Better late than never… my report on FCon written with Marie, which is why I’m sometimes mentioned in the third person 
“Where did all the time go? It hadn’t seemed like five minutes since we were in Walsall at the same time last year, and then FantasyCon 2006 was suddenly upon us – in a brand new city, Nottingham, and a new hotel with a rather nostalgic name (for those FConners who can remember the Birmingham do’s). For three days between 22nd and 24th September we took over that place, shifting it sideways in time and space until it was no longer recognisable to the general public; until it was ours for the duration – and quite frankly I don’t think the staff there will ever be the same again!
Nottingham was handy for us as it was only half an hour by train, and it was certainly more central for most of those travelling from all around the country or by the motorway – although having said that, the accident on the M1 meant that a number of attendees were stuck in traffic on the Friday night, including Pete Crowther of PS Publishing and author Tony Richards. We got to the hotel at about 11 a.m. on the Friday morning and I don’t think either of us has been looking forward to a con as much as this one in years. This was going to be a big weekend. Not only did we have great UK Guests - Ramsey Campbell and Juliet E. McKenna – we had three others joining us from the States: Raymond E. Feist, Neil Gaiman and none other than Clive Barker!
As soon as we got there and had checked in, we went up to the restaurant floor – even that seemed to be set aside from reality, with weird symbols appearing on the lift screen, akin to those in Lost when the button doesn’t get pushed. There we were greeted by Pat and Jenny Barber who had been there since the night before, busily putting things in place. There were boxes everywhere that needed unpacking, and eventually there were flyers, books, catalogues and bookmarks strewn over the tables ready to go in the goody bags – as well as our first glimpse of the FCon booklet which had original Clive Barker artwork on the front (and pretty damned gorgeous it looked too). We were expecting around 400 attendees, so were glad when other FCon committee members Debbie Bennett and Vicky Cook arrived, plus a larger than usual number of volunteers, including an enthusiastic Paul Campbell, all willing to stuff the goody bags on a sort of production line. Even with them it took about 3 hours of backbreaking work, so we were grateful for the sandwiches and chips provided – even if some of them came in double and triple decker proportions.
After freshening up, the first port of call was the bar area (of course). And already we saw how it had filled up in the afternoon. One of the first people we spotted was Neil – who we’d heard had arrived – and his god-daughter Hayley, so it was off to the bar with them for a chat and a drink before everything got too hectic. He told us about how nostalgic it was to be back here after almost twenty years, seeing some faces he recognised and others he didn’t – and in fact neither did we, as they were FCon virgins who’d booked for the first time this year. Neil then caught up with people like Ramsey and also a very nice lady called Wendy who’d once employed Neil as a freelance writer back in his journo days, when she was editor of Space Voyager magazine. In the dealers’ room the next day I found out that she still had a copy of Neil’s very first book, his biography of the band Duran, Duran – now a much sought after collector’s piece.
More chat and drink ensued, with people like Dave Price (ex- Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque editor), last year’s Guests of Honour Simon Clark and Mark Chadbourn, Martin Roberts and Helen Hopley (who were putting on another film show on the Saturday night), Jonathan Oliver of Abaddon Books and his wife Alison, and too many more to properly recall after a few drinks. In no time at all, it was the launch of the Con itself with MC David Howe mentioning the sad loss of genre greats like Charles L. Grant, David Gemmell, and Ken Bulmer. They will be missed. David also drew people’s attention to the two charity books on sale that weekend, his own Shrouded By Darkness in aid of DEBRA, and our very own BFS: A Celebration book, with profits split between the BFS and the Nqabakazulu project. There followed the famous Quiz, a UK vs US panel in which Ramsey and Juliet represented the former, Raymond the latter, and Neil took up the ground somewhere in-between, having been born over here but now living in the US (“When I was over here I wrote about the US, when I moved over there I wrote stories set in the UK…”). Ramsey’s interview came after that, with John L. Probert putting the questions to him, then a reading by both of them to take us past the witching hour.
Inevitably we all found ourselves back in the bar until the small hours, where the bar staff strangely called time at quarter to two (probably having run out of most of their stock – did they really think us writers just drink tea?). It didn’t stop us sitting up until nearly half three