Life on Hold Until Further Notice - Jan Edwards
As
the year of the Covid rumbles on we find more and more of those events we look
forward to are falling by the wayside. At the weekend just past I should have been on a panel at EdgeLit in Derby (event cancelled). Likewise events where I was intended to be on panels, or give readings, or (wo)man a book stall for Alchemy Press, are Birmingham Lit Fest, Fantasycon, Novacon, Stokercon and several other one day Lit events.
Stokercon
was the biggest loss for me. This had been scheduled for April and I had
intended to launch my folk horror novella, A Small Thing for Yolanda, there, as
well as the horror anthology Alchemy Press Books of Horror 2, which I co-edited
with Peter Coleborn and Alchemy Press, and two other Alchemy titles, Les
Vacances by Phil Sloman and Talking To Strangers by Tina Rath. But alas, it was
not to be.
The
only bright spot at that times was that Stokercon was rescheduled
(optimistically as it turned out) for August. But Covid had not done with us.
Stokercon is essentially an annual American convention that occasionally
crosses the seas to the UK, we really thought 2020 was going to be the year! We duly booked a celebration slot for the four
titles at the August Stokercon and added in the launch/publication of my next crime Listed
Dead to coincide with it all.
Ha!
As the Scottish Bard would have it, ‘The best
laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft a-gley.’
So
what then? Stokercon is an annual event and 2021 is already in planning; time
was running out. Answer? Reboot ‘Stokercon 2020’
as ‘Chillercon’! Aptly titled not just
because it’s a horror event but also that the weather for any event in Scarborough
in mid-January is going to be a tad brisk…
After all that I was left with two books floating around
without a place of birth, so to speak, meaning that the last week has been spent playing
catch-up looking for online niches the slot them into at very short notice. Ah. Me. Whoever thought this writing lark was going to be a restful occupation was having a laugh!
And of all that were not enough Misha Herwin and I have been trying to get our quarterly
book café into play. We slid under the
wire with the March event but were forced to abandon June. What of September?
Online - via Stoke’s City Central Library, Hanley on their Youtube channel ‘SOT
Libraries’ on 22nd September to be precise. The logistics are challenging but we shall get
there. And a good place to get Listed
Dead on a map, if not the one originally intended.
Where
there is a will, as the saying goes. Stay safe everyone!
***
***
Listed
Dead:Bunch Courtney Investigation #3 is available for pre-order HERE and
published in paper and digital formats on 6th August 2020
A
Small Thing for Yolanda is out in paper and digital formats HERE
To find out more about Jan’s fiction go to: https://janedwardsblog.wordpress.com/bibliography/
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