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 Saturday Afternoon I managed to attend a panel on Sex in the Citadel – about how we can navigate the writing of ‘adult’ situations, followed by the SPFBO at 10 panel, before falling into the welcoming evening darkness of Barcon.

Sex in the citadel

Do you want steamy sex scenes, or alluded to romance, when is it too cringeworthy to write it, and how do you avoid writing a harrowing scene as a romantic tryst. Our panel discusses the best way to navigate writing adult situations… subject matter be unsuitable for sensitive audiences and younger attendees.

Panel: David Cartwright, Anna Smith Spark, Tej Turner, Alicia Wanstall-Burke

As the Panel description mentioned – this did cover adult and sensitive themes so if you want to scroll past this section, head for the SPFBO Panel heading.

This panel seemed to end up being self-moderated although, with questions having been shared in advance, the expert panelists were able to structure the discussion in an engaging way, starting with introductions.

David admitted to having used sex in his books while Tej went further and confessed that “I have ghost written erotica under a pen name that I am taking to my grave.” (OK people – you have your mission let’s find that erotica!)

Anna Smith Spark said that her debut trilogy had the protagonist Marith doing “James Bond sex” with high priestess Thalia (Shades of Live and Let Die there) along with a more settled same sex couple!  Anna also pointed out one remarkable personal claim to fame.

“the abyssal void at the centre of Lovecraftian fiction is the female orgasm, and I have written the only paragraph long description of female ejaculate in fantasy fiction.”

Alicia flagged up a fairly typical concern about issues with family members reading your sex scenes, and also the fear that people think it is about the author’s desires not the characters!

With Tej’s erotica he said “I try not to think too much about what the people are doing when they are reading it!” while with fantasy

“I usually get to the point where the sex is about to start then the lights go out! If I do go into detail, it’s because it’s got a story purpose eg my portrayal of a lot of straight men as being in some ways toxic or unflattering!”

Anna though the idea of men not being good at heterosexual sex was a useful theme, as a counterpoint to sex as a reward for rescuing the female/saving the world! Something to challenge the assumption of the woman as love interest who will automatically want/enjoy sex with protagonists. With writing Thalia she wanted to unpack the character’s feelings about what is going on and the fact that she and Marith are in love – being extremely hot in a dangerous situation is not enough! Shoehorning in a sex scene just to satisfy the publisher often doesn’t work and her practical advice for the audience was

“Fucking and fighting – don’t include it unless it’s necessary to advance the plot!”

Tej noted some genre specific attitudes, with urban fantasy readers seemingly more comfortable with sex scenes than epic fantasy and American epic fantasy readers in particular being more prudish?!

Alicia, given the age difference with her protagonists was anxious to avoid any element of compulsion and be good on consent issues.

David admitted to being very uncomfortable writing sex scenes – but more at home writing about casual relationships in isolated group of characters within a crew! When contemplating the choice between “Romanticised or real”, between “poetry and motion or raw realism” David felt that the build-up is more titillating than the act itself!

“The need for intimacy is something that must warm blooded people enjoy or suffer from depending on your point of view”

Anna has written many scenes of gratuitous violence! “Fletcher and I pushed the boundaries of bad taste in ‘In the Shadow of Their Dying’ Waves of violence building as a force that is both sex and violence.”  The problem with a lot of sex writing is that scenes can get very technical “he inserted his penis” which can be distracting – the same can also be true of writing detailed fight moves, when it should be more about the smell of bodies and the intimacy of people who are together?!

Alicia mentioned people writing about “non-fun sex” and asked if we were moving away from sexual violence as a plot device.

David, in his own writing of future-set Arthurian mythos wanted to depict a reversal of sexual violence, showing in detail how Morgana le Fay was breaking the male character through sex.

Anna felt that sexual violence is not generally described in detail in books just because it is boring, unlike fighting. For example when (famously) the Westfold fell, the Dunlending armies would have dominated with rape as an act of war! “Tolkien didn’t say it happened but we all knew that happened!”  But Anna was keen to advise “Never have the raped brutalised enslaved woman suddenly becoming happy with the abuser!” There might be a survival technique at work – but make sure it depicts a satisfying story – the woman of the hour – don’t write such scenarios uncritically!

As the panel wound towards its end, two new terms entered my lexicon (not a euphemism), with

• Slash fiction/fan-fiction used to depict two (often) male characters put together in a non-platonic bromance. Eg Kirk-slash-Spock. And
• Shipping – which is about creating relationships in less explicit ways.

One point the panel picked up on was that slash-fiction approaches were often efforts to insert gay representation into narratives (eg Battlestar Galactica) which are implicitly homophobic through their failure to represent gay characters at all.

With just time to consider of writing with sex toys expressed frustration at missing an opportunity to write about a possessed dildo, while David mentioned an intimacy scene he had written between two AI combining to procreate a translation machine.

Come on David, it’s bad enough that AI is taking over all the creative art and writing stuff while humans have to be the drudge-bound wage slaves, but if AI is going to be having sex as well… well fuck that!

SPFBO panel

Exploring the role of the contest – now in its tenth year – in self-publishing. The Self-Publishing fantasy blog off (SPFBO) was started in 2015 by Bristol based speculative fiction author as a means to enable self-published fantasy works to get some exposure and rise above the white noise of the self-published landscape. You can read more about it here.

Panel: JE Hannaford, Graham Austin-King, TO Munro, Ivor K Hill

Moderator: Alicia Wanstall-Burke

My final panel of the first day was one where I was actually a participant – which somewhat restricted my capacity to take notes.  The fact that I’d brought a bottle of Kilchoman founder’s cask release (54.8% ABV) to share with my fellow panelists and a few select crew members, may also have restricted my coherent note taking capability.

Between us on the panel we covered the role of SPFBO judges for the various blogs, first-time SPFBO entrants, finalists and semi-finalists with several panelists having fulfilled multiple roles.

As with writing as an occupation, the panelists were aware of some of the mental health challenges in a high profile and very public examination of one’s work such as SPFBO delivers. All the authors were very appreciative of community support not just from the wider SPFBO afficianados but from the more close-knit clade of the SPFBO finalists themselves with their own discord group for sharing the highs and lows of the experience.

There was a sense that some early reviews could have been a bit blunt and that bloggers had refined their approaches to give much more exposure to the entrants, swiftly going beyond the early days where some books went rejected without even a mention by their chosen blogger (sniff!).

I felt that the professionalism of presentation, if not necessarily the standard of the stories, had definitely improved over the course of SPFBO’s first decade.  This is in keeping with what was discussed at the self-published panel at Glasow Worldcon. Self-publishing, or Indie publishing, is increasingly seen as a legitimate business approach which means authors are approaching it in an appropriately professional way.

The panel also touched on other awards with a mention of the Australian Aurealis awards  which are open to both self-published and traditional published speculative fiction, as well as alluding to other less scrupulous paid-entry awards which are a less discriminating, effectively enabling writers to buy an “award nominee” label to put on their books.

One other big SPFBO change has been the vast increase in the number of submissions and the speed with which the limited 300 entry spots filled up – down to a matter of seconds in SPFBO9.  The adjustment to a window of submission from which a random selection will get into the competition is much fairer on the frazzled nerves of authors spanning several time-zones. While those books that make it into the 300 are not allowed to re-enter in future years, those that missed out can try again.

Barcon

With the panels concluded it was time to repair to the bar where the consensus was that the bar food was much improved on last year while the water and glasses on tap for self-service was a useful innovation – (not least for those of us with some smuggled spirits in need of a glass.)

As with the memorable 2019 event, the committee had laid on an exciting evening entertainment of a string quartet ZHL Strings. The group got some enthusiastic audience participation before the evening settled into shifting circles of chat.

At one point Mark Lawrence challenged Kareem and others to try and stand up from a seated on the floor position without using their hands. That flexibility is apparently linked to longevity. Where Kareem and Dominick both struggled (video evidence is available) I mastered the task so it looks like you’re all stuck with me for a while longer.

As evening drifted into night, and then the small hours of the morning, it seemed that the crowd was perhaps smaller than in previous years. This may be an effect of being in the same year as Glasgow Worldcon with people rationing their con attendances, but it was still a pleasant enough occasion with people retiring somewhere between first and second 2.00 am as the Clocks burled back.

With the next post I will take you through my first couple of events on Sunday Morning, namely

• The Writing Around Life panel – we write to live, or live to write? And
• Archery in fantasy and writing fighting – Alicia’s sweary workshop – no shit!