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“What I Did On My Summer Holidays” by Peter Crowther
Posted by Peter Crowther on August 27th, 2008 at 11:57
Our summertime trip to the US was the usual mix of business and pleasure… mainly caused by the fact that our business is our pleasure.
An overnight stop in Hyannis just hours after landing was followed by another in Sandwich before settling down for three nights in Ogunquit, where we were really able to unwind. Then it was up to Northern midcoast Maine to spend a few days with Liz Hand in the magical setting of her lakeside cottage.
She made us feel wonderfully welcome and, among the many pleasurable events she lined up, introduced me to a barn the size of a car-production factory that was filled to the rafters with books. It took me around a half-hour just to stop shaking.
(From left to right: Christopher Golden, Nicky Crowther, Joe Hill, Connie Golden and Peter Crowther)
From Liz’s place it was back to Ogunquit for another three days of beach-’n'-books (and food! my goodness!!) with the second night seeing us drive down to Portsmouth NH to meet up with Connie and Chris Golden and Joe Hill for dinner. We were barely out of the cars when we all managed to buy books… which, to be fair, seemed about par for the entire holiday.
As many of you probably know already, Chris is one of the Guests of Honour at this year’s FantasyCon and we’ve commissioned a special story from him (“The Hiss of Escaping Air”… and, believe me, it’s every bit as delightful as the title suggests) for PS Publishing‘s first small chapbook — the book will be priced at £6/$12 and it’ll be available at the convention (as well as, of course, by mail order in the usual way). We also have a Joe Hill-related announcement to make but, for the moment, you’re going to have to wait. Watch out for full details, maybe next month.
We made it to our second NeCon, joining up with Mike Marshall Smith (one of this year’s Guests of Honor) and touching base with many friends including PS authors Darrell Schweitzer (watch out for his upcoming Living With The Dead), Rick Hautala (whose Reunion is due out from us in 2010) and Chris Golden again (in addition to the chapbook I mentioned above, watch out for a special PS Publishing edition of Chris’s wonderful time-travel novel, The Boys Are Back In Town) plus many many more friends, new and old.
The four days were chock-full of highlights but the one which truly stands out (aside from a team of paramedics from the local fire service being called out to cut off my wedding ring because my mosquito-bitten finger had swollen to twice its normal size and looked about ready to drop off — I kid you not!) is a small-but-perfectly formed (a few seconds over eight minutes) movie called Peekers.
Based on a short story by Kealan Patrick Burke, adapted by Rick Hautala and directed by Mark Steensland, Peekers is a pure joy and I recommend it to you without reservation. Zero special effects and 100% unsettling, it restores my confidence in an industry which seems increasingly hell-bent on excess. The film has now been included in the visual entertainments scheduled for FantasyCon, so there’s yet another reason to attend.
It seems wholly appropriate here to pay tribute to Dan Booth and the rest of the NeCon Crew — and the attendees themselves, as crazy and as loveable a bunch of people you could ever wish to meet — for putting on another fantastic event. NeCon really is unlike any other convention I’ve ever attended and Nicky and I are already looking forward to another visit… maybe in a couple of years.
It was but a short drive from the NeCon site to downtown Providence to catch up again with our good friends Paul Di Filippo and Deborah Newton for a few more fun-filled days of eating, drinking, swimming and, of course, book-buying… kicking off with a visit to the splendid Wes’s Ribs eating emporium, where we met up with Scott Edelman. (Paul, incidentally, is about ready to begin work on the sequel to his award-winning novella A Year In The Linear City, so watch this space.)
(Left to right: Paul Di Filippo, Nicky Crowther, Deborah Newton, Scott Edelman and Pete Crowther outside Wes’s Ribs, Providence)
But now, of course, the dust is all just about settled on our summer adventures and we’re thinking about turning on the central heating again for the start of the long autumn/winter chill. I guess the good thing — if you can call it that — is that we’ve got so much work scheduled and under negotiation (well through into 2010 now, with a couple of projects already earmarked for 2011!) that we’re likely to be kept so busy that we just won’t feel the cold. That’s the plan, anyhow!
- Pete Crowther
June 16th, 2010 at 12:52 am
Hello there . I was wondering it you were the Peter Growther that had a brother called Tim. and lived on Westhill Road in Wamdsworth. Tim and I grew up together .
June 16th, 2010 at 2:48 pm
I’m pretty sure you’re thinking of a very different Pete, Colin – this Pete is a Yorkshireman, born and bred. :)