Editing the past to life – guest blog

January 24, 2023January 24, 2023 by Dion Winton-Polak

Cover of Andrew Knighton's book: Ashes of the Ancestors against a background of glowing ashes.

History is made in the edit. That might sound absurd. Surely history is what happened in the past? It’s people, places, and events, the forward march of progress or the weary slump of decline. You can’t edit the world. But history isn’t the world. It isn’t even the past. It’s our understanding of that past, …

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Rising to the challenge

January 3, 2023 by Dion Winton-Polak

Book tunnel in Prague library. Photo by Diane Picchiottino on Unsplash.

I was in my teens when the number of books arriving on my shelves began to outstrip the number of books I could read. I must have given away something like 30 boxes of the things over time but the bookstack keeps growing. Go figure. Sadly, since starting to work as an editor, I’ve found …

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Survivor’s Guilt

December 6, 2022 by Dion Winton-Polak

Image of Jay Faulkner with Dion, Simon and Tom. Sepia tones. There is a white crack on the picture surrounding Jay's smiling face and splintering out across the rest of us.

Everybody dies, there’s no getting around it, but we each hope to leave the world a little better through the lives we touch, the changes we enable and make, the children we bring up. If we are very lucky, friends and family members, sometimes people in the wider world, will reach out to tell us …

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Reasons to be cheerful

July 5, 2022July 5, 2022 by Dion Winton-Polak

Ian Dury & the Blockheads image tweaked to say Dion Dury & the Blockheads, complete with punk pink tache and beard.

I’ve moved out for a fortnight while the builders do their stuff, and got a little mixed up with my schedule. I should have done an extra Hobby post last week then put out my Personal blog today. Ah, well. As I was typing the following update on Facebook, it occurred to me I could …

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Facing fears

May 3, 2022 by Dion Winton-Polak

Fear leers at us through the cracked lens of time; a thousand different forms threaten to reach through, clawing at our stomachs, crushing our throats, spearing our hearts with electric jolts. The present is not the problem, you understand. In the here-and-now we need only face what is and respond accordingly, but our minds… our …

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Blood Bowl 2 – game review

April 15, 2022March 7, 2022 by Dion Winton-Polak

Last year I set up a Blood Bowl competition with seven pals via Steam. This weekend saw the final round of The Smash ’n’ Grab Classic, and it has been a glorious success—so much so, we want to expand our group and start a brand new tournament. (More on that later.) If you are already …

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Stuff is nonsense

November 29, 2021 by Dion Winton-Polak

‘What do you want for Christmas?’ I used to have a million answers to that one; these days I’m more likely to say, ‘I don’t need anything.’ Hah! It always drove me mad when my parents said it, but I’ve started to come around to their way of thinking. Perhaps it’s age-related. Perspectives change over …

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Re: Con-nection

October 5, 2021October 5, 2021 by Dion Winton-Polak

Kelly White, Pippa Bailey, Myk Pilgrim, Joe McMahon, Nick Parkinson, Dion Winton-Polak

First up, I have to confess that I attended very few actual panels, no readings, and I avoided the karaoke bar like the very-literal plague. Well, here’s the Dion’s-eye view, anyway… The first day of FantasyCon was a wobbly affair, full of awkward moments and anxiety, calibrating and recalibrating as we came together for the …

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FCon-templation

October 6, 2021October 4, 2021 by Dion Winton-Polak

I was going to focus this post on FantasyCon 2021, which I attended in Birmingham last weekend, but I found that I couldn’t engage with the event in the normal way. This is not a criticism – with Covid-19 still very much on the rampage, I’m not sure any of us felt entirely comfortable. Instead, I’m going to talk about the significance of the event to me past and present, my mental state leading up to it this year, the fears and hopes I carried, and the final actual experience of reconnection with my tribe.

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Geek families (Finding Me, part 3)

August 4, 2021August 1, 2021 by Dion Winton-Polak

I threw myself into fatherhood with great enthusiasm. We didn’t know what we were doing – who the heck does? – but Clo and I supported each other and figured things out as a team. One of the things we figured out early on was that children are adaptable. So long as she was loved and cared for, Summer-Rose would be perfectly able deal with whatever world she grew up in—and if that happened to include weekends camping in ruined castles while Clover and I got our medieval groove on, then all the better. It provided a change of scene and gave her some childhood magic.

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Seeking Resolution

June 28, 2021 by Dion Winton-Polak

I recently discussed ways in which we can avoid conflict when editing (or being edited) in a blog post called ‘It ain’t what we say’. You might think of today’s post as something of a follow-up, though it has applications in the real world too.

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Reinvention (Finding Me, part 1)

June 4, 2021May 31, 2021 by Dion Winton-Polak

I’m happier now than I have even been – personally, socially, and professionally. If that sounds like a boast, I beg forgiveness, but when I look back along my footsteps, it feels nothing short of miraculous. I’ve been through bad times and mad times. These days, life feels pretty sweet. The secret? It came down to finally finding ‘me’.

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Game Talk – interview excerpts

June 4, 2021March 9, 2021 by Dion Winton-Polak

Hi folks, it’s blog time again. This one is a pared-down version of an interview conducted by the author C.C. Adams for his recent blog series, probing the thought processes, values, and strategies of people he feels have ‘got game’ when it comes to the business of writing – or in my case, editing. You’ll find links to the full interview and the rest of his blog series at the end. Cheers.

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The Bewilder-boy (Cracking Isolation, part 1)

June 4, 2021March 2, 2021 by Dion Winton-Polak

In these times of Covid, more and more people are coming forward to report mental health issues. Some people see this as a weakness, a crisis in and of itself, just as pernicious as the pandemic. Others see it as a process of destigmatisation: an open sharing of vulnerability and pain that unites and enables us to heal through support, empathy, and encouragement.

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Top 10 Digital Board Games

June 4, 2021February 9, 2021 by Dion Winton-Polak

One of the ways I’ve coped with the terror and tedium of the covid lockdowns is with board games. Not with my family sadly, as neither my wife or daughter are that interested, and not with my gaming group either. (The last thing that we played together was Pandemic Legacy throughout 2019 and no, it’s not our fault. We won.) Instead, I’ve been forced to get my fix on digital platforms. Read on for a whistle-stop tour of my Top 5 quick games and my Top 5 trickier ones.

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Into The Great Western Woods (Unstoppable Authors)

June 4, 2021July 11, 2019 by Dion Winton-Polak

Angeline Trevena: an unstoppable author

Hi folks, there’s no flash fiction contest this week, so instead let me introduce you to a good friend of mine, Angeline Trevena. She’s an author, a podcaster, and an all round good egg. If you’re at EdgeLit this weekend there’s a high chance you’ll get to meet her. Tell you what, why don’t I shut up and let her tell you why that’d be a great thing to do? Over to you, Angeline.

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In the market

June 4, 2021November 29, 2018 by Dion Winton-Polak

Evocative image: Strategic boardgame featuring a market. Complex. Full of people.

What was Sledge-Lit like?

There was an air of relaxed conviviality about the Derby Quad last weekend, but drive and purpose hummed beneath the surface. It seems there’s something about seeing people in the flesh, reconnecting with old acquaintances, and chewing the industry fat that inspires activity.

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Hanging together 3/3

June 4, 2021November 3, 2018 by Dion Winton-Polak

Bar talk. Andrew Freudenberg and Dion Winton-Polak.

What was it like at FantasyCon?

As a novice to the convention circuit, you study the schedule, make careful plans as to what panels and events you most want to attend, and then you spend all your time dashing around, assiduously writing notes, sweating, and occasionally weeping in the corner. It’s damned hard work. You wonder why people do this to themselves year on year and (looking around in despair and frustration) why everyone else seems to be just…hanging around in the bar.

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In the groove 2/3

June 4, 2021October 27, 2018 by Dion Winton-Polak

Evocative image: the editor's feet stretched out, big windowed doors, a fresh, bright garden outside.

What was it like at FantasyCon?

If Friday was my busy day, Saturday was all about the mooching. I woke around 6.30. Not my plan, but the body gets used to certain routines; as far as it was concerned, this was just another day at the office. Had I been more organised and less ragged, I might have

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In the headlights 1/3

June 4, 2021October 24, 2018 by Dion Winton-Polak

What was it like at FantasyCon?

I’d had a late night playing darts for the local team. We didn’t exactly cover ourselves in glory, so I was a little tired and a little blue come Friday morning. I ended up missing my train by a single minute

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