Edge-Lit 2
On Saturday I was a guest at Edge-Lit 2, an SFF literary convention held in Derby. I’d been to the previous year’s event and also to an iteration of AltFiction that was held at the same venue, so I was really looking forward to it.
Whilst I only did one panel this year, it was momentous in that it was my first time moderating. Luckily I already knew most of the panelists (see names in photo), so that helped to make it a more relaxing experience. I had sensibly prepared some notes beforehand (OK, at 11pm the night before, when I couldn’t sleep for nerves/excitement!), so it wasn’t difficult to get the ball rolling.
The topic was “The Journey Continues: Where Next for Fantasy?”, so as per my notes we talked about past trends, current fads, and favourite subgenres that we’d like to see more of (hint: swords’n'sorcery, updated to modern sensibilities). I was a bit worried we would run out of stuff to talk about, as my notes were by no means comprehensive, but after half an hour we’d built up enough momentum that we carried through to the three-quarter-hour mark with no awkward pauses.
Then I discovered the trickiest part of moderating: handling audience questions. Not only do you have to keep mental tabs on who has put their hand up each time, you have to deal with the difficult audience member who wants to monopolise the question time with a long ramble. I hope I handled it tactfully!
Luckily my panel was early in the day, so I was able to spend the rest of the convention chilling out with friends. I went to dinner with Adrian Tchaikovsky and Emma Newman and their respective partners plus a couple of other friends, then we went back to the QUAD for the quiz. I dubbed our team “The Cardinal’s Blades”, since we had one male team member (David Gullen) and a bunch of ladies (me, Fran Terminiello, Gaie Sebold and Ruth Booth) with a penchant for sword-fighting! We did pretty well, coming second overall, and I won a spot prize (a signed, limited edition hardback of Crack’d Pot Trail) for being the first to shout out the title of Steven Erickson’s well-known epic fantasy series (i.e. The Malazan Book of the Fallen). Haven’t read it, but I know my own genre!
After the quiz we went down to the bar. Unfortunately they’d put on deafeningly loud music to try and drown out the beer festival going on in the market square, so we beat a retreat to the hotel bar for the rest of the night. Hilarity ensued… (best to draw a veil over the whole conversation, to be honest!)
All in all it was a great weekend despite the scorching heat (the venue has no air-conditioning as far as one can tell), so I’ll be putting next year’s Edge-Lit in my diary (July 19th, I believe). I just hope that a) the weather is a bit cooler and b) we don’t clash with the beer festival again!
