Unicon Freecon Day 2 2012

I enjoyed day two, there was a lot of good stuff.

The day started with a bit of a random review of Sci-Fi TV and Movies in 2012 which was interesting but not informative.

Next was a topical discussion on whether Star Trek & Dr Who lead us away or towards reading Sci-Fi. I said towards, others said away and some said they made no difference.

We then had the pleasure of two writers sharing with the group. First was Sam Bowring, who just gave us some random, but very interesting thoughts odd things about fantasy stories. One of these was how in stories on two people have the same name, but in real life we often know a number of people with the same name. If we can keep track of who's who with the same name in life, we should also be able to do the same in stories. Next was Richard Harland, who read from his next book and shares about his love for Steam Punk. All good stuff.

Next those who had passed away in the last twelve months and were significant writers or fans of Sci-Fi were honoured.

We than had writer Zena Shapter read one of her short stories. It was a very good story with a nice twist at the end. It was called 'Trigger', I'm not going to give anything a away.

After this came a writers panel on the question: Is there more to life than writing SF&F? The writers were Sam Bowring, Thoraiya Dyer, Richard Harland, Zena Shapter and Stella Tarakson. Two of the panel answered no. I'm not going to tell you which two.

The last thing I attended was a workshop run by Zena Shapter on how writers can use the web and social media. I was really enjoying this workshop and getting a lot out of it. But, because it started late and I had to leave by 4:30, I missed half of it. Zena said that she runs the workshop a lot, so I'm hoping I'll get a chance to do the whole thing another time.

There was only one down side to the day, numbers. I really felt sorry for Garry, the organiser, because there were so many who said they were coming that just didn't show up. Instead of the expected 50-100 there was only just over 30 people.

I still had a great time and I'm looking forward to getting to the last few hours of day three.