in Derbyshire, UK, with his wife Marie O’Regan, his family and a black cat called Mina. Find out more at his site www.shadow-writer.co.uk which has featured Guest Writers such as Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Charlaine Harris, Dean Koontz and Guillermo del Toro.

There will, once more, be giveaway prizes to be had, and of course a great opportunity to enjoy the company of fellow fans. Please do use the Eventbrite listing to let us know you’re coming, and spread the word to anyone who might be interested! We hope to see you there!