So two weeks from today, Dan and I will be on our way to sunny Prestatyn in North Wales, where we are special guests of the third SFX Weekender, the weekend geek-gathering arranged by SFX Magazine. We’ll be there alongside celebrity guests and chums like Paul Cornell, Sylvester McCoy, Alex Kingston, Brian Blessed, Toby Whithouse, Sarah Pinborough, Ben Aaronovitch, Craig Charles, Eve Myles, Dan Abnett, Mark Buckingham, China Miéville, Adam Christopher, Hattie Haydridge, Norman Lovett, Sophie Aldred, Lee Harris, Geeky Girls Love Sci Fi, Geek Syndicate and a ton of other equally as famous and deserving to be mentioned here type people, all in one holiday park for one weekend.

Dan and I did it last year, and our ‘how to do comics’ panel was apparently notorious enough for us to be bought drinks all weekend by people. This year we have props, so should be even better.

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However, it’s not all great news convention wise today, as I’ve had to cancel my appearance next month at the Gallifrey One convention in Los Angeles, on the 17th – 19th of February due to work commitments.

Being a freelance writer is the greatest job in the world, writing the greatest things in the world, but the sheer nature of the beast means that you’re reliant on other people’s requirements for deadlines and suchlike. Over the years I’ve been lucky with only the occasional job or deadline that’s caused me to miss something, but this year I simply can’t afford the time away from the desk that a week in Los Angeles would give me. So, as much as I love Gallifrey One, pretty much my favourite Doctor Who convention in the world ever, it’s with a heavy heart that I have to pull out of attending.

If they’ll have me, I’ll be back next year and even though I’m not there, current Doctor Who scribe Josh Fialkov will be there with IDW editor Denton Tipton, and there will be some amazing things being announced. And with a guest list that goes across pretty much four whole pages, I won’t be missed too much in the grand scheme of things.

Thanks to Shaun and all the crew at Gally for trying to find a work around, and I’m sorry to let you down. If anything changes, I’ll be sure to let you know. As I said in my previous post I will be at a comic convention the following weekend, but this is in my home town and won’t take more than a day or two out of the schedule.

Something I’ve known about for a while now, but they wanted to wait until IDW were announced before putting it up on their website, is that as from today I can announce that I’ll be a featured guest of the London Super Comic Convention at the Excel Centre in London on the 24th – 26th of February.

Partly there to sign Doctor Who comics, I’ll also be appearing on panels and signing copies of the soon-to-be-a-movie Hope Falls with Dan Boultwood (who’s not yet up so class this as an exclusive) at the Markosia stand. I’ll also be signing copies of From The Pages Of Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’: Harker and Midnight Kiss, if anyone wants those done too.

London’s my home town and where I live, so there was never really a doubt that I would attend this, it’s a new event and an untried and tested commodity, but if it works, it’ll be awesome.

So the Eagle awards are up for nomination, and this year every other creator seems to be tweeting or Facebooking ‘hey! vote for me and these in [x] particular categories!‘. Which is annoying, because the one time I ever did this (back in 2008), we had nominations stripped from us.

Now, I will explain here – Back in 2008, I wrote a LJ post suggesting books I’d written that year as well as ones I thought were worthy, like Wasteland for example. I ended up being nominated for three awards. I then found out we’d been up for six, but several had been taken off me for ‘ballot stuffing’. The one LJ post suggesting options was apparently the culprit. We argued, Hope Falls was returned too late to have a hope of winning (it lost out to Thor, which wasn’t on the voting list until Hope Falls was removed) and Dan Boultwood lost a Best Penciller nomination because they ‘didn’t think he was famous enough to gain the nominations that he had.‘ The fact that in 2007/8 he’d drawn Hope Falls, The Gloom was appearing weekly on The Chemistry Set, he regularly contributed to my weekly on line column and we’d been announced as a creative team for The DFC was irrelevant.

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New Years Day, 2012 has arrived and with it comes the second half of my traditional ‘That was the year that was’, written after a wonderful evening spent with a quarter of a million other Londoners watching fireworks on the Thames. (see the photo to the right.)

July was one of last minute changes and decisions – I hadn’t intended to go to the San Diego Comic Con, but literally three weeks before the event I had some news related to things that I still can’t talk about and, with a stupidly expensive plane ticket bought for me, I made my way to San Diego. Luckily, even though in the Hotelpocalypse in March I’d managed to pick up and then drop the Marriott beside the convention centre, I still kept my backup hotel, a little secret place in the Gaslamp quarter that only cost me $300 for the week. Even ignoring the ‘do not pass’ tape and the scary lady who spent her evenings in the corridor screaming, with free wifi in the rooms, it was a bargain.

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