TFFcon July 13th, London

The Future Fire and Fabio Fernandes are delighted to invite all of our friends, and anyone interested in speculative fiction with a social conscience, to join us for a mini-TFFcon in the upstairs function room of the Coach and Horses, near Oxford Circus, London (directions below), on Friday July 13th at 18:00 (6pm).

The evening will involve readings, samples and giveaways, convivial chat, eating and drinking. If you'd like to read some of your work, please prepare about 10 minutes-worth and we'll fit you in. If you have any review copies, flyers, or other freebies you'd like to bring along, that would be great too. Any other suggestions most welcome. Email me, leave a comment below, contact us via Twitter,or just bring your idea along on the day.

I hope to see many old friends and new faces next Friday. Directions below.

Coach and Horses, 1 Great Marlborough Street, London W1F 7HG: walking directions from Oxford Street Underground (4 mins)

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Expanding review activities

Recently we've been keeping my eye open for opportunities to expand our reviewing activities beyond books and magazines, while keeping our focus on speculative and weird fiction and the small and independent press.

Just in case anyone's listening and might have review items to offer, some of the areas that have occured to us recently are:

1. Young Adult/children's literature: the crossover between genre publications and YA novels is strong (see previous post), and I feel that titles in this area need to be reviewed with a focus on their intended audience, rather than just as "lightweight" specfic;
2. Interactive fiction: there's a growing medium of interactive fiction in e-books (with iPad apps receiving the most attention); a book that you interact with rather than just reading is a good part of the way toward being a computer game, and I think both deserve the attention of speculative readers and reviewers;
3. Performance: we're very keen to feature occasional reviews of local theatre productions, interpretive dance, or whatever else might class as "performance" with a speculative element.

Do you publish/produce/perform in any of these areas? Do you review these kinds of works? Do you have any suggestions for publishers/producers we should get in touch with to ask for review copies? Any other neglected areas you think we should be looking into? Please let us know.