03 November, 2010

It's News To Me #31

I just got a new Mac and I have to say, I don't make many good decisions, but this is one of the better ones. Even blogger works better with a Mac. Who'd've thunk?

News

I don't usually put news first, but I felt this was deserved:

Science Fiction and Fantasy comes to Leeds

On Saturday March 12th 2011, Leeds will be hosting its first Science Fiction and Fantasy event in many years - ConJour.

The one day event is being sponsored by Tor UK and SFF fans will have the opportunity to attend guest talks and panels, and meet some of their favourite authors at signing sessions taking place throughout the day.

Confirmed guests attending the event are Mike Carey, Kate Griffin, Mark Charan Newton, Justina Robson, Adrian Tchaikovsky and Freda Warrington.

The venue is the Leeds Park Plaza hotel which is set in the heart of Leeds city centre, with nearby bus and train transport links, and it is very close to a host of shops, bars and places to eat.

“I’ve been to many conventions and events over the years,” said Stephen Aryan, one of the event organisers. “But the majority of them tend to be in the south, which is a long way to travel for some people. So I’m hoping that by setting ConJour in Yorkshire it will attract fans from all over the country.

“I also appreciate that full weekend events can be a bit intimidating, especially if it’s your first time or you’re attending on your own. This way, by running a one day convention fans can enjoy the event, maybe make some new friends, and they won’t miss out on anything.”


For more information about ConJour visit the website www.conjureevents.co.uk or email conjour@hotmail.co.uk or follow on twitter conjour1

Cover ArtI love Daniel Abraham (no matter what his pen-name) and this, Leviathan Wakes, is high on my list for 2011. I hope Orbit gives him the marketing he deserves, and right now they have a cool wallpaper to tide us over for the release.

Blogs

You have probably already noticed that I'm a big fan of The Wertzone. Adam does a great job with thought-provoking articles and I wanted to mention a few that I've been forgetting the last few weeks:

Power in Epic Fantasy

Does Science fiction need faster-than-light travel?


What I'm reading

I've finished a few books lately, but like I mentioned last week I just haven't had the time to write up reviews. You'd be surprised how long these actually take given how bad they are. :)

I finished The Ten Thousand [US] [UK] by Paul Kearney most recently and I agree that he's almost criminally underrated (not necessarily so by the blog-o-sphere) and I just picked up the sequel, Corvus [US] [UK], which I will be reading shortly.

In the past few weeks I've finished The Price of Spring by Daniel Abraham (review will be up this week), Ender's Shadow [US] [UK] by Orson Scott Card on audiobook, Mockingjay [US] [UK] by Suzanne Collins on audiobook, and I'm currently listening to Tigana [US] [UK] by Guy Gavriel Kay.

Boy am I late to the game with Kay and I still regret that. I'll be catching up soon enough though.

And that's the news...at least to me.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I am late to the Kay party too. 75 pages from finishing Lions of Al-Rassan. It is not as powerful as I was led to believe. It is great writing but I am not blown away.
I have Tigana but will wait for your review before I move it up the list.

The Ten Thousand is also in the pile and I look forward to reading that as well.

ediFanoB said...

I could not resist and ordered LEVIATHAN WAKES in advance :-)

Bryce L. said...

@Tyson - That stinks about Lions, I'm really enjoying Tigana, although it's definitely slower and more atmospheric. Ten Thousand is awesome, I have Corvus already and I'll be getting to it shortly.

@edi - Good idea. It's going to be good, I can tell already. :)