Alt.Fiction - the alternative view

So there I was, teetering on the edge of the skyscraper, the Baron’s minions advancing toward me with guns, knives and colonic irrigation equipment. The prospect of a gruesome death was real, imminent and only partly mediated by the prospect of also having sparkly clean intestines. Yet, despite this, I found myself thinking: this would make a good framing device for my report about Alt.Fiction.

48 hours earlier – a Saturday morning in June.

Bright sunshine splashes across the streets of Leeds as our hero makes his way to the train station. Birds are singing, pedestrians are breaking out in impromptu song and dance numbers and even the trains are running on time. Were it not still early, no doubt he would have raised a suspicious eyebrow at the world’s uncharacteristic levity, but it was, so he didn’t.

He did raise a suspicious eyebrow sometime later however, shortly after arriving in the Duchy of Derby, where he had once toiled as a humble serf coding merchandising databases. For this was not the land he once knew. A mighty fortress now stood here, just across the road from Gala bingo.

He might have justifiably said ‘crivens’ at this point, but instead stuck to the raised eyebrow.

Access to said fortress was gained via an underground passageway. A labyrinth waited within, along with some toilets and a hand-dryer that expelled air at such velocity it made your skin ripple kinda like Roger Moore’s face in Moonraker when he’s strapped in the high g-force simulator. The eventual exit led out into a strange new place that created much confusion – where was this place? I don’t remember this. Google Maps, you’re not helping. Could I have passed through a dimensional rift, a hole in the time-space continuum? Ah, no, hang on, I turned left back there instead of walking straight on, didn’t I? That explains it.

Further adventuring arrived at the Quad, which is a large building and not a four-wheeled bike.


A terrible venue for a writing event


A much better venue for a writing event

It was almost ten o'clock. The programme started at ten. The clock was ticking, but then again, it usually is. Unless it's digital. Either way, I barely had time to notice the inconsistent switching between third and first person, because I was in, upstairs, registered (by the formidably good crew who also did World Horror Con this year), pointed in the right direction by Catherine Rogers, Project Manager and Saint (yes, she dresses as a man and steals from the rich in a series of books by Leslie Charteris... but looks nothing like Roger Moore, who played her on TV), and then ensconced in the comfy chairs of cinema number one in time for the panel on 'How does today's SF compare to the classics?'...

Now, I won't give a blow by blow account of the panels, because I believe the audio will be made available on the Alt.Fiction site in good time, but my impression of this one was that it was an amiable chat where all concerned agreed on pretty much every point raised.

Unfortunately, as happened on a couple of occasions during the day, there was a re-enactment of Doctor Who episode 'The End of Time: Part One'. You know the bit where everyone's heads go all blurry and they end up turning into the Master? Yeah, that happened. Except everyone turned into Alan Titchmarsh instead.


This is Paul Cornell, Tony Ballantyne and Colin Harvey turning into Alan Titchmarsh


This is two Alan Titchmarshes turning into Lee Harris and Alasdair Stuart

As a brief aside, I saw Alan Titchmarsh's Ground Force co-presenter Charlie Dimmock in the hotel bar at Crimefest this year. This of course means she is, in fact, real, and not an animatronic puppet like you always thought. I mean, honestly, we haven't got anywhere near the technology to construct realistic, life-size animatronic puppets yet.


Charlie Dimmock, not a life-size animatronic puppet, but probably the result of a Martian gene-splicing experiment. The red hair's a dead give-away

At 11 o'clock, I went down to the Mac suite to participate in a podcast on 'Blogging and the Internet', hosted by Alan Titchmarsh and featuring just myself, Alan Titchmarsh and Alan Titchmarsh, because unfortunately Alan Titchmarsh and Alan Titchmarsh were unable to make it due to illness or car trouble.

As you'll have seen above, part way through the recording, the two attending Alan Titchmarshes turned into Lee Harris and Alasdair Stuart, whose exploits have by now passed into the stuff of legend and need no repeating here. This proved fortunate, because I was still suffering from my last run in with the Baron, where his henchman, Spot, tried to cut out my tongue with an industrial steel press. I was a little hoarse as a result (as opposed to a my little pony, which kicked off the whole me / Baron antagonism thing in the first place). Lee and Alasdair can both inform and entertain quite capably on their own for hours at a time, so when placed together, I happily got away with making the odd remark and throwing in the odd question and letting them do the rest. Oh, and there was some woman there too running the whole podcast, but I forget her name.

There were no breaks. As one thing ended, another began. So, after the podcast I hurried straight back upstairs to catch the 12pm 'Writing for BBC Books'. I took this photo of the panellists just before it started. Let it be a warning to those of you who have thought of writing for BBC Books.


Completely untouched photo showing primarily David Llewellyn, Guy Adams and Sarah Pinborough. Their eyes really do glow like that. It's because the BBC insert laser beams in their heads and send them out as cheap lighting rigs for school discos

However, despite their many disadvantages in life, those on the panel were very amusing and illuminating about the chosen subject (no doubt partly thanks to their laser-beam eyes).

Panel ends. Applause. Snack. Piss. Next panel.

1pm. 'Hack and Slash versus Sparkly Vampires'.


Despite appearances, the guys and girls did talk to each other during the debate

Another good crop of panellists and diverting discussion, but no one stood up for sparkly vampires, which was a bit of a disappointment. Clearly dousing the undead in glitter does not win you many friends amongst the more serious fantasy crowd. I shall be writing to Stephenie Meyer to suggest that her next effort should feature a lich covered in hundreds and thousands, because who wouldn't be won over by that?


Sophie Ellis-Bextor up to her armpits in hundreds and thousands. I'm not entirely sure why, but it came up on Google image search, so...

Panel ends. Applause. No snack. May have pissed, unsure. Next panel.

2pm. 'Creating Fear - The Art of Horror Writing'.

What I learned from this panel was that horror writers are a bunch of 'fraidy cats. Except for Steve Jones, who struck me as one of those brilliantly opinionated types that accordingly generates disagreement and debate at odds with the usual panel protocol of everyone politely agreeing with each other. Not that this would have been a problem anyway, given Sarah Pinborough was in attendance too, being her usual bright, filthy, funny self in spite of a cocodemol overdose.

Piss. Panel Ends. Applause. Shit. Pissed too early. Never mind. Next panel.

3pm. 'What is Alternative Fiction?'


Featuring Marc Gascoigne, middle, doing his meerkat impersonation. He really is saying 'simples' at this point

The best way to sum up this panel would be to use the summations offered up by the panel at the end. But I didn't write them down. They were good though. Listen to the podcasts when they're up.

Talking of podcasts, after this last panel I went down to see... um, whoever that woman downstairs running them was. This led to me sitting in the audience for the next, which was rather fascinating for me as a budding writer. It was on 'The World of Publishing' and featured the views of not only publishers (Marc Gascoigne), editors (Steve Tribe & Jenni Hill), but also a publicist (Jon Weir). The latter especially being a novel and refreshing take on the business that I've not seen/heard represented on a panel before.


I could have fired up Paint Shop Pro and doctored out the red eye, but then I might have got carried away and dressed them up as Care Bears or something and that would have been both disrespectful and completely misplaced in this piece of serious reportage

There were more events after this, but I'm afraid I was pretty sozzled by this point and the rest of the evening was spent chatting in the bar. Wossherface has name-checked those we talked to in her post below and the big disappointment of Alt.Fiction was not having more time to talk to everyone.

But everything I saw was a great success. The panels were generally and genuinely of a higher quality than those I've been to at the likes of World Horror, FantasyCon, Crimefest and the Harrogate Crime-writing Festival. This isn't to disparage those events, but I think that the weakness of Alt.Fiction - everything crammed into one day - also played to a great strength of quality over quantity. The subjects of the panels were broad enough to allow a good and varied discussion instead of being hamstrung by a narrow or obtuse objective. The writers in attendance all did themselves credit on the stage, no doubt helped by the programming committee's choices and the Quad as a venue was refreshingly swish compared to the sometimes creaky hotels that often host similar events.

It would have been nice to try out the workshops, catch some readings or make the evening events, but hopefully I'll get the chance to do that next year.

All of which brings us back to that rooftop... but it's getting late. I've got work tomorrow and you know how it is. I'll tell you all about it another time. But don't ask about the my little pony thing. That's still way too traumatic.