Guest Profiles

Guest Profile: Ariel

We regret to inform you that Ariel will be unable to attend the convention this year, due to circumstaces beyond his control.

Ariel is a thirty-something year old married gent, living in Manchester. He currently works as a self-employed freelance web designer, and in his spare time runs the UK genre fiction news website UKSFBooknews.net

Ariel worked for six years in the Deansgate, Manchester branch of Waterstone’s, where he was responsible for the best damn SF/Fantasy section in the country, and he also produces an in-house reviews-based fanzine called The Alien Has Landed, which itself produced a short-lived spin-off in the form of a short fiction magazine called Alien Landings in the mid-nineties. Time moved on, and Ariel left Waterstone’s, but he took his ideas with him and, in January 2002, and online version of the mag, The Alien Online, was launched. Then, in October 2006, following a change of focus and direction, TAO became UKSFBooknews.net, and the rest is evolving history…

In what laughingly passes for his spare time, he reads as much as he can - particularly epic/heroic fantasy, space opera, literary fantasy/SF, and graphic novels - likes an occasional single malt, real ale or red wine listens to music - storytelling singer/songwriter stuff for preference - and spends time with his lovely wife, Jo, usually watching comedy shows on TV, or ploughing through DVD box-sets of The West Wing.

For his day-job, Ariel gets to sit at home, with the cat Hobbes for occasional company, working on websites for a host of UK genre fiction authors and publishers, including: PS Publishing, Michael Marshall Smith, James Barclay, James Lovegrove, Mark Chadbourn, Paul Kearney, Brian Ruckley, Les Edwards, Tim Lebbon, Mark Morris, Deborah J. Miller, Sarah Ash, Jude Fisher, Michael Cobley and Tom Arden. Want a website? Grab him and ask…

Guest Profile by Pádraig Ó Méalóid