Just over a week ago, Mrs Church and I went to Edge-Lit in Derby. It was the first convention we’d been to since the pandemic, and made for a great weekend.
Edge-Lit was started by Alex Davis as a one day convention at Derby Quad and became a regular – and very popular – event. When Alex moved on from the Quad, it looked as though Edge-Lit would come to an end, till the very able Holly Blades stepped into his boots. Panels, dealer’s tables, workshops and a chance to catch up with other writers and fans in the bar. What more could one ask?
Not much, except maybe a Nando’s within walking distance. Oh, wait, it has one of those as well!
Edge-Lit was a blast, although I only caught up with a fraction of the number of people I’d hoped to. The ones I did get to see again included Sarah Pinborough (who returned as a surprise guest to co-host the raffle with Tim Lebbon, with the adorably grumpy Pixie Peigh handing out prizes when they weren’t too far to conveniently walk; it’s pretty much become an institution at Edge, and if you ever attend it, you’ll soon see why.) Also present and thoroughly incorrect were Alexandra Benedict, Conrad Williams, Catriona Ward, Ross Warren, Neil Williamson, Georgina Bruce (always a force of nature, now a brightly-coloured one,) Penny Jones, Alison Littlewood, Jo Thomas, Sean Hogan and the brilliant Lynda E. Rucker, a dear friend I hadn’t seen (or set the world to rights with) for far too long (“And another thing…!” as we’re fond of saying.)
I got to meet some new faces as well, including Tendai Huchu, Caimh McDonnell and Jonathan Sims, and to take part in two panels: Location, Location, Location and Genre X, exploring the crossovers between crime and horror/dark fantasy. I had the pleasure of Tendai’s company on both of those (he chaired one, I chaired the other!) and both were tremendous fun (hopefully for the audience as well.)
Tendai’s novel The Library of the Dead formed part of my Edge-Lit book haul. In addition, Mrs Church won a prize in the famed raffle, and it was one of the good ones too: a bag of advance readers’ copies from Titan. Among them was Hailey Piper’s A Light Most Hateful, which you can't see in the picture of our Edge-Lit book haul overhead because I immediately called dibs and snaffled it. :) Hailey’s an amazing writer, and everything she does makes for compulsive reading. There were more books, too. I might blog about them another time.
Over the past few years – like a lot of people – I’ve become a lot less used to going outside, and due to that and a couple of health issues my mobility is not great at all right now. Hopefully that’ll change in the near future. It meant that both Mrs Church and I were pretty well wiped out by the weekend – which is one reason I’ve only got round to blogging about it now – but it was well worth it.
The bottom line is that Edge-Lit is back, and the new management’s doing a great job. If you love SF, fantasy and horror and live in the UK, you should definitely go.
I mean, there’s a Nando’s just across the square. What more could you ask for?
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