Shrewsbury Gets Nerdy for SFF

Liam Hogan attended the first Fantasy & Sci-Fi Spotlight at Shrewsbury’s Nerdy Cafe and lived to tell – and write about – the tale.

The Nerdy Cafe, wearing the previous day’s Shrewsbury Pride colours, hosted a Fantasy & Sci-Fi Spotlight on 29 September, a day-long event dedicated to genre fiction for “avid readers and aspiring writers”.

Sponsored by, among others, The Broken Binding, Alternative Stories, and yes, The British Fantasy Society, entry was free – but the canny ones pre-booked, which got you a hot drink and a goody bag into the bargain.

Split over two levels (Nerdy’s prone-to-flooding basement not under threat on this occasion), the event boasted a good number of author/vendor tables, readings, panels, and workshops. A mix of indie and traditional authors, this was all about the community. Authors prepared to put themselves out there, happy to chat on the off-chance you might put your hand into your pocket to buy a book or a comic. Or perhaps just sign up for their email newsletter.

Nerdys is a gaming cafe, was still operating as such, and there wasn’t a lot of separation between vendor area and an improvised (and possibly hazardous!) raised stage, leading to some early sound issues, fixed when the microphones were unleashed from their stands.

Most of the panels were hosted by Joel – “Shropshire’s most popular dungeon master” – who did a solid job of keeping the questions flowing without injecting too much of himself into the discussion (a struggle, I suspect, for one so obviously enthusiastic). The event could have done with a little more “housekeeping” management, both in general and between sessions – the only timetable I saw was flashed onto monitors in between book promos, and the first panel, a general chat on indie vs traditional publishing billed as “Discovering your next great read”, started without fanfare and an audience of two, myself included. Thankfully others drifted in before too long.

Other panels were more tightly focused and did indeed spotlight the authors, as they covered magic systems, the crossover of gaming and fiction, writing the first draft of a novel, and ended with a joyous Worldbuilding in Science Fiction. Apparently what we really need is a utopia full of Henry vacuum cleaners, for all those carpeted spaceships…

A frequent panel presence was special guest Emily Inkpen (pictured), who was also feature-interviewed about her audio drama series, Dex Legacy (currently kickstarting for Season three).

Other authors included LL MacRae and Lee C Conley, who brought along his swords for one of the workshops, Tasting Steel: Separating Combat Fact From Fiction. With workshops overlapping panels and sometimes other workshops, this was the only one I got to go to, though Hazel Meredith-Lloyd’s Young reader’s and writers session looked very popular, perhaps because it was scheduled in advance and had to be booked on the day. Workshops I missed included Planning and Plotting with Tim Hardie, and Fantasy Worldbuilding with Stephen Aryan, possibly while I was enjoying my Earl Grey downstairs, eavesdropping on authors talking about their books.

I left (of course!) with newly-purchased, author-signed books, but also many recommendations. One hopes that the event returns. There were steady, if not perhaps spectacular, numbers throughout the day, and with more advance notice of the timings, it would have been perfectly feasible to cherry pick a few of the panels in between other Sunday afternoon activities.