This is a series of articles to give a flavour of this year’s 15^th Bristolcon and its  first two-day event through the eyes of one often returning attendee – me. With 52 Programme items of which I made it to just 8, it is a somewhat limited view, but hopefully the following accounts of panels and events will be of some interest to those who were there and those who might have wished they could be!

On the Saturday Morning of Bristolcon (26th October 2024) I managed to attend a panel on ‘Beyond Arthur’ and a ‘guest of honour interview with Joanne Harris’

Panel – Beyond Arthur!

We continue to mine the Arthurian legends for fantasy novels, film and TV, but there’s a wealth of more obscure myth and legend anchored in the landscapes and collective memories of Britain, including the Southwest. Our Panel discusses some of the potential inspirations that lurk beneath the beaten paths, in the forests and lakes beyond Avalon.

Panel: Steve McHugh, Anna Smith-Spark, GR Matthews, Alicia Wanstall-Burke

Moderator: S Naomi Scott

After some self-deprecating introductions with Geoff asserting “I’ve written many books some of which are good” and Alicia admitting only to “lots of pages, lots of words” Naomi posed the question, Why is Arthur the most popular myth?

Steve highlighted the intrinsic heroic nature of Arthur “He’s supposed to be the best of us, he sacrificed himself for good and that’s what people want in films and books the archetypal hero. And people can change the myth and play with it!”

Anna took a more historical perspective. “Arthur was selected as a suitable myth for Britain in medieval times. There is limited actual evidence except in some references in dark ages Welsh poetry, but Arthur became a myth used by Welsh resistance to Norman rule. He was also appropriated by the chivalric code and the Norman’s themselves, with Henry II claiming to have found Arthur’s bones.”

Alicia, noted that Arthuriana feeds across the Plantagenets and could be wielded politically, with the story being bent to whatever the powers-that-be wanted to talk about rather than peasants’ priorities.

Geoff reminded the audience of the memorable line about “watery bints handing out swords” being no basis for a system of government, highlighting how Monty Python and the Holy Grail is just one of many retellings of Arthur – a myth that is constantly reinvented!

Anna noted how the Arthurian legend merges the chivalric era, and the period of dark ages societal collapse. While woman figures in the legend are mostly passive and  embroiled in a love triangle, you can project so much onto Arthur by using different time periods!

Alicia observed that other stories are more rooted in their era for example Beowulf, while that temporal flexibility of the Arthurian myth allows you to explore more modern themes. For example issues of consent – given that Arthur himself is born through rape with Igraine taken by Uther when he is in disguise as her husband!

Steve felt that one reason for Arthur’s perennial popularity is that with the Arthurian legend, Hollywood doesn’t need to pay any royalties to anyone!

Neatly leading on from that point, Naomi asked if Arthur was still relevant today or is there another myth we should turn to!

Steve hoped not – he wants people to buy his books which draw extensively on Arthurian myth in a modern urban setting.!

For Geoff – the supporting cast was in many ways more interesting than Arthur himself! Arthur is the paragon while it’s his knights that go adventuring.

As Anna said, it is his conception and his death that are the only key points in his story, which led Geoff to point to the parallels with Jesus – even to the extend of “he will return when we need him”

Alicia mentioned other genesis myths for the British Isles, including being previously populated by giants and invaded by a Trojan escapee called Brutus! This even led into the mislabelling of the first dinosaur bone discovered here which was misidentified and mis-labelled as a giant’s ball-sack (or to give it its more proper name – Scrotum Humanum) before being more properly categorised as Megolasaurus. (If you don’t believe me (or Alicia) here’s the link!)

Anna picked up on the Brutus myth as another Trojan survivor’s story! While Aeneas founded Rome, Brutus sailed on to the British Isles which makes for a nice FU moment for the far right populists of little England

“Yes your nation was founded by war refugees from Turkey!”

Alicia noted how the Scottish origin story was a 1700s development politically motivated by desire to distinguish Scotland from England.

Still in the Scottish borders, Steve hankered after exploring Redcap mythology about malevolent murderous goblins or possibly Nessie. Steve also liked the Robin Hood mythology especially the Disney cartoon version as the best re-telling!

Geoff felt there was scope for the Cornish myth of little people to be worked into a climate change story! And Alicia pointed out that the mythical Cornish mine creatures called knockers were not actually evil spirits – it’s simply that the knocking sound is created by the mine when it is one the brink of collapse, so a real-world symptom rather than a mythical cause of collapse

Geoff was also curious about dark ages history including those battles involved in formation of Britain having discovered that a significant defeat of the Mercians by the West Saxons took place near his own sleepy village of Meopham.

While Anna enjoyed UK holidays and the opportunity for immersion in local history and folklore she was wary of claiming in current times that “English mythology is in my blood.” Arthur is icon of Britain and Wales, but was also written about in France, so he doesn’t carry that explicit sense of ethni-English nationalism! Arthur can be for everyone!

Alicia pointed out how the Victorian’s turned ‘rebel against invasion – Boudicca’ into an ‘emblem of empire!’ and highlighted that we need to be aware of the lens/barrier that the Victorians put on our view of history! We need to look over/round that and discover it for ourselves!

Steve noted how you can take the vagueness of Arthur and fill the gap with whatever you want! Especially as Alicia added that there is a mix of almost pagan magic themes and Christian grail quest

To Anna’s mind, Beowulf’s story is a piece of literature, whereas Arthur provides pegs on which people can hang stories, while Alicia felt that myths have been added to Arthur in a Frankenstein like style.

As Steve put it

“the Arthur myth is like somebody found a writer’s notebook and decided just to publish it.”

Again leading on from that Naomi asked “So Is Arthur more a setting than a story? And what are your thoughts on stitching together myths from different elements?”

Unsurprisingly Steve agreed with the first question, and went on to suggest a kind of “Avengers assemble” for British myths, bringing different elements together, a bit like when Robin Hood cropped up in Ivanhoe.

Those of us who have been watching the Kaos series felt there were distinct parallels between modern day Billionaires and the gods of Olympus – with their preoccupation with their own narcissism and callous disregard for ordinary people who they view as both exploitable and beneath them.

Naomi concluded with “Arthur has been used as tool of political legitimisation – will that endure?”

The panel’s view was that that appropriation for political legitimisation hasn’t ended. Any myth that can be used to legitimise an asshole – will be used by said asshole! Donald Trump, in seeking the endorsement of the iconic Kennedy name through recruiting Robert Kennedy Junior, is trying to ride the myth of JFK – the American Arthur.

This neatly highlighted for me how myths have often been put to use for political purposes to build that sense of identity, community but also the all-important division between “them” and “us” that the manipulation of public opinion has always required!  Even communist era Soviet Russia called on the myth of Russian Tsars of the past like Peter the Great. Myths are politicised and used by dictators as some notional saviour of the country!

As a final observation, Steve wanted to see Trump try and pull a sword out of a stone!

Joanne Harris interviewed by Joanne Hall

Bristolcon had two special guests Joanne Harris and Peter F Hamilton, with each given an interview – though sadly I only got to Joanne Harris’s interview.

This was Joanne’s first Bristolcon as she was not a great con goer, and wasn’t sure she was allowed to be at a fantasy con – depending on how rigorously a con might guard its genre boundaries.  However, she did note that cons are more fun than literary festivals as the latter have more segregation between authors and the public. It’s nice to be able to come and just relax!

Joanne has been at the writing business for a while, with her first book published in 1989 to limited success apart from the enduring admiration of a woman in Pinner. When she started digitisation was just a theory and there was no internet to speak of. However,  contracts did make mention of ‘future technology.’  She expected that over the next few years we may see big changes in the way publishing works, in particular with a move away from print.

Joanne Hall mentioned how small press publishing is leading to more democratisation of writing so, on the good side, anyone can publish a book, but conversely on the bad side anyone can publish a book

Joanne Harris felt that authors are still paid not enough. Money doesn’t seem to trickle down to the writer and the threat of AI is alarming in the way it may write authors out. AI is already taking work away from editors and translators but this is not how creation, editing or translation works. These are not mechanical processes and slashing a workforce and retaining a few to oversee AI’s faltering efforts is a retrograde step. However, people in publishing seem only to care about selling copies.

Joanne Hall pointed out a recent AI written mushroom guide she’d found that would have killed anyone who relied on it to identify safe fungi, and she went on to asking what Joanne’ Harris’s creation process was.

The answer was,

“it’s quite messy I have a few ideas that rattle around and may suggest a story, then I’ll try and find a voice and then a main character and then workout needs and wants. But I like to retain an element of fluidity, not really a plotter or a pantster.”

Throwing tea at a wall is an integral part of Joanne’s authorial process, and she writes in her shed! Which is just a shed (but one that can travel through time and space). There are advantages to having a place free from distraction especially at the end of a “Just muddy enough path” that deters people from calling/interrupting except in dire emergencies.

However, the shed can also be a metaphorical one, carried with Joanne on her travels and unfolded in whichever hotel room she finds herself in!

Joanne admitted to having written a Dr Who novella, which was a sort of fun fan fiction exercise although apparently the BBC don’t pay that well! It took a long time to write the novella – as long as a novel! She was a big fan of Dr Who as a child which she watched from behind the sofa in a fort of cushions and it was with the third doctor that she started to understand what was going on!  However, her mother was very dubious about any kind of fantasy!

Joanne Hall asked if fantasy writing was a bit of rebellion against maternal disapproval and Joanne Harris admitted that her first vampire novel did annoy mother, but she wrote what she wanted to write with no real expectation of making a living or even being published.

“There are far better ways of dying poor than being an author”

Coming from a family of three generations of teachers it is unsurprising that she ended up in teaching and it took quite a bit of luck to get to a point of being able to give up teaching. However, 25 years later she still feels like a teacher on a very long sabbatical!

In Joanne’s experience success involves a lot of luck plus hard work and perseverance but it’s important to realise the publishing industry can’t predict trends or overnight successes. So, don’t try to write to a wave of a current trend as the on-trend wave will be long gone by the time you are published!

Joanne Hall agreed that you should write the story that’s in your heart, that’s true to you, because if you don’t love your story people can spot that, whereas you can tell when a writer is having fun – it sort of sparkles off the page

Joanne Harris agreed that joy is important, particularly as she was just emerging from a tunnel of four weeks of editing, so not all is joy.

Joanne Hall noted how Harris had suddenly become prolific in almost Tchaikovsky like proportions and asked about the latest book.

This is a fantasy novel – Broken Night – which is about a menopause version of Carrie, imagining what if superpowers came to the protagonist at menopause which makes for an interesting shift on focus from more tropish young women. The publisher was trying to push it as more literary/murder genre, not wanting to put it firmly as fantasy!

When asked if she saw herself as a kind of Trojan horse writer slipping fantasy into literary fiction, Joanne said she has no particular agenda, just writes what she wants to and lets others worry about the packaging.

She often gets asked at literary festival if she believes in magic, and she gives a longer answer about magic as a metaphor for aspects of the human condition, eg charisma etc and that magic is transformative!

Joanne Hall – I think quoting Terry Pratchett – said that “fantasy is the oldest genre used to explain the inexplicable” and asked about Joanne’s other new book The Midnight Market.

Joanne mentioned that she had been working with two publishers and had been using her name with a middle initial for the fantasy books, but the distinction has become rather blurred and the need for two publishers much less obvious. The Midnight Market is basically Romeo & Juliet with nasty faeries set in London! The world building did involve a lot of research and some consideration of extinction events as the character family names are drawn from species of butterflies and moths some of which have died out.

Joanne Harris had also been pushed into collaborating on some cookery books by her agent, but has given the money from those books to Medicine Sans Frontiers, which has meant she got to travel with MSF which has been really interesting. She admits to being much better writing about making food than making food and worries that the books “make people more expectant when they came to lunch.”

“Recipes are a bit like stories, nothing is original they are handed down through the generations. My mother used cooking as a way of staying grounded in her French culture!”

She went for more practical and less esoteric cook books and is not really great on puddings, ironically being not even that fond of chocolate.

“I like watching people make them but have never really been fond of sweet things. Unfortunately for 25 years people have always expected to take pictures of me eating chocolate!”

On one Italian book tour Joanne was eternally grateful to a Milan mayor who ushered her out of the hurly burly with a promise to try something delicious and she was so relieved to be offered anchovy toast (rather than a chocolate cliche) by a mayor who well understood that “she might have liked a change!”

When asked about what lessons she came away from her experience of fighting the good fight in the Society of Authors, Joanne simply replied  “Tweet less smile more.”

While readers might welcome more books on Norse mythology, Joanne admitted that her publisher doesn’t want more Loki – however there is one already 3/4 finished, and as Joanne tends to write what she wants to write we may hope to see it completed soon. She was, at the time of interview, about to surprise her publishers with something else new.

When considering her most and least favourite parts of the writing exercise, Joanne said that sometimes books get a bit bogged down on mid draft sprawl and uncertainty! But that is part of the creative process! And that she is better at starting books than finishing them with 3 WIPs currently on the stocks.

She identified page 150 as the real wall like moment, a challenge so concrete and clear that her husband recognises when she hits it. (This could be when the tea hits the wall?!)

The number of drafts a book takes depends on the nature of the story.  Joanne reckons she has two types of books that she writes.

• One is the fishing rod which is cast out to catch a story where there is generally just a first draft and then a beauty polish.
• The other is a Rubik’s cube, which requires re-ordering and organising with inevitably multiple drafts.

However, every day starts with a reread of the previous the day’s writing and lightly editing it to get in the zone for writing the next bit, so the first draft usually ends up pretty clean.

As a genre transcending author with eclectic inspirations, it is clear to Joanne that she does have different audiences for different classes of books – with crime readers in especial being very loyal to crime within a diverse Harris readership! So Joanne wanted to finish by saying

“Thank you to all for being here. I know what I owe to you for being able to do this thing and I hope to be able to do it for a lot longer.”

And after that it was a bite of lunch before I got ready for the panels and activities which I will share in my next post, namely

• Sex in The Citadel – writing about the squelchy stuff – or not!
• SPFBO at 10 – seeing what the competition has done for the community in its first decade and
• The joys of Barcon