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.