A lovely bunch of coconuts

Conflux 8 is on this weekend in Canberra What bringeth 2013?

A lovely bunch of coconuts

What a lovely bunch of coconuts we are! The Australian speculative fiction scene is so friendly, encouraging and supportive – I had a blast over the weekend catching up with writers and readers I knew and meeting lots of lovely new people at Conflux 8. Held at the Canberra Novotel over two days packed with panels and workshops, Conflux is the annual spec fiction conference held in Canberra. With special guests like mega-best-selling fantasy author Keri Arthur and Coeur de Lion publisher Keith Stevenson, there were lots of opportunities to ask all those questions you’d ever had about speculative fiction.

I was lucky enough to be invited to participate in two panels: The art of scene and mood setting in dark fantasy, with Alan Baxter and Tracey O’Hara, and Fantasy entities other than dragons, fairies, kings and queens, with K J Taylor and Tor Roxburgh. I had a great time talking about both topics from the perspective of a short story writer – the panels were great mixes of well established authors, novelists and short story writers and it was interesting to see different themes emerge from the different mediums.

YA fantasy author D L Richardson has a great post here on the ‘other entities’ panel.

It was great also to be able to interview writer, editor and publisher Jodi Cleghorn – my interview with her will appear on this website in the coming weeks.

I really enjoyed the weekend and came away inspired to find a way to fit some more writing into my crazy, over-partitioned life. A writer must write to be a writer, after all!

Here are some photos from Conflux