(Hello, Hello) It’s Good To Be Back

Well, hello all! I have returned from a truly fantastic two weeks in the States. We packed so much in, it feels like much longer – so where to begin when talking about it? Well, there were the wonders of Olympic National Park, the joys of Seattle, the sheer bounciness of meeting H’s various friends out there (hi all!), Halloween fuelled Queen / Elton John tribute acts, marvellous Northwestern booze’n’food, proper road tripping, New York haunted house mayhem, the nuttiness of Halloween (I have met Scrabble! And it wears very short skirts), much Met-ness, and of course World Fantasy Con, which was (unsurprisingly) just Fantastic.

So this is really a coming soon post, as there’s much to blog about having conned over the weekend. Again, where to begin? Ted Chiang set me straight on the relationship between science fiction and reality… I talked fiction-as-implication with Steven Erickson… Hal Duncan ranted unstoppably on the absolute need to read both Alasdair Grey’s ‘Lanark’ and Edward Whittemore’s ‘Jerusalem Quartet’… Lisa Tuttle was fascinating on her fictionally challenged Great-Grandfather… and so on…

All that’s coming up over the next few posts (coming soon!) – oh, and of course I’ve got to report back on the great Stellas comeback gig (one of the odder but more rewarding gigs we’ve done, it turns out) – but for the moment a very last minute plug for the great Jean Herve Peron (Faust bassist and all around Art Errorist), playing tonight at the Luminaire. Go here for details – what with the chainsaws, the solo-ness and the ace support, it’s going to rock (my attendance attendant on jet lag, alas…)