Schedule for Alt.Fiction Spring Writing Weekend

Hi Guys,

Here's the latest news on the Alt.Fiction Spring Writing Weekend, which takes place this May. We've just managed to confirm the schedule, which looks really exciting and is crammed with feedback time, workshops and talks that will be hugely useful to everyone attending.

So here it is - if you haven't booked your place yet, tickets are just £180 including all food and accomodation and can be booked at http://altfiction.co.uk/the-programme

Cheers

Alex

Alt.Fiction Spring Writing Weekend – schedule
All events in the Chatsworth Room unless otherwise stated

Friday 20th May

4pm onwards Arrival time
7pm-9pm Dinner (Legacy Chesterfield Hotel restaurant)
Saturday 21st May

8am-9:30am Breakfast
9:30am-10:00am Opening session – writing aims and ambitions
10:00am-10:45am Opening talk by Alex Davis – Literary Agents
10:45am-11am Break
11am-12pm Discussion session – plotting and planning
12pm-12:15pm Break
12:15pm-1pm Feedback session – bring some work with you
1pm-2pm Lunch
2pm-3pm Workshop with guest author Tony Ballantyne
3pm-3:15pm Break
3:15pm-4:15pm Interview/Q+A with guest author Tony Ballantyne
4:15pm-4:30pm Break
4:30pm-5:00pm Day one summary and plenary
5:00pm-7pm Free time (including free writing time in Chatsworth Room)
7:00pm-9:00pm Dinner (Legacy Chesterfield Hotel restaurant)

Sunday 22nd May
8am-9:30am Breakfast
9:30am-10:30am Inside Publishing talk and Q+A with Alex Davis
10:30am-10:45am Break
10:45am-11:30am Feedback session 2 – bring some work with you
11:30am-12:00pm Discussion session – the genre book market 1
2pm-12:15pm Break 12:15pm-1pm Workshop with guest author Simon Clark
1pm-2pm Lunch
2pm-3pm Interview/Q+A with guest author Simon Clark
3pm-3:15pm Break
3:15pm-4pm Feedback session 3 – bring some work with you
4pm-4:30pm Day two summary and plenary

Events are go...

Hi Guys, A week or so since I last posted, which I can only put down to being busy both with social stuff and decorating, although I have to admit I didn't get my hands all that dirty... :-) But things are picking up very nicely under the banner of Alt.Fiction - obviously we're not all that far away from our Spring Writing Weekend, with some places still available for that. The schedule of events will be going live soon, and I think everyone will be really impressed when they see the level and quality of activity going on. Then of course we've been lucky enough to make two big announcements since then, first and foremost all the details of our flagship Alt.Fiction 2011 event, taking place on 25th and 26th June. Our Guests of Honour for this year are huge SF author Alastair Reynolds and top comic book writer and novelist Dan Abnett, who will both be joined by a stellar cast of authors throughout the weekend. I'm so excited about the expansion to two days and all that can offer, so it should be a fantastic year. But wait, there's more... as we've also been able to snag an event with the legendary Iain M Banks at Leicester's Phoenix Square on the 3rd June. Anyone who has seen Iain before will tell you how entertaining a speaker he is, and he was a real star turn at Alt.Fiction back in 2007. I'd love to say more, because that's far from all we have in the pipeline, but some things are still cranking their way through ths system before becoming official. But rest assured we won't be taking too much time off after the June weekend, and we'll be back in full swing throughout September and October. That's all for now... signing off for lunch! Thanks a lot Alex

Busy busy...

Afternoon all,

Just a quick stop in for the weekend - things have been pretty busy, so apologies for lack of a recent posting!

I am pleased to say, however, that we now have all the details for Alt.Fiction 2011 - it's great to be back for a fifth year, and our Guests of Honour for this year are Alastair Reynolds and Dan Abnett, who form part of a fantastic line-up of speakers.

All the details are below anyway - hopefully will see many of you there!

Cheers

Alex




Alt.Fiction 20112
5th-26th June, at QUAD, Derby

Saturday 25th June, 10.00am - Midnight
Sunday 26th June, 10.00am - 5.00pm

Weekend pass £45
Saturday pass £30
Sunday pass £20

Alt.Fiction marks its fifth year with a fantastic weekend for readers and writers of science fiction, fantasy and horror. Bringing together some of the UK's leading talent in the genre, Alt.Fiction presents a full programme of readings, panels, workshops, podcasts and much more over two days, giving you the chance to hear from your favourite authors, find out more about the world of publishing and learn more about the writing process.

Alt.Fiction is a weekend not to be missed for book lovers and budding writers.

This year's Guests of Honour are bestselling science fiction author Alastair Reynolds and acclaimed comic book writer and novelist Dan Abnett. They will joined by speakers Tony Ballantyne, Cathy Brett, Keith Brooke, Mark Chadbourn, Peter Crowther, Stephen Deas, Paul Finch, John Jarrold, Juliet McKenna, Mark Morris, Graham McNeill, Adam Nevill, Mark Charan Newton, Sarah Pinborough, Robert Shearman, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Ian Whates, Conrad Williams, Chris Wooding and many more.

Tickets from either http://www.derbyquad.co.uk/altfiction or from QUAD Box Office on 01332
290606

Alt.Fiction is a trading name of Writing East Midlands - for more information visit www.writingeastmidlands.co.uk

Incoming...

Hi Everyone,

More events coming up on the horizon, which is something I love being able to say! I can give the full details of a crime event upcoming in Derby, as well as passing you on a date for the return of an old favourite event in the city.

So first of all, we've got crime author Adam Creed joining us at Sadlergate's Bar Lisi for an evening reading and Q+A session. I always try and have a nice realxed atmosphere at events, and Bar Lisi is absolutely perfect for that. Here's the full story anyway...


ADAM CREED - Author Event
Wednesday 25th May
7pm, Bar Lisi, Sadlergate, Derby
Tickets £3

Join us for a reading and Q+A with crime writer and creative writing tutor Adam Creed. Adam is the author of the D.I Staffe novels, starting with Suffer the Children and Willing Flesh. His latest title, Pain of Death, is released in April 2011.

A great informal evening in a comfortable setting with a rising star of the crime scene, and a valuable chance to find out more about writing and the life of an author.

To book your place, call Alex on 07896 228367 or email at alexdavisevents@hotmail.co.uk

I'm also very pleased to give you a heads-up the Eat Your Words will be returning to Derby - the night combines author readings and Q+A with a fantastic three-course meal, and the evening is always a great experience. I can only give you a date for the diary for now -15th June - but plenty more details to follow.

That's all for today - see you next week.

Thanks a lot

Alex

Mighty busy...

Afternoon all,

Friday afternoon and I've finally gotten around to putting together a blog. Things have been seriously busy, both on the Alt.Fiction front as well as on my own work, so pretty excited about what looks like a packed summer.

On the personal work front, I'll be running four creative writing courses here in Derby (yes, that's four) after the great success of the first and second courses at QUAD, which have both booked out. I've also booked in for a follow-up course, which is something I'm really looking forward to. I'm also pretty pleased to be running an event with local crime author Adam Creed at Sadlergate's Bar Lisi (full details to follow) and resurrect Eat Your Words, a food and reading evening I used to run several years ago. Again, more details to follow... what an awful tease I am.

The summer for Alt.Fiction is absolutely jam packed, including the main thing I wanted to mention today - our Spring Writing Weekend. These writing weekends are a hugely valuable experience for writers, and for me have really helped me forge a lot of long-term friendships to boot. We're running at the Legacy Chesterfield Hotel, which is a stone's throw from the train station and have two fantastic guests in the shape of horror supremo Simon Clark and SF star and workshopper extraordinaire Tony Ballantyne. So if you're interested in writing in the field, this is the best chance you'll get at a weekend made just for you.

Full details all below anyway, and next week will be even more announcements on AF events for May, June and July.

Cheers!

Alex


Spring Writing Weekend, 20th-22nd May

Guest Speakers:
Simon Clark – acclaimed horror novelist and author of The Night of the Triffids
Tony Ballantyne – science fiction writer of the Recursion Trilogy and the Penrose Series

Venue: Legacy Chesterfield Hotel, Malkin Street, Chesterfield, S41 7UA
With a convenient location next to Chesterfield rail station and a wide range of leisure facilities, the Legacy Chesterfield Hotel is a great place to work and relax.

www.legacy-hotels.co.uk/legacy-chesterfield/

The Spring Writing Weekend costs just £180, including two nights’ shared accommodation, all meals and hot drinks, plus a full programme of writing activities throughout Saturday and Sunday featuring two guest authors.

To book your place, or for any enquiries, email alt.fiction@writingeastmidlands.co.uk
or call Alex on 07896 228367

A £90 deposit is required to confirm your place, with a further £90 to be paid at least one week
before the event. Deposits are non-refundable except in case of event cancellation. No refunds will be given in case of any changes to guest authors, or in the event of participants being unable to attend for any reason. Please note, the deadline for booking your place is 13 May 2011.

Alt.Fiction is a trading name of Writing East Midlands

The joy of film

Afternoon all,

Back for another blog on another topic that has been rattling around my brain of late, namely that of films. I've done a lot of programming in literature down the years, and it's a field I absolutely love. Hearing a really interesting discussion or a fantastic reading is always great, and I've been lucky enough to be there for some great ones.

But of course literature isn't my only interest, not by any means, and film is something I've always been really keen on. I may not have the broadest of taste, or be of any use at the monthly film quiz, but I'm a fan of genre films and cult films and foreign cinema, so I have my little patch anyway. But what I've been wanting to do for a while now - and have only seriously been looking at this week - is how you go about sourcing films for screenings. I've been able to get advice from a lot of people with an involvement in film, which has been a huge help. And to be honest, even since Wednesday when I first started making tentative phone calls, I've learned a lot about the process.

And boy, is it a tricky one.

Well, it is and it isn't. There's no intrinsic reason for it to be difficult - call the rights holder, tell them what you want to do, pay them a fee and then boom, you're ready to screen. The process in itself is simple, but what was particularly interesting to me, as an absolute novice, was how different it was trying to get hold of certain rights when compared to others. I'm not going to sit here and name studios or films, but some things were perfectly easy to get a hold of. Some you could even just play your own DVD without having to bring in a 35ml print or source anything from the distributor. Then other times it could be a long, exhaustive process involving shipping prints from the US or elsewhere overseas. Then there are differences in some cases for the size of the audience, the size of the screen, whether the audience is paying...

So while you have certain principles in general, there are a lot of differences in each individual case. Which made me realise just how tough a job the guys at cinemas, and particularly independent cinemas, have to do. They have to weigh up not only whether they can get the rights, and then cross the proverbial minefield that ensure, but whether what they pay for the rights will recoup itself at the box office. Sure, it's cheaper to bring in an old classic than it is something brand new on release, but then do people want to see it when they can just pick it up on DVD, in many cases for less than the price of a cinema ticket? Then if you're splashing out for a new film, is it going to draw enough audience and be popular enough to justify its outlay? I remember being thoroughly annoyed when I couldn't find a local cinema showing Pandorum when that was released, but having seen it since I can better understand why it would perhaps have been a risk - it's hardly safe ground like an action film or a romcom after all.

As I noted a few days ago, the process behind things has always interested me, and it's been a buzz to have the chance to explore this new process. Hopefully the fruits of all these phone calls and emails will be seen soon enough, and I'll be able to expand my programming horizons a bit into this new area. As I've always said, it never hurts to have another string to your bow (says the event organiser/tutor/proofer/copyeditor/writer...)

So that's been the joy of film for me this week. Be sure to stop by next week, as I should be able to announce some very exciting gigs for the first time...

Cheers!

Alex

Events - the ins and outs

Afternoon all,

Interesting times at the moment for me - even though the next few weeks are a bit quiet on the events front, April to July is going to see quite a pick up, not just in Alt.Fiction terms but also on freelance terms as well.

I have to admit that this is one of my favourite phases of work. First of all you have the daydreaming, the blue sky thoughts of what would be absolutely ideal to run. That's a good bit, because at that point the world is your oyster. Then it's taking all those optimistic, wide-eyed ideas and then trying to apply some kind of sense to them - what is feasible, what is realistic, what is affordable. At that point you tend to lose a whole batch of ideas, and after that process of elimination you're left with a simple choice - just how much can I take on? And what offers me the best return on my time and effort?

I don't want that to sound too clinical, but I think we all know these are tough times and unfortunately my days of being able to do things because it was a good idea are long behind me. If it doesn't make money, then unfortunately it's on the ideas scrapheap and soon forgotten about. Artistic quality doesn't always pay the bills unfortunately.

Then it comes to my absolute favourite part - the logistics, the real ins and outs of putting an event together. People will often say to me 'I don't know how you go about running events'. And I always say that it's not any particular talent, it's just that your brain either works that way or it doesn't. Ever since I first started going to events I was interested in how they came together and how they worked on the day - from my earliest days of volunteering just after university, the process fascinated me almost as much as the event themselves.

And that's what I mean by how your brain works - 9 out of 10, perhaps 99 out of 100 people, would go to an event and listen to the speaker and just enjoy it, take it in. I try and do that as well, but there are all sorts of thoughts pop unbidden into my mind such as 'I wonder what this venue cost to hire?', 'I wonder if you could do idea X in this space', 'I wonder what the deal was on the bookstall' and so on. I'm always interested in what lies underneath an event, which is no doubt how I've come to putting events together myself over the last five years. I'm also a dreadful venue watcher when I'm out and about, which I think is a particularly bad habit, but I digress.

The other thing about events is that you have to remember that the ultimately satisfying thing is the end result. Many jobs and walks of life you have landmarks on a pretty regular basis, things that you can tick off and say, 'yes, that was done successfully'. An event essentially has no life apart from on paper until the day, and even then your months of planning will only result in a day or a weekend of activity. That's not something that is satisfying for everyone. But for me, again, the penchant for logistics comes in, because for me that one day of activity is not just one success, but a whole series of small successes. When the venue is set up right, that's a little moment of satisfaction. When things kick off on time, that's another. When the glasses of water arrive on time, that's another tiny victory. And these are the things that make up an event, the tiny pieces of a jigsaw that hopefully will only ever be seen as a whole by an audience, but has been painstakingly put together over many months.

I suppose, frankly, that to most people these types of ins and outs are ultimately quite boring. Even more so, as an audience member, they are largely unnoticeable in your experience. But do bear in mind the people who put events together up and down the country will ultimately succeed or fail on these often tiny factors. I salute my fellow pedants, detail-watchers and control freaks who make all these things happen.

To be honest, I struggle to see myself ever not doing events. It's become a sort of addiction over the years, the buzz of planning and putting together and then the even bigger buzz of getting there on the day and thinking 'I made this happen', or at least in part made it happen. There will always be other things on the table as a freelancer, but events are ultimately what I love. So brace yourselves for more - more from Alt.Fiction and more from Alex Davis Industries or whatever it may in time be called.

So just remember, next time you see a glass of water arrive on stage, that was meant to happen.

-Alex