Wednesday 17 November 2010

The End of the Line launch at Foyles

So, last night I attended the launch of The End of the Line, the new anthology of Underground-inspired horror from Solaris Books, edited by Jonathan Oliver.

"This one goes out to the Phoenix massive!"

I have to confess I was a little late (due to family matters) and only really arrived in time for the Q&A session at the end. But all was not lost, for as the Foyles part of the event wound up, things really got going at the Phoenix Club, right across the road.

It was great to catch up with so many fellow writers, many of whom I am pleased to consider my friends now, as well as the Abaddon/Solaris editorial team, who are really like a kind of family (just don't ask me what kind).

Some of the highlights (or otherwise) of the evening were Jasper Bark and Scott Andrews pointing out that I am now genetically redundant since my son has recently won a prize for his writing (which I something I have failed to do myself so far), Al Ewing wondering what the world of Pax Britannia would be like in the year 1,000,000, David Moore's moustache, struggling to join in a conversation with Rebecca Levene and Jasper Bark because they are both a good head shorter than I am, seeing the expectant Mrs Oliver looking so well on it, meeting David Bradley, editor-in-chief of SFX magazine, again (and him recognising me!), and posing for Holmes and Watson-esque sepia tints with Michael Rathbone, Esq. (who has a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo in the new PB novella Proteus Unbound).

Rathbone and Green - here to save the civilised world!

And here are five things I didn't know this time yesterday and yet I do now.

1) Scott Andrews is a self-confessed Tequila snob.
2) Jared Shurin liked (or was that disliked?) the fact that I killed him off in Dark Side not once, but twice.
3) Adam Nevill believes it is more effective to disturb and unsettle with a horror story than to horrify.
4) Rebecca Levene likes the X-Men.
5) Richard Owen, champion of the Natural History Museum and inventor of the word 'dinosaur', also invented the word 'dentine'.

So there you go...

Scott "It has to be lime for me, every time" Andrews.

If you really want to, you'll find all sorts of embarrassing photos of myself (and other writerly types who'd also had possibly one Tequila too many) here.

No comments: