Last night I spent 3 hours on the phone to California for a World Fantasy Con committee meeting. That was followed by an hour or so in the bar where I ended up doing more WFC stuff. I also got to talk to Gail Z. Martin and Rob Shearman, both of whom turned out to be lovely people. Gail is a regular at Dragon*Con and confirmed everything Lou Anders has said about it having a vibrant and well-attended literature track. Rob is a multi-talented guy who sees himself first and foremost as a playwright, rather than a World Fantasy winning author or Hugo nominated scriptwriter.

I also had a chat with Guy Adams about the “Women don’t write horror” thing. Slightly to my surprise, no one had accused either Maura or myself of being “shrill” all weekend (at least not in my hearing). It is possible that Sarah Pinborough had rearranged a few people’s testicles to dissuade them from complaining, but if she did so then it was in classic horror writer fashion and done in a padded room where no one could hear her victims scream.

Anyway, Guy was very contrite, and quite aghast at how easily he failed to see the problem with what he was publishing. As I’ve said before, men do learn to ignore women’s writing as they grow up. It is often subconscious, but very powerful. Hopefully having made such a mistake once, Guy won’t make it again. He assured me that the other two books in the series do include interviews with women writers. Also the 2009 BFS Yearbook, which is an anthology, includes stories by women. Guy has posted an apology to the BFS web site.