Going Orbital!

Sadly the title of this post does not refer to astronomic sales figures, but it does refer to something almost as good - a visit to Eastercon, which adopted the name ‘Orbital’ this year (no doubt in reference to its proximity to the M25!) The picture above is of me with one of my fellow panelists - I wonder if anyone reading this blog will recognise him. It should be easy enough to work out as there were only 3 others on the panel. One was female and the other two are listed below. I only attended the Friday, as personal commitments drew me home for the rest of the weekend. There would have been blood spilt if I had tried to stay, so I’m sure I made the right decision.

I was priviledged to be a part of a panel alongside Charles Stross, Jane Killick and Paul McAuley that was delightfully entitled ‘Don’t give up the day job!’. It proved to be a lively chat/discussion which attracted a fairly large audience. It would be difficult to say if we concluded it was a good idea or not to follow the advice of the panel’s title, but I’m convinced that between us we managed to put off sufficient numbers of the audience from doing so for a while, thereby keeping the competition off our tails for a little while longer! Job done!!

Aside from the panel, this proved a great opportunity to catch up with some friends: Amanda Hemingway and Ian Whates amongst several others. It was also my great pleasure to meet Sarah Singleton, whose work I’ve been aware of for some time (as she keeps getting onto awards lists, and is also published by Simon & Schusters). Sarah seems a lovely lady and I do hope I shall get the opportunity to speak more with her in the future.

Ian would never have forgiven me if I had not attended his launch party for ‘Myth Understandings’ and ‘Celebrations’, two fine new anthologies that he has edited and published. The lists of contributing authors are most impressive. I’ve got my copy of the first and shall be acquiring the second very shortly. I didn’t brave the monstrous queue to buy at the party. I have to say it was the most impressive turn out for a book launch I’ve been to aside from the melee surrounding the Harry Potter books!

My namesake, Justina Robson, very kindly made a point of telling me that she had seen a girl reading Imperial Spy at a bus stop. It’s so nice to hear these little tales of folk reading my work. It sort of makes the whole agony of writing worthwhile to know that there are folk out there who are taking the time to read what I’ve written. All in all, it was a very worthwhile day trip. Hopefully I’ll get to go to the entire event next year. They are always fun, and a great place to network.