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Lurking Musings

~ Musings of a newly published writer

Lurking Musings

Tag Archives: Birmingham UK

Eastercon Artshow

31 Wednesday Mar 2021

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings

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Artshow, Birmingham UK, Eastercon 2020, Eastercon 2021, Fangorn, Photography, photoshop


Easter is on its way and that means it is time for Eastercon!

It’s back… and this time it’s virtual!

So, because of the international emergency situation vis a vis COVID19, there wasn’t a British Science Fiction convention over Easter last year. The event was planned to have been in Birmingham but was cancelled. Then it was planned to be in Birmingham again this year but has since had to revert to a completely virtual event.

I’ll do a longer post at some point soon about the difficulties of achieving a fully virtual convention… but this post is all about the Artshow.

A preview

So, at Easter 2020 I had managed to book a place on the Eastercon artshow. This runs every year at the con and artists display their work and it is offered for auction or sale. You get to see what well known fantasy and SF artists have been working on and maybe even get the chance to own some of your very own. I had a plan to bring along 15 photographs – 5 large (10 X 8″) and 10 small (6 X 4″) and had bought a set of mounting boards and packing bags for them ready to go. I was in the process of selecting the final 15 when the event was canceled.

Which meant I was actually fairly ready for this year’s artshow with very little extra work.

Well, apart from the fact I had spent most of lockdown learning more about how Photoshop works, getting better at editing, and making new images to sell… so my final collection is different to the one I might have taken to Eastercon 2020 and I spent a bit of time re-editing some of them to be even better.

And there will be other differences.

For example, because this is a virtual auction, I don’t need to print off a set of images ready for display. In a normal artshow, you’d bid for or buy a physical item that is hanging on the wall and, at the end of the weekend, you take it home with you. This time, however, the images will be displayed in a virtual environment created in Kunstmatrix like the one shown here. Which means, in my case at least, I will be able to effectively do prints on demand. At the event, everything will be displayed with a price for the 10 X 8″ version. However, you are welcome to contact me and ask for a quote for any reasonable size and I should be able to supply it.

The caveat on this is that I only have five 8 X 10″ mounting boards and ten 6 X 4″. Once I run out of those, or if you order a different size, there may be a slight delay in delivery times while I order some more in. I’ll let you know when you order if this is going to be the case.

So, if you are at Eastercon this weekend, I hope you take the time to wander around the artshow and, while pondering whether to get the Fangorn original cover art for your favourite book, you also consider some of my images…

Location, Location, Location… Part Two: The University of Birmingham

27 Thursday Dec 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings

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#amwriting, BBW Romance writers, Birmingham, Birmingham UK, books, Isengard, J.R.R Tolkien, mundania press, Ninfa Hayes, Orthanc, paranormal romance, Photography, Publication, Sarehole Mill, Selly Oak, The Bristol Pear, The Curse, Transitions, University of Birmingham, writing


A few days ago, I posted about Marsden Beach and Arbeia Roman fort. Now it is time for part two of my blog posts about locations I used in Transitions.

The university is where the contemporary action of the story happens. It also happens

The blue plaque at Sarehole Mill

to be one of the (several) universities I attended and worked at in my time as a scientist. I needed a university for my characters to be attending and it seemed a convenient one to use because I knew it so well. There were other advantages too.

One was the association with J.R.R Tolkien. As pointed out in the story, Tolkien did live for some time in the West Midlands (Kings Heath, now a suburb of Birmingham), spent a lot of time visiting places like Clent and Lickey Hills (both places we used to walk our dog) and attended school at King Edward’s school. Said school is right next to the university and does indeed have a good view of the iconic tower which was potentially the inspiration for the tower of Orthanc in Isengard (Sarehole mill being another inspiration, not to mention the dark smoke of the nearby black country). This provided a wonderful opportunity for two of the characters to be pedantic geeks.

The clock tower of the University of Birmingham

The tower itself was also a great location to use for the above scene because it looks so awesome – a huge, red brick clock tower in the middle of a courtyard made from similar red brick university buildings. Ever since I arrived in Birmingham this tower, which is visible from quite a distance away, always struck me as an ideal place for an epic battle between two powerful beings.

Of course… I use it in Transitions for a fight between two students, one drunk the other possessed. It’s hardly epic, more comedic as the drunken student is hardly competent in combat and the possessed one does not care and it ends with a piece of pedantry (like all the best arguments). However, one day I will use the tower again and this time it will be even more epic…

In the university I namecheck a number of lecturers. None of these are based on lecturers I know, though some have traits which some lecturers I have had may have shared. The names of the lecturers are, however, those of friends of mine. Professor Abigail Bath is named after two friends, one a costume maker (who also took my profile photo on this site) and the other a Doctor of History (who is also acknowledged in The Curse due to her expertise in Witchcraft). Professor Hayes is also named from a friend of mine. Not, as you may think, Ninfa Hayes (who is a friend but one I hadn’t met when I was writing Transitions) but the man she married. Finally, Dr. Gallop is named after my father in law. I do feel I have to apologise to at least two of the people namechecked here as both of the lecturers they name are not shown as the best of the breed.

The final scenes of the book centre on Selly Oak which is a place with a lot of student accomodation just outside the university. Specifically, a pub called the Bristol Pear

The Bristol Pear Pub, Selly Oak

which was for a while the home of the University Goth Society’s infamous ‘Friday Night Goth Shite’ nights (or FNGS for short). I tried to portray one of these nights as accurately as possible, including the description of one of the DJs. Unfortunately, FNGS (which was later joined by SNGS, no prizes for guessing what that means) is no longer based at the Pear but when I left Birmingham it was still going strong at a cocktail bar closer to the city centre. It may still be going somewhere. I like to think that someone in Birmingham can still wander into a small pub or cocktail bar somewhere and still find a goth night run by a student society.

So, there is a short tour of some of the Birmingham locations used in Transitions. Next up will be Aqua Sulis.

Note, unlike the previous article, none of the photographs here were taken by me. All credit for them belongs with the original artists who took them.

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