This is a photo from the FFF workshop at Orbital 2008. Left-to-right: Gareth D Jones, Martin McGrath, Paul Graham Raven, Neil Beynon, Gareth L Powell, Justin Pickard, Shaun C Green. Photo courtesy of Gemma Morgan.

Some photos from the weekend are already starting to appear on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/orbital2008/

Plus, there’s a photo of the Friday Flash Fictioneers and a nice summary of our workshop over on Gareth D Jones’s blog: http://garethdjones.blogspot.com/2008/03/and-jolly-good-time-was-had-by-all.html

Other Orbital reviews from the FFF crew can be found here, here, here, here, and here - including the story of how Martin McGrath assumed upon being introduced to her that Interzone author Aliette de Bodard was my wife.

I’ve spent the last few days at Orbital, this year’s Eastercon, in the Radisson Edwardian Hotel, Heathrow - and what a few days it’s been…

I travelled from Bristol on Friday morning, with Colin Harvey, author of Lightning Days and The Silk Palace. We got to the hotel at luchtime and pretty much launched straight into the thick of things - the highlight of the afternoon being an energetic panel discussion on the future of the UK short fiction market.

I also met up with some of the Friday Flash Fictioneers, and finally got my hands on a copy of our anthology, Illuminations - which looks absolutely awesome.

We launched the anthology Saturday afternoon at a flash fiction workshop, which went very well. But by that time, I had started to feel ill - a feeling that would only get worse as the weekend progressed.

I met some old friends, such as Jetse de Vries and Roy Grey from Interzone, Andrew Hook from Elastic Press, Neil Williamson, fictioneers Gareth D Jones, Justin Pickard, Martin McGrath, Neil Beynon, Paul Raven, and Shaun C Green - and some new ones, such as fellow Interzone author Aliette de Bodard, Dev Agarwal, and Christopher Teague from Pendragon Press.

But by Sunday morning I had begun to feel really dreadful and had to miss the guest of honour speeches by Charles Stross and Neil Gaiman - but before I retreated to my hotel room with some rice cakes and bottled water, I did manage to stop by the art auction and buy the original artwork for my short story, Ack-Ack Macaque, drawn by SMS.

I will be participating in two programme events at this year’s Eastercon. On the Saturday, I will be on the panel for a discussion of “Sex and The Singularity” and on Monday I will be taking part in a flash fiction workshop with the rest of the Friday Flash Fictioneers. If you are attending the convention, why not come along to both? (See the main programme for more details).

I returned home this evening from a two-day business meeting in Chepstow to find an email inviting me to participate in a panel discussion at Eastercon discussing:

“Sex and the Singularity - Will our posthuman future be a matter of living next-door to the god of love, or will the only wangs around be carpets? What will really happen to gender and identity if we upload—and who’s written about it?”

It seems that Gareth D Jones has managed to convince the organisers of next year’s Eastercon to let the FFF gang run a flash fiction workshop… I’ll relay more details as I receive them.

Nominations are now open for this year’s BSFA awards. All current members of the BSFA are eligible to nominate and vote for the awards, which will be presented at next year’s British national science fiction convention (Eastercon). Members of the Eastercon will also be eligible to vote for the awards.

The Eastercon souvenir brochure arrived in the post this morning, containing photos and memories of the Easter weekend we spent in Chester. There’s even a (very small) photo of me sitting next to Liz Williams on the “gender in SF” panel.

I’ve just booked my place at ‘Orbital 2008′ - next year’s Eastercon. See http://www.orbital2008.org/ for further details.

As you know, my first short story collection will be published by Elastic Press in August next year. I received this piece of good news by email back in January but couldn’t tell anyone about it as Andrew Hook had sworn me to secrecy. However, since Andrew himself let the cat out of the bag at Eastercon, I’d now like to quote part of that email:

“I was planning to read your stories today… The big surprise was that I hadn’t quite expected to finish them so soon! Truth be told, I had to read from one to another because I enjoyed them so much. ‘The Redoubt’ is fantastic, a truly heartrending story; but whilst it was easily my favourite story here, all the others were chomping at the bit to be as good. What I liked about them, as well as the many diverse, original, and fully-realised themes, were the characters and the human touches that made connections with today’s world whilst also nodding to the future. Great stuff.”