Thanks to the good folk at Alanera Edizioni, I blagged an invite to this year’s Lucca Comics and Games festival. For those of you who’ve never heard of it, it’s an enormous pop culture carnival devoted to every aspect of geekdom – comics, miniatures, boardgames, roleplaying games, cosplay, computer games, fantasy art etc. and it’s all housed in the beautiful, medieval, walled city of Lucca in Tuscany.

I was there to promote the Italian edition of Ghoulslayer, Sventraghoul but I (along with Kathryn and our boys) spent most of the time cooing over homemade costumes and parades and exploring all the stands. (Kathryn snapped most of these photos.)

I managed to catch up with John Blanche and see his amazing Vodoo Forest exhibition and met a whole host of other artists and authors but, to be honest, my favourite thing about the festival was its magical atmosphere. There were huge crowds of people crammed into Lucca’s narrow, winding streets, but everyone was friendly and chilled and brilliantly weird. We made loads of new friends and we’re determined to get back there again as soon as possible. If you’re even a little bit of a geek, I can highly recommend trying to get over to see it next year.