US proofs of Ecko Rising just landed on my desk. These moments make everything worth it – bring me out in chills because I still can’t quite wrap my head round the fact that they’re real. Then the book is in my hands, new quotes and new accolades, and I wonder if I could pinch myself and wake up.

Ecko might reckon he’s King of Cynics… but I love my goosebumps and I hope they never fail me.

Ryde, like all little seaside towns in the off-season, is a very peculiar little place.

Walking along the bleak and windy seafront, it’s very beautiful – the tide low enough to look like you can walk  over the Solent, the wind cold enough to flay the skin from your face. There are follies here, strange towers long unoccupied, deserted funfairs and seaside rides; there are huge estates of derelict property. As the sand blows past your feet and the empty tourist attractions stand stark against the sky, the whole damn thing does just look like its waiting for the Zombie Apocalypse.

My guesthouse is out of time – some vision of the 1950s, with rocking horse and gingham curtains and winding, endless stairs. Sapphire and Steel have been here – it should have a little plaque to say so – or perhaps its from one of Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected, and there’s a body in a back room that’s been decaying there for years.

Like the beach, though, it has an allure all of its own.

The island continues to offer oddities – tourism and militaria are everywhere, as expected – but so are endless charity and vintage shops, numbers of harmless loonies in curious hats, and every house seems to need some stone creature or gargoyle lurking on its front porch. Protecting it, perhaps.

Derelict property – and churches – recur with alarming regularity.

Going on holiday by myself has been an experience – kind of lonely (but in a good way) and kind of empowering. Next year, I’m going back to Ryde and I’m filming Sapphire and Steel face the Zombie Hordes.

Move over, Doctor Who – it’s a guaranteed winner!

Take a long drive via the scenic route, the rising slopes and rearing rocks of Snowdonia, the sheep in the road, the tumbledown stone cots and the villages on the edge of nowhere.

Take a holiday caravan with a choice of old VHS tapes. Take giant deckchairs and cawing rooks and strange chainsaw-carved creatures that looked like something out of Spirited Away. Something waiting.

Take twelve-hour days on our feet, selling copies of Avengers Vs. X-Men and Assassin’s Creed cosplay stealth blades (so was there that game of Dancefloor Hitman in the end?). Take many friends, old and new; take a very different kind of stock, and a very different kind of fan.

Take a plethora of authors at the Forbidden Planet table. Take notes on how appearing on a panel can affect a subsequent signing. Take nineteen copies of Ecko signed and sold – and take an interesting lesson in authordom from, at various points, David Moody, Stacia Kane and Peter V Brett. Take time to wonder: just how much of an author’s persona is donned?

Take costumes (of course) – take a cardboard Blood Angel and five fans dressed as a game of Pac-Man. Take every kind cleavage, every pattern of waistcoat, every steampunk cog and goggle; take every lightsaber, every sword and bow and zap-gun. Take every plastic and pointy ear.

Take a breath, and go outside.

And finally, take a walk in the early morning, down to a beautiful little beach and great shadows of mountains – take a moment of tranquillity that makes the high energy madness of the Con all wonderfully surreal.

And take a consensus?

A subtly different event – very much a con for cosplayers. In some ways, it felt more like Expo than EasterCon. The facilities were better than previous years and the business was very good, but perhaps a little bit warmer, next year?

This is post where the author puts up their schedule for the Con – you know the ones: this panel, this talk, this signing, this kaffeklastch (if you’re lofty enough to have earned such things), and then I’ll be in the bar. If it’s the SF(X) Weekender, it normally comes with a reminder to take your own toilet roll, towel and sense of humour.

Take the bar as read, the sense of humour as blue, and the Forbidden Planet trading table as where you’ll usually find it – and it seems that the Haven on offer this year is a cut above some of the comedy chalets we’ve deloused in the past.

I even hear rumours of Laser Quest.

My own schedule is, as ever, fairly straightforward – you’ll find me behind the Forbidden Planet trading table and (at at least one point) changing hats to take a seat (if you see what I mean) and joining Peter V Brett to deface some books.

As ever, the FP table will be hosting a series of such events throughout the weekend, so do make a note:-

FRIDAY
14:00 – Stacia Kane and Francis Knight (following ‘Here Come the Girls’ panel)
15:00 – David Moody (following ‘Here Come the Boys’ panel)
16:00 – Paul Cornell and Christopher Brookmyre (following ‘Have I Got News For You’ on the main stage)

SATURDAY
13:00 – Gareth L Powell (following ‘It’s The End’ panel)
16:00 – Peter Brett and Danie Ware (following ‘Fantasy Worlds’ panel)
17:00 – Hugh Howey (following interview on the main stage)
18:00 – Simon Morden and James Smythe (following ‘Asimov’ panel)

So please come and join us, buy books, meet authors, talk geek, and make sure you save enough energy for Craig Charles on Saturday night.

After all, he is bringing the funk back.

Anxiety is a funny thing.

Sickness in your stomach, reasonless and unnameable.  Agitation in your blood, burning from the inside out; that constant undercurrent of adrenaline that you can neither focus nor master. That relentless feeling of tension – like there is something over you, or behind you, or something you haven’t done, or some confrontation you’re anticipating…

And that exasperating, hovering sense of inadequacy, buzzing at you flylike – that, really, you’re better than this and you should get a fucking grip.

Exercise helps, then at least the adrenaline is useful for something, Walking brings focus and clarity of mind, running allows you to channel your tension into the release-high of endorphins – enables your body to function and it should and – amazing! – the nameless deamons of your fear are gone in the steam of breath and sweat.

Alcohol helps, bringing contentment and that glorious warm glow of actual weariness – it lures you with sweet relief and the empty promise of a good night’s sleep. But that way madness lies; it’s the ‘easy way out’ and the exit point is nowhere you need to be.

There are pharmaceutical options, offered by Doctor or friend, some legal and some not, all enticing for the offer of quiet they bring. But though they will not wake you in the small hours of the morning as booze will, just to taunt you with how they’ve cheated you, they will lull you into a semi-permanent doze, a somnolence that blurs your life to apathy and soft focus.

And that comes with a price – an inability to write. Words need passion, and their absence is not a sacrifice I’m willing to make.

And yet.

In the words themselves there’s relief. It’s not the exultant ‘fuck you’ offered by maniacal exercise, it’s not the comfortable seduction offered by alcohol or drugs. It’s a third option, a clean option, a route to somewhere outside – it’s as though a door opens to a new place – a place you know and that you’re familiar with, a place you can relax and be at ease with the world around you.

A place where you’re in control, perhaps.

I’ve written almost all my life; in the times where I forgot how, I missed it like a friend.

This is the first time I’ve ever realised why.