Things we like by friends, family or contributors to Factor Fiction.
Jay & I will be guests at Nottingham Does Comics on the 13th June.
The Speculators (the writing group we are in) will be running this event for the Clarendon Park ArtBeat Festival on Friday 23rd June at 6.30pm.
Friends Meeting House (Small Meeting Room), 16 Queens Rd, Leicester.
How do you create a fictional world? A discussion about world building within SF&F and related genres.
States of Independence is our favourite local book festival, and this year we’ll have a stall.
INDEPENDENT PRESS DAY
Free of charge | 10.30am – 4.30pm | Open to all
Clephan Building, De Montfort University, Oxford Street, Leicester LE1 5XY
Workshops | Readings | Panels | Seminars | Book launches
Bookstalls | Independent presses | Regional writers
Fiction | Non-fiction | Poetry | Plays | Artist books | Magazines | Journals
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We’ll have stock of a variety of our publications on the stall. Including:
Cover by Jay Eales
A zine raising money for HOPE not hate and including prose, poetry, comics and more by lots of local Leicester writers.
Two new collections of Lee Kennedy’s autobiographical comics.
We’ll also have a handful of copies of the latest book that includes short stories by Jay & myself:
That night I dream about Whitby.
It’s the place that Effie says I belong to. I’m sitting in a cosy room, with a small window overlooking a storm-lashed town. I can hear the sea, an endlessly restless noise. The fire crackles in the grate and I’m sipping a very sweet and delicious drink from a tiny glass. The woman called Effie is sitting across the room from me, but goodness – she looks ancient. She’s like a wizened old hag sitting there.
Effie is talking in between sips of sherry and she’s making plans. Plans of action, of attack. We’re involved in a kind of… yes, series of adventures. She’s talking like the whole world is depending on our working together to foil not one but several kinds of evil menace.
What a bloomin’ palaver!
Nine brand new stories about Brenda and Effie’s adventures in Whitby by Greg Maughan, Jay Eales, Tony Jones, Andrew Lawston, Matthew Bright, Morgan Melhuish, Neil O’Brien, Nicholas Campbell and Selina Lock, with a prologue by Paul Magrs.
Also available to order from Obverse Books
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We’re also hosting some friends’ books on the stall:
Purple Prose: Bisexuality in Britain is the first of its kind: a book written for and by bisexual people in the UK. This accessible collection of interviews, essays, poems and commentary explores topics such as definitions of bisexuality, intersections of bisexuality with other identities, stereotypes and biphobia, being bisexual at work, teenage bisexuality and bisexuality through the years, the media’s approach to bisexual celebrities, and fictional bisexual characters.
Filled with raw, honest first-person accounts as well as thoughts from leading bisexual activists in the UK, this is the book you’ll buy for your friend who’s just come out to you as bi-curious, or for your parents who think your bisexuality is weird or a phase, or for yourself, because you know you’re bi but you don’t know where to go or what to do about it.
Also available to order from Thorntree Press
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Plus this novel by local author and fellow Speculator Daniel Ribot:
Ludmilla Vatinashkaya already struggles to balance the challenges of marriage and family with her promising career as a captain in Stalin’s army when she is ordered to direct Vampsov, a covert unit created to fight the most implacable enemies of the Soviet Union: vampires. Astonished and initially skeptical, Ludmilla takes her unit on a thrilling and violent trail of destruction as Vampsov hunts down the blood sucking enemies of Socialism. With the help of Vassily, a dark and brooding creature who denies his very nature for his love of the fledgling Soviet state, they confront the most notorious monster of all in his Transylvanian lair.
Vampsov 1938, brings to life in luscious detail the Stalin-era Soviet Union. Daniel Ribot has beautifully navigated this turbulent page of history to create an an edge-of-your-seat thrill ride that’s hard to put down and impossible to forget.
Also available to order from Amazon
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Hope to see some of you there on Saturday!
Cover by Jay Eales
‘Do Something’ – Official Leicester Launch
Upstairs at Firebug (1 Millstone Lane, Leicester, LE1 5JN)
3-5pm, Saturday 3rd December
There will be a panel discussion, raffle and readings, and fine company. Also, cake.
Several local contributors will be taking part in the launch, including Rod Duncan, Jay Eales, Jenny Walklate, Ambrose Musiyiwa, Will Ellwood, Penny Jones & Cynthia Rodriguez.
The cake will be free, but the zine will cost you a fiver.
Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1678502645705533/
‘Do Something’ at Astral Gypsy (Coventry)
Astral Gypsy comic shop (Unit 2E, Fargo Village, Far Gosford Street) in Coventry.
Sunday 4th December, 1.30-3.00pm
Astral Gypsy are kindly hosting us (Editors: Jay Eales & Selina Lock) for the afternoon to sell copies and chat about the zine.
We will hopefully be joined by local creator Yen Quach. Each copy of the zine comes with a free print of an illustrated poem by Yen.
Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/226533384445814/
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Do Something is a zine that came about as a result of the EU Referendum and the rise in hate crime that followed.
We sat in shock for a few days, and wondered what if anything we could do. We saw others in our social media feeds who seemed similarly lost. We put out a call to arms to the writers, the artists, the poets and comic creators. The political cartoonists. Many from Leicester, but also from much further afield. We called and they answered. Leicester based novelist Rod Duncan. Political cartoonist for the Morning Star, BlueLou. Mike Carey, writer of X-Men and The Girl With All the Gifts. What we originally expected to be a 24 page photocopied effort ended up a professionally published 72 page beast.
For the Table of Contents – see our previous post.
All profits from sales of Do Something go to the charity Hope Not Hate, which sums up the ethos of the project. It may not be a big thing, but as the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu said “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”. We hope that you will join us in adding to the sum of Hope and tipping it away from Hate.
The event ties in with the ‘HOPE not hate’ weekend of action.
If you are unable to join us for an event, but would like to buy a copy of the zine then please PayPal £6.50 (includes UK p&p) plus your delivery address to [email protected]
Thanks to our friend Regie Rigby of Desination Venus Comics (Harrogate) you’ll be able to buy our newest publications at their table at Thought Bubble this weekend.
They are at Stand 1, Royal Armouries Hall.
Hot off the presses you’ll be able to purchase:
The first two volumes of the Lee Kennedy Collection.
Inner City Pagan collects strips from Lee’s small press Inner City Pagan comics plus extra material. With a foreword by Zograf.
Wage Slave collects strips from Lee’s small press Wage Slave comics plus extra material. With a foreword by Roberta Gregory.
Each volume will be £10 each.
You’ll also be able to pick up copies of Do Something! our charity zine in aid of Hope Not Hate. This will be the perfect bound edition with some colour illustrations and a free A5 print of an illustrated poem by Yen Quach.
It includes a brand new short story by Mike Carey, illustrations by Dave Windett, Emma Reynolds, BlueLou and comic strips by Vicky Stonebridge and Paul Rainey. For full table of contents see our previous post. They will be £5 with profits going to the charity.
So pop along to see Destination Venus Comics at Stand 1, Royal Armouries Hall.
May turned into a very busy month for us with lots of events with some kind of creative connection…
First off was a visit to The Lakes with friends from The Speculators writing group. No writing was done, but we did lots of sight-seeing of writing-related places.
Writers in the rain – at Wordsworth’s favourite writing spot.
Applied Comics Network Event – information, educational & factual comics.
Next up was a trip down to London for the inaugural Applied Comics Network Event, which I had been invited to speak at about the sessions I do at work about using comics to communicate research. I’ve blogged this in detail over on my work blog.
We both did readings at the latest Fox Bites event, which is a Leicester event for writers to read 5 minutes extracts of their work in a relaxed atmosphere in a local cafe. Organised by the lovely Adele (aka Aunty Fox) of Fox Spirit Books.
Jay entertains the audience with a sci-fi tale.
Jay read his short story Spare Change, which originally appeared in Murky Depths. While I read Once in a Blue Moon, a piece of flash fiction I wrote for the event.
The others writers who read were:
Selina talks ancient hearts.
Mayapee Chowdhury read a short story from her collection Embarrassing Siblings, Playground Taunts and other Growing Pains.
I went on a rather different creative jaunt during for the second Bank Holiday weekend, as I went on a sewing retreat. It was good fun and I learnt lots of new crafting techniques…
Fruits of my sewing labours.
May is being rounded-off with Jay busy working on a short story and a Speculators critiquing session this weekend.
Oh, and April brought the news that To End All Wars has been nominated for TWO Eisner Awards! Very exciting to have written for an Eisner nominated book!
I was rather busy in 2014 promoting ‘To End All Wars‘, so I forgot to give our prose stories the shameless self-promotion they deserve…
My most recent short story appeared in ‘Iris Wildthyme of Mars‘
The Red Planet.
Everyone agrees about the colour, at least. The rest is up for grabs.
Is Mars a dead and sterile desert, or teeming with life?
Are Martians red, green or blue? Nubile and lithe, or monstrously tentacular?
These Marses are of course incompatible, contradictory, and in many cases quite impossible. And Iris Wildthyme has visited them all.
My story Death on the Euphrates sees Iris and her companion Panda splashing down into a canal of Mars and becoming embroiled in several mysteries.
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While Jay wrote The Revenant for The Alchemy Press Book of Pulp Heroes 3.
Twelve stories of supermen, cops, Mysterymen, samurai and private eyes from the likes of Kim Newman, Rod Rees, Tony Richards and more … thrilling tales of pure Pulp Adventure.
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Jay’s previous prose publications:
Mightier than the Sword, Faction Paradox: A Romance in Twelve Parts, Obverse Books, 2011
Imaginary Kingdom, Alt-Zombie, Hersham Horror, 2012
Nine Tenths, Terror Scribes, Doghorn Publishing, 2012
Faction Paradox: Burning With Optimism’s Flames, Editor, Obverse Books, August 2012
Born Among Briars, More Tales of the City, Obverse Books, 2013
The Five Faces of Fear (The Periodic Adventures of Señor 105 #8), Manleigh Books, November 2013
Zeitgeist, Terror Tales Volume 2, #1, Rainfall Books, June 2014
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Selina’s previous prose publications:
The Periodic Adventure of Seňor 105: Green Eyed and Grim (Novella), Manleigh Books (2013)
The Great and Powerful, The Alchemy Press Book of Ancient Wonders, Alchemy Press (2012)
Light Fingers, Terror Scribes, Doghorn Publishing (2012)
Lone and Level Sands, Alt-Zombie, Hersham Horror (2012)
Last weekend we were at The Lakes International Comics Art Festival in Kendal.
Our highlights were:
Jonathan Clode, Stuart Richards, Selina Lock (I’m looking a tad serious there!) & John ‘Brick’ Stuart Clark at the TEAW – Art of Editing Panel. Photo courtesy of Alex Fitch
Jay and I will be heading up to The Lakes International Comics Art Festival next weekend (Friday 17th – Sunday 19th Oct), with a boot full of Borderline Press books to drop off at the Comics Clocktower.
Including the new Verity Fair collection by Terry Wiley, which we’re very excited to see as Verity first saw publication in the pages of The Girly Comic.
On Sat 18th at 10.30am I’ll be appearing on the To End all Wars – The Art of Editing panel, as one of the ‘ brow-beaten’ contributors. This will be followed by a mass signing featuring the attending TEAW contributors. Come along and say Hi!
Also looking forward to attending lots of the other events at The Lakes.
We’ll be heading up to Thought Bubble in November.
Looking forward to seeing the glory of three halls of stalls and catching up with lots of friends.
Very excited to have been asked to do a local book signing for ‘To End All Wars’ at the University of Leicester bookshop on Tues Dec 2nd. More details when confirmed.