Firstly, holy hell yes does the structure of this site need updating. That is being looked at.

Secondly, Bristolcon was a blast. I was on a really interesting, gritty panel on AIs that delivered (for me anyway) on an intellectual. I got to be the Prophet of Doom, which is a panel role I occasionally slip into when I feel we need a bad guy and nobody else is volunteering. "Do we need legislation about the rights of AIs?" asks the moderator. "Yes," say I. "How will we handle that?" "Badly." I glower at the audience as if to say "Come the revolution…" Muahahaha. Also at Bristolcon: many very fine authors, artists and the like, for it really is one of the largest and most bustling local conventions going. Paul Cornell recorded an episode of his podcast The Cornell Collective there, with Emma Newman, Jaine Fenn and Cavan Scott, so do go catch that. Ian Stewart (of Science of the Discworld fame) gave a talk on time travel. I even signed a satisfactory number of books (1). Good time was had by all.

But tempus is fugitting right now, if not on winged feet then on insect wings or a jetpack or something. Next weekend I am at Octocon in Dublin, and I will be doing this. In case that link is to some special private me-only page, "this" translates to:

Saturday October 10th — 10am "Bad Advice" panel (my speciality); 12pm "Writing RPGs" panel. I will also just be generally around and about from late Thursday evening until at least early afternoon on the Sunday, so please say hi, get me to sign things, convert me to lunatic religions (2).

Later on in the month I am Fantasycon (3) in Nottingham, the schedule of which can be found here. My personal globules of fun are:

Saturday 24th 2pm: "War: What Is It Good For? Martial Conflict in SFF"  panel; Saturday 5pm — "Robots, Beasts & Humanimals: Writing Non-Human Characters" panel. I will also be reading not once but twice (!!1!) — on Friday at 7pm, and then again on Saturday at the Super-Relaxed Fantasy Club. The Friday slot will include the First Ever Excerpt from The Tiger and the Wolf along with a short story from an upcoming Fox Spirit antho. The SRFC section is only 5 minutes, so I'm still looking around for that (any requests?)

lightspeed_65_october_2015Finally, we accelerated to Lightspeed, meaning the Hugo-award winning magazine, issue 65 of which is very kindly publishing my new story "Children of Dagon". This is a SF piece and has very little, or indeed nothing, to do with HP Lovecraft.

Although I may have some Lovecraftian news in the near future…

(1) i.e. at least one.

(2) please don't.

(3) or "Fantasycon 2015" as originally typed. But, let's face it, if later this month I was attending Fantasycon 2016, or 1994, or 2245, then I'd really have upped my game as a SF author.