the-tiger-and-the-wolfSo: not the planned reading recs post, which has been shoved into the future like a dyspeptic time traveller. Instead, lord alive, The Tiger and the Wolf won the Robert Holdstock Award for best fantasy novel at the British Fantasy Awards, which somewhat blindsided me (as anyone listening to my cobbled-together speech probably gathered).

Holdstock is one of the great fantasy writers, and the BFS award is one of the great accolades for fantasy, so I am utterly delighted. Also, that T&W, which I sweated and slaved over, and which I sunk a whole heap of worldbuilding into, has had that kind of recognition. I raise a glass to Maniye, Asamander and the rest of them.

Fantasycon, while I'm on the subject, was great. It's perhaps the best con for catching up with friends, as there's quite a close community feel to it these days. Allen Stroud and Karen Fishwick led a very able team to produce an enormously enjoyable convention. For those who aren't in the con scene but are thinking about it, FCon is definitely a writer's convention — most people are in the trade or are working on it, and a large proportion of the panels are on genre, genre tropes, writing technique and publishing. Plus fun stuff (I was on a mad panel game Dungeons and Disorderly run by Abaddon's Dave Moore), book launches, the infamous karaōke and plenty of socialising. It's one of the peregrinatory cons, and next year will be the turn of sunny Chester.