Killers -- At Fantasycon

Posted by Colin Harvey Oct 14, 2008

I arrived in Nottingham on the Friday for Fantasycon, and quickly realized that the decision to launch the limited edition here with signed hardcovers --that until now had looked as if it was going to work--was starting to unravel. Only two of my three boxes had arrived; I had no copies of Killers. Lots of dust-jackets, but no books!

The hotel is one of the few in Britain without internet coverage. It took me until 7pm to stumble across a hot spot.

Tracking showed that DHL had delivered the package at 5.39pm, but been turned away. The hotel vehemently denied this.

The next morning, I (again) couldn't access the internet, and when I could, the DHL site --as for most of the last week-- was down.

Britain nowadays requires that to resolve a problem the customer needs either internet access, to ring a premium phone line, or both (Customer disservice, companies now have the gall to charge a customer a premium to sort out the service provider's fuck-up).

One call confirmed that I needed internet access, and for the DHL site to be working...

After trudging round Nottingham to find a hot-spot and another call, I was put through to Jason, a charm-less goon who clearly didn't want to work a weekend, and whose strategy was to make everyone he came in contact with as miserable as he was.

He told me that the box would remain at the Loughborough warehouse until dispatch on Tuesday -- after I'd left. He suggested that I collected them, rather invalidating the principle of a courier service.

Had I not had a reading at Midday (it was now after 10am) I nonetheless would have reluctantly collected them, even though they were twenty miles away. But I had no transport.

As it was, we'd advertised the book in the Con Program, I was due to read from the anthology at Midday, and to stand up at the Con's Monster Dog Book Launch.

All without a single book....