I am returned.

The convention was a very different affair to last year courtesy of a smaller venue and a wider distribution of attendees across several hotels but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Good positioning of the main bar between the panel rooms meant that it was fairly straightforward to meet up with people and the smaller venue meant the whole thing was a lot more interactive.

I was pleased to meet up with people I hadn’t seen in a while, make some new friends and put faces to people I had spoken with online but not in person. It also brought home to me how silly it was that I hadn’t finished either manuscript of my novel length projects given the number of industry people in attendance and has reaffirmed my commitment to finishing them before the next one rolls round. Ideally I’d like to have one finished in time for FantasyCon. Today has been spent looking at the amount of work left in both and the optimal plan for dealing with it. I don’t intend to deliberate for too long: it’s time to get on with it.

Other lessons included a determination to get better at saying hello to people I don’t know, signing up to get myself on panels and that I don’t, in fact, look like my avatar. The last one was a bit of a relief. I have a ton of other notes that I’m mulling over – if anything interesting occurs I will post.

Being back in Bradford was strange. In most ways it feels like an age since I was in university and in others it seems like I just went on a slightly long vacation. My brief walk up to and around campus was a lot like that. Whole sections of the campus looked like they hadn’t changed at all since I was there and others had changed beyond recognition – add-ons, new builds and forlorn derelicts waiting to be turned into car parks. I was reminded once again that you can’t really ever go back. And that’s not actually a bad thing.

Also: Omar’s still rules.

Now back to work.

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