FenCon Reflections
In which I look back at FenCon paneling, write a couple of chapters, and read a book.
One thing I never expected to see when opening my hotel room curtains at the start of FenCon last weekend was four wannabe Spider-Men paintbrushes in hand scaling the hotel wall below my window!
Surprise wall-crawlers aside, this year’s FenCon was a great way to kick off my 2024 convention season. It was a busy weekend with panels each day and a signing (thanks to those folks who picked up a few books along the way). As always it was fun to catch up with old friends, as well as make a few new ones. For those folks I only saw in passing, I’m sorry we didn’t get an opportunity to chat, hopefully next time.
My panels covered a wide range of subjects, and at times were challenging, but every one of them was fun.
The First-Ever Liars Panel
With Cat Conrad, and David Rike, moderated by Stephen Patrick
Where every question is made up and the answers might be too. I must admit I wasn’t at my best on this panel as I’d just got in from a full day of travel and it took me a while to get in tune with the setup for the panel. But once I did it turned out to be fun, and folks in the audience seemed to enjoy it.
James Bond Man of Mystery
With David Rike, D.L. Young, and Amy Sisson, moderated by me.
I’m up for any opportunity to talk Bond, and even better when I ask other folks questions about their views on 007. We kicked off with the question I asked in the last James Bond Lexicon newsletter, ‘Is James Bond Science Fiction?’ and went from there to cover a wide range of topics related to 007 in both movies and prose.
How to Turn Your Idea into a Graphic Novel
With Cat Conrad, and Keith Lansdale, moderated by D.L. Young
It was great to listen to Keith Lansdale on his experiences writing comics as a lot of what we discussed resonated with both of us and hopefully provided some guidance for those in the audience.
Networking for Introvert Authors
With Paul Black, moderated by Stephen Patrick
Perhaps it was fitting that this subject had the fewest panelists. Kudos to moderator Stephen Patrick for asking some insightful questions and teasing out a few home truths along the way. I would say this turned out to be my most challenging, yet favorite, panel of the weekend. As Stephen summarized, this panel turned out to be an exploration of the strengths of introverts and how discipline, boundaries, and a supportive community can help us all become better creatives.
Science and Technology on Alternate History
With Julie Barrett, Dominick D’Aunno, and Chris Donahue, moderated by M.T. Reiten
I think the consensus here was that as long as you don’t break the rules you’ve established for your fictional world, go ahead and put death rays on your dirigible. Along the way, we had some fascinating discussions on inflection points, unintended consequences, and lost technologies.
Where You At? Comics Cities
With Mark Finn, and Teddy Harvia, moderated by Stephen Patrick
I’m not sure how many times we talked about Gotham on this panel, but it came up a lot, both in discussions of the city as a supporting character, and the city as a restriction to storytelling. Some locations are important to storytelling, while for some stories it doesn’t matter - I guess the consensus here was to know which one your story needs.
Other Stuff
Each week when I sit down to put one of these newsletters together I’m always grateful to my subscribers - you have subscribed haven’t you? If not just click the button and join our growing community of subscribers.
Feed My Need For Coffee
We intend that this weekly newsletter will always be a FREE subscription, but if you enjoy what you read here, or any of the other places I hang out online, and feel you would like to contribute, you can now leave a tip over by clicking on the Ko-Fi banner below.
Brabazon Bits
This week I completed the first drafts of another two chapters of the Bristol Brabazon book. In some ways, these were the hardest to write so far, as they dealt with the cancellation of the project and the scrapping of the once proud aircraft.
Tracking down exactly what happened to the remains of the Brabazon has been an interesting challenge, as no one kept records. Various pieces seemed to have passed through multiple hands or become the subject of family mythology such as the post I found online that claimed that his ‘mum still uses two plates of Brabazon's skin as baking sheets.’
Pages and Screens
Books Read in 2024 - “Trigger Warning” by Neil Gaiman
A collection of short stories each with a promised twist from one of my favorite writers should be a winner. And while I was engaged enough to read the collection in the space of a couple of plane rides, it didn’t feel very satisfying.
All the stories were good, there were no bad ones, but nothing was a real standout either. On reflection, I think I enjoyed the short essays and anecdotes about the background of the stories more than the stories themselves.
Bond Briefings
The new bi-weekly James Bond Lexicon newsletter is off to a great start with more subscribers than we could have hoped for over the first few weeks. - Thanks to everyone who has subscribed.
In our latest issue, I ask Is James Bond Science Fiction, plus news of another Bond museum exhibit opening next month, plus a new upcoming book release.
If you enjoy the worlds of 007 and haven’t subscribed, you can join us at the link below
Before They Were Beatles Updates
The next episode of THE FORGOTTEN BEATLES podcast is done and staged. In this episode, we cover the 3 Cs - George’s stand in Vince Calandra, acapella group The Chants, and drummer Norman Chapman - It is scheduled to go live on the first Wednesday in March.
The February issue of the Before They Were Beatles newsletter is now out in which we take a sidebar to talk about the influence of legendary “Play in a Day” guitarist, Bert Weedon. If you don’t want to miss out on the expanded story of the early Beatles history, you can sign up for a subscription below.
Weekly Web Round-Up
Forest Comics - - Gill has been busy loading another box of graphic novels into our online store, and they are starting to go quickly, so if you want to check out what we have for sale just click right HERE
Batman On The Cover - The journey through Batman’s comics publishing history continues this week we move into December 1968 with new issues of Detective Comics, Batman, Brave & The Bold, Justice League of America, and World’s Finest.
My pick from these would be Brave & The Bold #81 with Batman and The Flash once again featuring a dynamic Neal Adams cover. I remember seeing this on the spinner rack around the time of release (or whatever date it was when it turned up at the local newsagents in the small village in the north of England where I grew up), but I didn’t pick it up for some reason. Many years later DC reissued it in a prestige Baxter format and I just had to buy it.
Where on the Web is Alan?
You can now find links to all the places you can find me online, websites, newsletters, social media, and more in a single LINKS page on my personal website.
As always, thanks for joining me this week. If you know someone else who might enjoy the contents of this week’s newsletter, or just my weekly ramblings in general - please feel free to share by clicking the button below.
See you next time
Alan J. Porter
The Can’t See The Forest (TM) newsletter is a production of Megrin Entertainment, a division of 4Js Group LLC