Martin Owton's Blog

At the beginning of this month I went to the World Fantasy Convention in Brighton. I haven’t been to a con since World SF in Dublin in 2019, mostly because of Covid and the risk of catching that or another form of con crud – I’m well most of the time but I am still immune-compromised. Another factor is my hearing; all the best conversations at cons take place in the bar which tends to be too noisy for my artificial hearing to cope with. I also struggle to hear panellists if I’m not close to the front.

But a World Fantasy Con within a 90 minute drive? Can’t not go, plus my wife likes Brighton, so we booked up.

We stayed at The Grand, next door to the Con hotel (Doubletree by Hilton). No sea view but a comfortable little room, good breakfasts and lovely staff. We used their valet parking which was very convenient but expensive – but then parking in Brighton is expensive anywhere in the centre.

Check in at the Con was very fast and well-organised with a good map of events locations – needed as the hotel was a bit of a maze across several floors. The first thing I did was deposit a few paperbacks of Exile and Shadows of Faerie for sale on the BFS Indie Authors table which was pretty packed with other Indie books. After that a wander around the dealers room to speak to some folk I knew plus a chat with a small-press publisher that might be somewhere I can send my wip when it is done.

The programme, as usual, seemed to have a number of panels that looked interesting running at the same time. Funny how that always happens, but at least there was plenty of time allowed to move between venues, unlike Dublin 2019. I found that by going to the front rows I was better able to hear the panels although there was no T-Loop (disappointing), and some panellists still speak direct to the other panellists rather than to the microphone. I don’t know how folk further back heard them. Things I did hear from the panels: peak romantasy has been reached, cozy fantasy is a real thing and in demand, Europe, in particular Germany, is buying lots of epic fantasy but translation costs can be a barrier, the UK market is big into diversity and hidden voices – if this describes you then your time has come.

The most important thing from about the con was meeting people. People who I know but hadn’t seen for ages, people who I interact with online but have never met, and people whose work I’ve read and liked but never interacted with. From that perspective the con was a success. I caught up with a lot of old friends, had face to face conversations with a bunch of people I’ve interacted with online who turned out to be excellent folk (shoutout to Mark Lawrence – a prince amongst men) and met new people.

This was what I went for, plus my wife enjoyed Brighton and we had a couple of excellent meals – shout out for Pinello, an excellent and reasonably priced Sicilian restaurant on the seafront, a few hundred yards west on the con hotel.

The whole con seemed to run smoothly so kudos to the organisers for that.

It was expensive but worth it! I didn’t sell any books, but I met a load of great people.

I went to the funeral of my friend Dave Gullen yesterday. A good friend and a great writer. He was only a year older than me.

I first met Dave when he joined the T-Party Writers Group back when we were still meeting in each other’s houses. His writing stood out even then. The group grew and we grew with it. I came to greatly appreciate Dave’s critiques of my work, and we had enough common ground to co-author a story that sold to a good market. He covered a lot of ground in his writing and I would urge you to search it out (search David Gullen in Am*zon), you’ll probably find something strange yet wonderful.

I will miss you, Dave

One of the good guys

This weekend my Facebook feed threw up as a memory the picture I took from my seat at Wembley of the Championship Playoff final a year ago. I remember the exhilaration and hope I felt then.

Which brings me to my thoughts on this …..remarkable…season that finished yesterday with a home defeat 1-2 by an Arsenal side who finished 2nd in the PL and reached the semi-final of the Champions League. Put like that, it looks a relatively respectable performance as does the previous 0-0 home draw with Man City. These results are not representative of a season that has been the most miserable and disappointing of my experience as a Saints supporter, worse even than the 2008/9 season when we were relegated to League 1 (which serves as a warning for next season).

I went to a good number of home games; we won one (Everton), and I left early several times as we utterly surrendered to Brentford, Brighton and Tottenham. The players were frequently outclassed. Russell Martin did a fine job building a team for the Championship at the beginning of last season, but completely failed to build one for the Premier League. Only two of the new players looked PL quality – Ramsdale and Mateus Fernandes; both of whom will most likely be moving on to stay in the PL. RM had to go, but his replacement Ivan Juric was equally unable to halt the downward momentum.

We have now appointed Will Still as manager. He comes with a good reputation from Ligue 1 in France. Perhaps he can find a few gems for us from that league, I hope so as the tean needs a major rebuild. There are reasons for optimism for next season, but the example of Luton Town hangs over us.

Up the Saints

Goodbye Russell Martin

It was coming. We played well in some games and were unlucky (home to Ipswich for example), but in others we looked outclassed. The system wasn’t working. Many other clubs would have pulled the trigger weeks ago. The defeat to Spurs was just too much. We were as poor as I’ve seen in a league game for years.

But thank you for last season.

I haven’t written a short story worth a damn in years, but I still have a few unpublished ones that I keep trying to find homes for. One of them that I wrote years back with the prodigiously talented Gaie Sebold has found a home at Parsec Magazine (https://pspublishing.co.uk/parsec-79-c.asp). Check “Dogged” in the new issue (#12)

So Southampton made it back to the Premier League at the first shot, though it was via the playoffs having finished fourth – and I was there at Wembley for a hugely memorable day out. No thanks to Royal Mail though as I had to queue up to get a reprinted ticket at Wembley. My original ticket has still not been delivered.

I’ve enjoyed this season in the Championship. Match tickets half the price of PL matches and the prospect of watching them win a majority of games. I will admit I was a sceptic of Russell Martin’s playing philosophy, but the results are undeniable. Adam Armstrong turns out to be a very effective goalscorer when you use him the right way. Will he now score in the PL? We’ll find out. Some of the team are already leaving – good bye Stu Armstrong of the magnificent hair. I wish you success wherever you go. Some of the players will need an upgrade if we are to avoid coming straight back down so I expect to see several new names in the starting line-up in August. This is no different from the last time we got promoted from the Championship. I hope we can make as good a job of it as we did then.

Welcome to 2024! I hope you all had a fun-filled Christmas and New Year – I did.

This being the start of a New Year I thought I should do an update on my writing (I assume that’s what you’re here for). Good news – the muse returned and I have added more words to Eternal Warrior book 2 so that it now stands at ~25k words. I also have ~15k words of a new thing (1st person POV, present tense, unrelated to anything previous) that grew from a writing prompt at Rushmoor Writers back in the spring – it looks like the start of another novel. Further good news – I saw a significant uptick in my KU page reads for the Nandor Tales books. If this was you, thank you. A few more reviews appeared and were very welcome (if a bit lonely).

Healthwise I’m still comfortably stable, the cochlear implant works well and a long course of physiotherapy has improved the foot/ankle pain that was impacting my mobility. I’m back to being able to walk long stretches without problem.

And finally Southampton are winning games again – or at least not losing – raising the prospect of a return to the Premier League. After the last few seasons it feels really good to look forward to their games.

So my episode of The Chase has aired and the secret is out – I beat Jenny “The Vixen” Ryan on my own which puts me in a pretty distinguished group of people who have pulled off solo wins. I believe there have been around 30 in history of the show. This site (http://onequestionshootout.xyz/index.html) has all the stats if you want to really dig into it.

If anyone missed it, or wants to see it again it should be here https://www.itv.com/watch/the-chase/1a7842/1a7842a2083 for a while.

So 6 months have managed to pass since I posted an update, how did that happen?

I had a birthday last week which would normally see me reaching state pension age (65) but now I must wait another year for that.

Writing-wise I have shelved book 2 of “Eternal Warrior” as I could not figure out how to make what must happen next be interesting. I do intend to return to this, but it requires an appearance by the muse.

I have returned to doing pub quizzes with a fair level of success, principally at The Half Moon, Windlesham.

My appearance on The Chase is now scheduled for Tues 26th Sept at 5pm on ITV. It will be worth watching.

So a month has passed, and now I think I can tell you a bit about what I mentioned in the last blog post.

Those of you who know me will be aware that I enjoy a good quiz and am somewhat competitive. It will come as no surprise that I might put myself forward for a well-known TV quiz. I did, was accepted and on Fri Jan 27th filmed an episode. I do not yet know when it will be screened and will post the date when I know.

I went to watch Southampton play at St Marys. They are going down. That is all.