I am finally pleased to bring you my recap and review of CYMERA 2022. I had hoped to have this year’s recap out in a more prompt fashion, unfortunately I have to admit defeat; this time of year with the heat and pollen count is just about the worst combination for someone with my health conditions. Hopefully it has been worth the wait!

This is my second year attending this event, and you can check out my CYMERA review from last year.

It all started back in 2017 when “festival enthusiast Ann Landmann and Noel Chidwick, mastermind behind award-winning sci-fi magazine Shoreline of Infinity, were having a cup of tea and lamenting the lack of genre authors in book festivals programmes”. For her dissertation for her MA Arts, Festival and Cultural Management, Ann created the business plan for CYMERA and the festival was born. You can read the full story over here on the CYMERA website, and there is also a wonderful media page full of interviews where you can learn even more about CYMERA.

That’s the official spiel, so what actually is CYMERA all about? Well, I can happily tell you from experience that it is the book festival/convention/event that any fantasy, science fiction and/or horror book fan has ever wanted. The authors cover a wide range of topics, genres and themes, the panel hosts are fantastic and there are laughs, serious discussions and just so much going on. There’s a book quiz, tabletop roleplaying happening, writing and publishing workshops, a creators’ hall with a fantastic array of things to browse, an open mic session, a writing competition and much more.

I suggest heading over to the CYMERA 2023 page and browsing through the programme to see all the panels and workshops that took place.

There is also a discord channel that I recommend joining if you’re interested in attending CYMERA at any point, or just want to hang out with people who love fantasy, science fiction and horror books!

It all started back in 2017 when “festival enthusiast Ann Landmann and Noel Chidwick, mastermind behind award-winning sci-fi magazine Shoreline of Infinity, were having a cup of tea and lamenting the lack of genre authors in book festivals programmes”. For her dissertation for her MA Arts, Festival and Cultural Management, Ann created the business plan for CYMERA and the festival was born. You can read the full story over here on the CYMERA website, and there is also a wonderful media page full of interviews where you can learn even more about CYMERA.

That’s the official spiel, so what actually is CYMERA all about? Well, I can now happily tell you from experience that it is the book festival/convention/event that any fantasy, science fiction and/or horror book fan has ever wanted. The authors cover a wide range of topics, genres and themes, the panel hosts are fantastic and there are laughs, serious discussions and just so much going on. There’s a book quiz, tabletop roleplaying happening, writing and publishing workshops, a creators’ hall with a fantastic array of things to browse, an open mic session, a writing competition and much more.

I’m sure I’ve missed something, so I suggest heading over to the CYMERA 2022 page and browsing through the programme. It was impossible to attend every panel (without a time machine or something of the like) so I can only report back on the ones I was able to attend personally anyway.

There is also a discord channel that I recommend joining if you’re interested in attending CYMERA at any point, or just want to hang out with people who love fantasy, science fiction and horror books!

My first panel of the event was ‘Rebels’ with authors C.L. Clark, Laura Lam and Tasha Suri chaired by the wonderful Sonali Misra. I have to give a shout-out to Sonali for starting her panel with a verbal image description of herself. It was C. L. Clark’s first time in Scotland, and she explained that had tried a Tunnock’s tea cake (link here for my non-Scottish readers!), describing it as “yum”. Sonali followed up by saying that they were going to take her to try IRN-BRU, haggis and deep-fried Mars bar after the panel.

I had the pleasure of seeing Sonali chair a panel last year and once again she was in top form, steering the authors through a wide range of themes. As with all panels she began by asking the authors to describe their books. Tasha Suri started us off by describing The Jasmine Throne as “the story of two morally grey lesbians who work together to burn down an empire in a south Asian inspired world”. C.L went next, pointing out that she normally just steals Tasha’s one but realised that was kind of inaccurate, explaining that The Unbroken as being ‘Two moral gray lesbians’-ish where one is trying to destroy the empire and one is trying to destroy it. Laura was short and to the point, describing the Seven Devils series as “Star Wars but make it gay” which got a laugh from the audience and appreciative nods and smiles from her fellow authors.

With rebels being the name of the panel, the conversation quickly turned to the type of rebellion and resistance present in each book. It was interesting to learn more about the interests of each author. For example, in The Jasmine Throne there are scenes of resistance through art as well as violence.  C.L. was most interested in was the psychological rebellion that the conscripted soldiers had to deal with, and how they handle the reality of the way they were raised. In comparison, when writing The Seven Devils series Laura wanted to explore the way colonisation makes people complicit.

I particularly enjoyed hearing the authors discuss how important language was in their books, with Laura taking us through the way the Empire of The Seven Devils series controls their subjects with a chip in their brain and how this assimilates their language. She introduced the audience to a character without a chip who speaks Scots mixed with swamp terminology and Laura said she had great fun creating some of the insults the character uses. By this point I was already moving Seven Devils up my TBR, and I won’t lie, this pushed it up even further!

Likewise in The Jasmine Throne, language is being suppressed by the Empire, we were informed by Tasha who went on to discuss the theme of cultural identity. Reclaiming language and culture through art was something she was interested in, and there is a small scene at the start of the book on this topic. As an Asian reader Sonali enjoyed moments like these as she understood the references to Indian culture. As Tasha explained that she seeded references and stories throughout the book, she referred to one particular story and how a particular name from it that she’s included in the book gives a hint to what’s going to happen in The Jasmine Throne. It was quite funny because as she was talking about it C.L. began to recognise the Easter egg and sat there smiling and shaking her head for a few moments (as seen in the photo above). It’s always lovely to watch authors enjoy books as much as we readers do!

When asked about writing strong realistic women characters (and I bow down to Sonali’s wording on that one), C.L. revealed an interesting factoid about how The Unbroken came to be. It was the result of several classes including one on how women can be violent. She spoke about her military background and conservative family who believed in women being ladylike, two views that didn’t mix and were at war within her. She spoke about how war is a common aspect in fantasy, yet female characters don’t get given proper weapons or taught how to fight. They are only told to fight in defence or in an emergency, they never get to just fight. So she decided to write a book where all women fight and are violent.  She wanted to write a book where there were characters like her, and when she started writing The Unbroken gay characters were “very thin on the ground”. The other reason for wanting to create a queer normative world was so that the main character’s relationship wasn’t a forbidden romance from that angle. The characters had enough going on, she pointed out.

It was a similar perspective that Laura offered when talking about sexuality in Seven Devils. Referring back to the origins of homophobia, and it’s link to reproduction she pointed to the fact that the Empire controls reproduction completely, so there’s no reason for society to be homophobic. Like C.L. she pointed out that the characters had enough doing on, and she wanted there to be romance and the characters to express it without being worried about it. She also reflected that while the universe is a “dystopian hellscape” it’s two thousand years in the future and by then there at least won’t be homophobia.

This was a fantastic panel, and as you can see I had a lot to share with you from it. I wish I could share so much more, as it is, this is the third and final draft; the original was much longer! This is my second time seeing these authors on a panel, and I highly recommend checking out any panels with any of these authors as they are always brilliant!

I enjoyed Saint Death’s Daughter by C.S.E. Cooney immensely, and I’ve heard a lot of good things about T.J. Klune, so naturally I had to check out a panel with them.

I have seen a few panels chaired by Meg MacDonald, and she is always a delight, and was so again. The authors quickly bonded over them both having a character Desdemona in their book which was adorable (and interestingly enough both Desdemonas aren’t very nice!). Having not read Under the Whispering Door I was very intrigued to hear how T.J. Klune described it. He introduced it has his version of A Christmas Carol. Wallace has a similar attitude to Scrooge, considering his employees to be parts in a machine. He’s the type of person who instead of fixing a broken part in a machine decides to just replace it entirely. One day he fires someone, showing an extraordinary lack of empathy in doing so and then dies at the end of the in the same office. It all happens in the same chapter. The big difference is that in A Christmas Carol Scrooge’s personality changes happen very quickly, the reader does not get to see the journey and that was something he wanted to show. In particular the question of what makes a good person while exploring the concept of grief were the ideas that led to The Whispering Door.

I think everyone was surprised to hear that Saint Death’s Daughter was a project that took C.S.E. Cooney twelve years to complete. It started as a lark, she told us, beginning as an homage to Terry Pratchett and The Adam’s Family, and over time became more philosophical. It was based on an idea she had for a protagonist who cannot problem-solve with violence and realises that everything she is/comes from is toxic.

Other than the obvious theme of death connecting the two novels, it became apparent as the panel went on that empathy was another theme that connected them both, especially their protagonists. While C.S.E. talked about how her protagonist Laney had no one to teach her empathy, T.J. talked about wanting to subvert the stereotype of the hard ass lawyer. He wanted to write a character that was a jerk who isn’t beloved by readers but is appreciated and understood.

For both authors the journey was important as was the aspect of found family. Through found family, Laney is able to learn more about herself and her identity, especially in regard to her blood family. Her entire life, C.S.E explained, Laney has been told her entire life that the Stones are executioners, assassins and necromancers to the royal family, and they do glamorous work, but the truth is none of it is glamorous or good. Laney’s journey is about learning that a Stones can be whatever she makes it, and that good and right is also flexible depending on the situation.

T.J. reflected that he is very fond of the found family trope. He elaborated on this by saying that found family is the reality for many queer people around the world, and that is because they (and he included himself as he spoke) did not get to have a loving and accepting home. His family is made up of his brother and his sister, and his friends, he clarified. As a result having to go out into the world and making your own family out of nothing has always been a core tenant of his books; “everyone deserves to find their people”. People who will laugh with them but not in a way that is malicious or knock them down, he expanded, because we all have faults, and they should be celebrated.

At the end of the panel the audience asked the authors a couple of interesting questions;

• Favourite books with necromancers characters or deal with death: C.S.E. went first and named Laudna from Critical Role campaign three (and got a round of applause from T.J. who said that was going to be his answer), and Raistlin Majere from the Dragonlance Chronicles. T.J. named Tamsyn Muir’s Gideon the Ninth and Meg mentioned Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence which begins with Three Parts Dead which T.J. has also read and enjoyed.
• How were the tea flavours decided for The Whispering Door: T.J. informed is that every single flavour named in the book actually exists, and he’s tried them all. He always knew that tea was going to feature because tea has been a part of every culture for thousands of years. It is the second most consumed liquid after water, before beer, he explained. Every culture has its own traditions and rituals focused around tea, and something else that has always been around is death. Death and tea have been around as long as each other and combining them seemed like a simple idea. He chose teas based on memories and personal experiences, with each one chosen for a very specific  reason.
• How much work went into the footnotes in Saint Death’s Daughter: C.S.E.’s face lit up. They were such joy to her, she exclaimed, and T.J. added that he loved them. The footnotes were the Stones’ history that C.S.E. had to cut from the book, and she wanted to put them back in, but it would have interrupted the flow of the narrative. Instead, she found that she could add them as a footnote, along with additional notes about the city as Laney explored it with her friends. She won’t say that the books mentioned exist, but one day they might, and she is aware that one of the books mentioned in a footnote has been googled by quite a few people which she loves!

At the end of the panel Meg asked what was next and C.S.E. is working on a new book which is a romcom about a Goblin girl, and several other creative projects (she’s a busy woman!). T.J. has three books due out; Heatwave, the final book of The Extraordinaries trilogy which has just been release, Wolfsong in the fall and In the Lives of Puppets, a Pinocchio retelling next year. And it doesn’t stop there, he has more coming, but he couldn’t talk about them.

It was an interesting panel which delved into some very deep and important topics, and as always Meg did a wonderful job chairing.

I was very excited about this panel as between last year and this year I’ve read The Four Treasures series (book one to three) by Caroline Logan and I love faerie tales. I also enjoyed the panel that Eleanor hosted last year immensely (go team maps!).

I feel that I have to start off by saying that Caroline lamented on not bringing her two dogs with her this year and mentioned that she should have brought them, so here’s hoping she does so next year!

Remnants of Blood is H.F. Cunningham’s debut novel and this was her first book event. In her book the fair folk were believed to be myth, and in reality they are nearly extinct, with their power living on in remnants. H.F. introduced us to her main character who is unaware that she is a remnant, and the powers she has inherited are quite dark. She gets involved in all sorts of shenanigans; “she’s a bit of a disaster”.

The Four Treasures starting with The Stone of Destiny, which Caroline revealed was originally meant to be just the one book, follows social outcast Ailsa who ends up embroiled into an adventure to find The Stone of Destiny after two selkies wash up on her beach. At first, she doesn’t really want to go, Caroline explains, and she’s shunned by people because of a mark on her face which people believe is a sign that she’s a changeling. The books in the series are named after each of the four treasures and Ailsa and her friends are on a quest to find them to stop the threat to the world.

H.F. always wanted to base her book on Scottish myths because there is so much she could do with it, and she loves that there’s so much flexibility with myths. Included them in her work also acts as a connection to her home now that she lives in Germany. Plus, she added, they’re fun to write! With three books worth of creatures and myths under her belt Caroline admitted that she was beginning to have to hunt for new ones to add for book four. She has a unique perspective on the topic though, suggesting that as they are both Scottish they are creating new myths as they write.

The surprising inspiration for The Stone of Destiny was a Taylor Swift video. Admitting she’s a huge fan of the singer, Caroline told us that the video for Out of the Woods (video here) was an inspiration, although she has also gotten inspiration from rollercoasters before as well!

Unsurprisingly the discussion turned to maps, and all three women gushed over the map in H.F.’s book which makes me very eager to see it now! The five kingdoms of Remnants of Blood is based on geographical locations in Scotland, i.e. there is a coastal area, another is a bog, which I found very interesting. While describing the landscapes H.F. let slip that she currently has a trilogy planned, but is open to it being longer it that’s the way it goes. She never doubted she would have a map, and it’s something that she enjoys finding in books as a reader. As for The Four Treasures, originally Caroline had considered writing the novel as a historical fantasy, and then she realised that involved a huge amount of work! Creating her own world allowed her to add in whatever she wanted. The Isle of Elianmor is based on Scotland, and then she borrowed from other ancient civilisations and mythology for the other lands. She started drawing her map while she was writing the first book because her characters were going on quests, and she just loves a map.

Talking about Ailsa’s journey in The Stone of Destiny, Caroline explained that she wanted to show mental health representation particularly the effects of trauma. Aisla starts off very closed off, she told us, and doesn’t realise that she necessarily needs the people that she meets. Slowly she begins to open up to them.

As Eleanor mused over how Aisla and H.F.’s protagonist Tannin would get on, H.F. picked up on the fact that both women are prickly and unapologetically so. She went on to say that there is that level of realism about women in both books. She refers to a moment in Caroline’s books where the friends are hiking for days and Aisla just tells everyone to shut up and leave her alone. “It’s just so relatable,” H.F. told us. 

On the topic of favourite characters, Caroline named Prince Angus and there was a consensus that he was a golden retriever and everyone’s favourite. H.F. has only read the first book and warned Caroline that if anything happened to him in the second book they were going to have words. Caroline just shrugged; “who knows?” (I’m not saying anything, you’ll have to read the books yourself 😉 ). Her favourite POV to write is Harris, which did not surprise Eleaner (or me)! Anyone who has read The Four Treasures will recognise the obvious fun that Caroline has had with Harris, and she confirmed as much. H.F. loves writing Tannin, but had to give an honourable mention for Captain Attilo, the princesses’ bodyguard.  A grumpy cinnamon roll who is in charge of a group of teenagers. Tannin’s love for jokes makes her the most fun to write, and H.F. proudly admitted that she managed to sneak about seven to eight puns into Remnants of Blood. She now has a pun target for book two because she’s got to beat book one.

I am most definitely adding Remnants of Blood to my TBR as I am well and truly intrigued after this panel! I highly recommend The Four Treasures series if you have not read it yet!

This panel was probably one of my most anticipated of CYMERA 2022. I have read books both by C.F. Barrington and Josh Winning, and originally Dan Hanks (whose book I also loved) was scheduled to join them but was unfortunately unable to attend.

Starting us off Josh introduced The Shadow Glass, describing it as a love letter to 1980s fantasy movies in which a man called Jack goes on a real life quest with the puppets from his father’s failed 1986 movie.

In comparison, Chris aka C.F. Barrington told us that he is on book three of The Pantheon series which started with The Wolf Mile which originally began as an idea for a history series or a crime caper. He quickly dismissed both these ideas as due to a lack of personal knowledge in history or police procedures. The end result was a combination with fighting in and around Edinburgh with lots of history and without the need for police to be involved.

This is due to the Pantheon, an organisation run by the world’s wealthy elite that runs the world’s biggest underground games. Created by “mega wealthy oligarchs”, the Pantheon has the resources to buy off security forces around the world. The Pantheon was the result of Chris wondering what would the world’s elite be interested in after they got bored with their luxury items and sports teams. He looked back at history and took inspiration from Rome’s gladiatorial combat to create a worldwide event, with seven teams based in five cities. Edinburgh is home to two teams. History is tied in to each of the teams, with each one representing an ancient warrior race. There are rules and seasons as with any game, the only difference is the sport is a bloodsport where people die.

Noting that the both authors have written about unlikely heroes, Shona invited them to talk about why they chose them. In The Shadow Glass, Jack’s relationship with his father was destroyed when his father’s movie (also called The Shadow Glass) failed. The book is about Jack coming to terms with his feelings towards his father, who he views as a monster who abandoned him, and recognising that maybe things weren’t that clear-cut, Josh explained. To Josh, Jack was not necessarily a hero, he was just a “complicated messed up guy who had a lot of issues and needed puppets to help him figure them out”.

The idea for The Shadow Glass started with Josh finding out that in the eighties The Labyrinth was viewed as a failure, apparently it was seen as something bizarre, and apparently it broke Jim Hensen’s heart that it wasn’t well received. I was only a year old in 1986 when The Labyrinth was released so by the time I was old enough to see it, it had probably had started to peak as a cult, or at least a children’s, favourite, so I found this fact very interesting! Wondering how Hensen’s felt about The Labyrinth‘s bad reception and how it affected his relationships was how Josh found his way into Jack and his father.

There’s also a secondary hero in The Shadow Glass. Toby is a huge fan of The Shadow Glass film and Josh told us that he wrote him to fit into the more traditional role of a hero. It was very important to him though that the role was “modernised”; Toby is a person of colour, and he’s gay. He had fun writing the relationship between Jack and Toby, which boils down to a thirty-five-year-old who has nothing in his life together and a teenager who actually has his life together, including being confident about his sexuality.

Like Josh, Chris didn’t see Tyler, the main character of The Wolf Mile, as a hero either. Tyler is living alone on an estate in Edinburgh. He never knew his father, his sister has disappeared, and his mother was killed in a hit-and-run. He’s a drug dealer, and has been left with lasting injuries after being beaten up by the gangs. When he gets recruited by the Pantheon, who have a very high selection criteria, no one is quite sure why or how he made it there. While the game itself is very bloodthirsty, Chris wanted to show that it was something that allowed for personal growth, and to show Tyler’s journey in becoming someone with more confidence that transferred into the real world.

Adding puppets into the mix allowed Josh to be more satirical in The Shadow Glass. It gave him the opportunity to comment on how ridiculous the notion of puppets from a film coming alive was and a chance to comment on the movies he loved. If Jack had been transported to their world, Josh pointed out, they wouldn’t have been puppets any longer and that was the unique point of the story of The Shadow Glass. Choosing to have puppets come to life in the real world was not without its challenges though, and what Josh struggled with the most when writing The Shadow Glass was how to keep the puppets hidden. To get around this he decided to have a sequence set in comic-con (which I have to tell you, is brilliant). He enjoyed writing the scenes with the puppets in the real world and had a lot of fun seeing how dark he could go with them.

Chris admitted that his biggest challenge when writing The Pantheon series was quite similar; he had to work out who to conceal full-out battles involving hundreds of warriors in a real world setting without it being ridiculous. He went with the idea that it’s an illegal sport, which meant that people did know about it to some degree.

An interesting point came up when the two authors were discussing their writing process; both need to listen to music to write. While explaining that he needs to create a playlist before he can start writing, Chris asked what was on his playlist for The Shadow Glass. It turns out that both authors listen to a lot of video game soundtracks and get inspiration from them!

Chris is currently working on book four of The Pantheon series, with book three, The Hastening Storm, due out in September. After that he’s not sure what’s next!

Josh is about to sign a two book deal with a US publisher. They are both horror books, and the first one is called Burn the Negative and Josh said he thinks of it as a dark reflection of The Shadow Glass. It’s got nostalgia vibes, this time focused on 1990s horror and is about a journalist who is sent to report on a new streaming series in LA. It’s actually a remake of the cursed horror film that she starred in as a child and history starts to repeat itself. As for the second book, he is still in the process of pitching that.

This was another great panel, and Shona did an excellent job of highlighting the themes both books share despite being very different genres.

As with last year I did watch other panels, and wish I had the time to tell you all about them. This is my second year attending this event and once again CYMERA did a wonderful job of having an existing and varied schedule. CYMERA is also a flexible event which means that ticket holders are able to attend the event in person or virtually, or a combination of the two. This means that if there’s a schedule conflict it’s possible to watch both panels by catching up with one virtually later!

I had hoped to attend in person this year and my health prevented it. Thanks to the wonderful CYMERA team choosing to run an inclusive event I was still able to attend. You can read more about making events inclusive on the Inklusion website and if you’re heading to Edinburgh Fringe this year check out their panel Celebrating Inclusion.

CYMERA is back in 2023 – 2nd to the 4th June 2023. In the meantime join the CYMERA team for events throughout the year including their book groups as they invite you to join them reading SFF books each month!

Thank you for reading my review and recap for CYMERA 2022! My apologies for taking so long to get this out into the wild, I hope it was worth the wait, and you enjoyed reading it 🙂

Hopefully I’ll be able to report on CYMERA 2023 in person next year! Cross your fingers for me 🙂

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