Come to BristolCon! You know you want to …
BristolCon. It’s this coming Saturday. It has all manner of science ficitonal and fantastical fun. You should be there.
Guests include Paul Cornell who, if you’re not that into sf, wrote some Dr Who episodes, and who is an exceptionally nice man. Also fantasy novelist Joe Abercrombie, whom I’ve never met but whose biog on his website is very amusing.There’s also Alastair Reynolds, Juliet McKenna, Colin Harvey, John Meaney, Cheryl Morgan and many more writers, illustrators, sfx people, and me.
The con also sees the launch of Dark Spires, an anthology of sf, fantasy or otherwise speculative, tales set in Wessex and edited by Colin Harvey. I’m dead excited about this as it includes the first short story I’ve gotten up off my arse* to write in about a decade.
I’m also doing a talk at the Con. It’s supposed to be about how to ferret out stories from the fabric of Bristol past and present though it has not yet quite come together as a complete brain thing in my head yet. I expect this here Google Map of Bristol weirdness I’ve been doing will have something to do with it. It’s a work-in-progress full of spelling mistakes and empty bits, mind.
That’s BristolCon. This Saturday. November 6th. Come along. What’s the worst that can happen?
*Actually, this is rubbish, you don’t get off your arse to write, you sit down on it. Well, most people do, though a man in the pub once told me that Dickens wrote standing up, but I have no idea if that’s true or not.
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Eugene Byrne 
I love the map! Time for a bit of exploring I think.
What’s the portal all about? My bus passes it everyday. Is it a fire escape or a Neverwhere style gate?
Hi Darren
Thanks for that. I said at the Con I’d leave the map up for a few weeks, but maybe I should just leave it there and keep adding, when I find the time, ‘cos there’s loads more than just this. Sorry, but there are a lot of gaps at the moment as it was just notes to myself. I’ll try and fill in the blanks in the next week or two.
The “Portal” is an entrance to a complex of underground cellars. Before the Blitz this was a crowded, built-up area and homeowners, especially merchants, from medieval times onwards had cellars dug under their homes to store their wares in. This exact spot is where a pub and wine merchants was in 1940, and the cellar is said to be particularly extensive, tho’ I’ve never been in there. When the area was tidied up afterwards the concrete pyramid was put there as a portal to this netherworld …