London reading: 21 March 2015, Courtyard Theatre London N1

We’re off to London! Nottingham Writers’ Studio are showcasing work from their first three journals – Crime, Secrets, and A Sense of Place- in a Free Event at The Courtyard Theatre in London on Saturday 21 March.

I’ll be reading my YA short story, ‘Didn’t See Nothing’, alongside Booker nominated author Alison Moore, award winning screenwriter Michael Eaton, and other members of the studio who have contributed stories, poems and articles.

It’s a great chance for NWS to showcase some of the brilliant writing being created in Nottingham right now, and I’m really pleased my story is one of them.

If you’re around, it would be great to see you there!

Morning After Mayhem

Nottingham, Festival of Words team prepare to launch
@wordsnovel as part of Word of Mouth at Mayhem

What a great night!
I met a load of really interesting people at Mayhem last night - a great combination of Mayhem fans (including a chap whose horror make up was eye-wateringly good) and Broadway cinemagoers who had just come out of seeing Skyfall (all very impressed with Mr Bond).

The lineup was great - classic takes on old stories, archive chillers from the seventies and early eighties projected on the wall, and me.

It's my second time I've had work showcased in Word of Mouth at Mayhem, but my first where I did the reading.  I wrote The Good Books specifically for Mayhem - taking all my memories of watching Hammer House of Horror behind a cushion on a Friday night, and rolls them up into a tale that creeps up on you like an odd smell...

Two (A5) pages in to The Good Books at
Mayhem (pic: Robin Vaughan-Williams)

It's a nerve racking thing, standing up in front of an audience and reading your work, but when you don't have Tom Baker's telephone number, you've got to do it.  It's part of being a writer, talking through your work, and getting immediate feedback from people during and after the performance.  It was lovely to chat about how I wrote the story, what parts people enjoyed, and watch other writers perform their work.


If you're thinking about doing it yourself, there's loads of advice on the interweb telling you how to do it, but here's my one tip-top tip:


A5 printouts.  No, really.

When you've finished writing, change the document page size to A5 on your word processor, and print it two pages at a time on your A4 printer.  Cut in half, staple into paperpack-sized notes, and never worry about your story wilting over half way through - you've got enough to concentrate on when you're presenting a chunk of your soul.

Hope that makes sense:  if it doesn't, I'll show you what I mean when I perform at the next Word of Mouth in November - more details later...

If you're still in need of a chill, Mayhem runs until the 4th November - for more info, take a look here.

Weekend

So, a busy weekend - Nottingham looked splendidly Victorian (sort of) from the fourth floor of Waterstones on Friday evening, where Gail Carriger discussed her Parasol Protectorate series while I drank Pimms and lemonade.  I held back on cake, but it was kind of them to offer.  There was a huge number of Steampunk fans in the audience, dressed to the nines.  It's interesting to see how ideas of an alternate Victorian reality have such an impact on fans of the genre.

Gail's writing is great fun to read; a mix of Austen-like attention to social manners and protocol, with a big slice of werewolf and vampire lore thrown in for good measure - all rolled up into a strangely believable world.  Timeless is the last book of the series, but she's busy working on another part of her very inventive universe for YA readers.




Then came Alt.Fiction, packed with discussions, panels, and my reading slot!  I was very nervous (my thanks to whoever gave me the tip of putting my notes in a folder - it reduced the shaking to tremor levels), but I was really pleased with my read of the opening chapter of Hidden Daughter.  I got some lovely feed back from another writer about my presentation, and as a result, I've made some new friends.  Once again, it was really worthwhile to get out there and talk to other writers.  And I'm itching to read more of my work in public now.

In the meantime, I'm back to editing Coalface.  I'm about a third of the way through, and it's shaping up nicely - so much so, I might even start sharing a little more of it soon - watch this space.

Practice, practice, practice.

Talking about time-travel with a stopwatch in your kitchen is something even I don't do that often, but that's what I was doing tonight.

One of my resolutions this year was to share my work with an audience as often as I could (reading aloud on the bus doesn't count as an audience).

Alt.Fiction have very kindly given me an open mic slot at their Flash Fic session at 1pm this Saturday - I'll be reading an extract from chapter one of 'Hidden Daughter'.  After some great advice on reading extracts from my colleagues at Nottingham Writer's Studio, I've edited, read, re-read, drunk coffee and re-read again.  

Now I'm ready (I think).

I'm going to pick up some more tips when I see Gail Carriger discuss her new novel 'Timeless' and other things Parasol Protectorate related (good name, very jealous of that name) at Waterstones Nottingham on Friday night.

Then I'm looking forward to hearing what other writers will be reading to us on Saturday, and sharing the start of weary time traveller Penny's story with an audience.

Resolutions

 A bit late in the day perhaps - who said you could only make them at New Years?

A lot of the resolutions I made were to do more of what I do now - more writing (natch), more running (DIY does not match up, however many cupboards you demolish and doors you hang) more risotto (with barley - will report fully when I've perfected it).

The newer, more frightening resolutions are:
 - read my work to a public audience as often as possible
- sign up for and complete a 10k run
- complete a full working draft for the sequel to Hidden Daughter before New Years Eve
- finish reading all the books I mentioned when I talked about reading last year

With the snow outside, running's gone for a burton, but I'm busy working through the books (really enjoying Paula Rawsthorne's Truth About Celia Frost) and I've signed up to the open mic slot at Alt Fiction this year - will keep you posted on the others as I go along.

Reading

As a writer, I'm pretty dedicated to putting words (or at present, changing words) on the page.  But as I continue with the rewrites for Coalface, and begin to write the follow-up to Hidden Daughter, I know there's more to it than that.  Because writing only refers to the process I use for what I really do; which is storytelling.

Part of my new 'to finish reading' pile-
don't even get me started with
what's on the E-book reader...

Getting an experience of storytelling from the outside looking inwards is as important as being inside your own story; a timely reminder that whatever you think of your story, the audience/reader will probably be thinking about it from another perspective.  In a very real sense, your story becomes their story. 

It was great to experience storytelling from both perspectives when Sent/Received was performed alongside works by other writers at the Word of Mouth's horror event recently.  Now I'm going to continue the experience by actually finishing the pile of novels I've started reading during 2011, then misplaced when the spectre of work tapped me on the shoulder.  It's a bad habit, and it's going to stop.

So here's the plan: if we bump into one another and I can't tell you what I was last reading, I owe you a coffee/tea/beverage.  Because like writers, readers finish.  Or wind up buying a lot of coffee.