Angry Robot Books is one of the most interesting publishers in the business at the moment – not just in terms of who they are publishing (such as another Conflux 9 guest Kaaron Warren) but also in how they’re approaching the industry at the moment.

In fact, there’s going to be an interview with Marc going up here in a week or two – there’s exciting things happening at Angry Robot and we’re looking forward to talking to Marc about it.

Until then – Congratulations Marc!

Further venue information and a booking reference number has been added to the venue page. It is okay to book now. Don’t wait to reserve your room. You can use your credit card to secure your booking over the phone without charge. Don’t worry if your card is going to expire before Conflux 2013 because you can update it closer to the convention time with the new card number and expiry date.

We don’t have the rooms blocked out. We have to make sure we book them. So if you want the venue to ourselves (and it’s not that big) then book away. We have to share with Qantas, but I’m not picky.

I’ve booked the Embassy Suite because I like to spoil myself.

Donna

9512 Conflux A3 Poster-3

Here is some information about Grant.

Grant Gittus works in Melbourne running a small graphic design business. He has illustrated some book covers, interior illustrations and co-authored the children’s book “Biker Baby Learns to Count”, giving him a published output of around 25 words. He has also written and illustrated a picture book which garnered the praise “..the illustrations are dark and forbidding, the text doesn’t make sense. It is hard to imagine who would want to publish this manuscript” from one editor. He hopes one day to learn how to draw properly, so he no longer has to rely on mere sexual attraction for success.

Grant has also hung around the fringes of the SF&F fan community for a number of years, mostly waiting for the court order to be lifted. Along the way, he has designed logos and convention material for AussieCon3, AussieCon4, Conflux3, Conflux4 and Convergence 2.

A big thank you to Grant from Nicole Murphy and Donna Maree Hanson

The hotel is three stories high and the conference facilities are on the second floor so no one will have far to go or will have too much of an issue with the elevators. The bar is in the corner of the building and can be a cozy venue or spread out into the spill over area to accommodate a larger group. The cafe suburb of Manuka is about a ten minute walk down the road. There is serviced accommodation next door, for those who prefer it. The synagogue is across the intersection and there’s a Catholic and Anglican church in Manuka. On the foot path, you can see Parliament House, as Rydges Capital Hill borders the parliamentary triangle.

With have an accommodation deal with Rydges, and we think it is an awesome deal. Stay tuned for details of how to book. Basically, for a bed and breakfast deal, a standard room will cost $160 per night. We will post the range of rooms and step up prices shortly. We want you to book those rooms up so we can have the hotel to ourselves, well mostly to ourselves as there is a block of rooms permanently reserved for  our favourite airline. Also, we think Canberra will be busy at that time of year so we want to make sure you can join us.

The rooms are a little dated, but they are large and have an understated elegance about them. As far as we know there are five mobility impaired rooms, standard rooms with a Queen bed and also rooms with a Queen bed and a double bed, which would be suitable for those wanting to share. An extra breakfast in this case will be $24. For an extra $20 per night you can secure a King spa suite, which contains a King bed (no surprise there) and a spare bath. Nicole and I inspected this room type and found them quite spacious (good room party venue). As the building is ellipse in shape, some rooms lean over the atrium area and others face the outer rim of the hotel building. We think it is quite a fascinating design. There are further price upgrades for suites and we’ll let you know though I think Nicole and I are racing to book the Ambassador suite for ourselves. We could have our own little kingdom up there.

Wait till we put the booking details up before you approach the venue. Here is a link to the site so you can have a squiz.

Firstly, let us say how excited we are to be organising a Natcon in Canberra again. Our last Natcon was in 2004 at Rydges Lakeside. We will be making big announcements soon, but a few teasers are in order.

We are putting the finishing touches on our venue deal, with a great convention space and reasonable bed and breakfast rates. There are limited rooms so we must make sure we book them all out so we only have to share the hotel with Qantas staff. As soon as we have signed the dotted line and paid the deposit we will let you know what the venue is and the fantastic rates we have negotiated.

Next, we have line up two awesome international guests and we are still working out who our Australian Guest of Honour will be and who our special guest will be. You never know we may even have a local guest. We have an excellent fan guest of honour lined up too. (Nicole and Donna don’t mess around!).

Then we can say that we will have a steampunk themed high tea, which will be a pre con event (in the early afternoon of 25 April, 2013). At present we think the cost of this will be $40 per head and we want you to dress up and get with the theme. This will be a paid event and not covered by the membership to the convention.

An opening cocktail party is definitely on the agenda and this will be included in the membership and how much food and drink we will have will depend on membership numbers.

We are also hoping to have a Regency Gothic banquet ,which will be a replay of the previous Regency Banquet. Again this will be a paid event and we’d love you to dress up for that too, if you are in the mood.  We will let you know the cost in late 2012 when we have costed the menu with the venue.

Of course, you know Nicole and Donna love to dance so there will be a masquerade disco and your old favourite, the DITMAR Award ceremony.

Along with that we expect a great range of panels, readings, kaffeeklatsch, traders room, games room and workshops.