Our visiters

The New Librarian is over from Sweden. She came with a group of 25 librarians to check out our libraries. To be cynical, it’s good they came while there are still libraries to check out. It’s a EU thing, apparently. They have been travelling all over the place to see and learn stuff.

Son and I went into Manchester on Tuesday evening to eat pizza with her. It was nice to see her here again. We do see her in Sweden, but it’s been a while since she popped over to Manchester on a regular basis to hear outlandish bands in concert. We’re dreadfully cool.

They had done Oldham; the main library and one branch. Today they are covering a university library and one other. Tomorrow it’s a new library in Birmingham, followed by one in London on Friday.

Before the New Librarian Mrs Pendolino called, to make us beautiful again. That was very necessary.

And in between the two ladies we had Spiderman come round. It’s not something that happens often. I wish it did, because he’s a real tonic.

He was, of course, Steve Cole. I could tell, because he didn’t have his mask on (presumably it’s harder to drive a car if you can’t see). He’d been doing some school events in our neck of the woods, and a bookshop signing. When he was done, he texted to tell me to put the kettle on. (Politely, obviously.)

It was a flying visit, but a very nice one. Son and I gave him tea and a raspberry muffin, which he found hard to grip with his Spidey fingers. And I hadn’t really considered the questionable wisdom of pouring tea down the throat of someone who might well not have been out of that suit since some kind lady zipped him in that morning.

Steve is touring schools to talk about his new book, Magic Ink. He brought me a copy, and a postcard. I will read it and come back to you. We didn’t talk as much about it as I’d expected. It was more about Steve’s 96 hour deodorant and the comic book he made as a boy, and David Tennant’s Doctor Who ties.

Before setting off to drive home, he struggled out of his Spiderman outfit (in the shower room) and then spread it out on the floor so he could fold it up neatly.

I’m sure Steve had no actual need to visit Bookwitch Towers while flying around the country like this. But it’s much appreciated that he did. I’ll probably go round grinning for days. As for Son, he had simply not been able to imagine such a crazy, funny person.

(Yes, I can spell.)

Bookwitch bites #109

If my bites didn’t already have such an excellent title, I’d call today’s post Hoffman & McGowan. It’s got a nice ring to it. Solicitors. Or television cops. Yes, that’s more like it.

Ladies first, so we’ll go to Mary Hoffman who has a new website design. Again, you could say, but that’s OK. Mary has been writing books for a while, and needs to go through a few web designs. They are like shoes. You must have them. They wear out. And with so many books, Mary simply has to be able to organise all the information sensibly. And beautifully. Like the shoes.

We’re not leaving Mary yet. Earlier this month she wrote this beautiful blog post on the History Girls blog about her mother-in-law. I find it fascinating to read about the lives of ‘reasonably ordinary’ people. Because once you start looking at an individual, you soon discover that many people have something special or exciting in their past.

On to Anthony McGowan, who is excited about his upcoming film. Or more correctly, the upcoming film of one of his books; The Knife That Killed Me. I gather it’s just appeared at Cannes, which in itself is pretty exciting. I’m a little wary of knives, so I don’t know how I feel about watching the film. I found the build-up in the book almost unbearable. Well done, but hard to cope with.

And from the topic of knives, it’s a short step to bullying, and to another couple of ‘solicitors/cops;’ Morgan & Massey.

Nicola Morgan blogged about cyber bullying on the Huffington Post. And about teenage stress, also on Huffington. (I suppose I need to find out how to get blogging there…)

Finally, awards time! You remember how I mentioned David Massey a couple of weeks ago? Like, he was at the Chicken House breakfast, and I helped myself to a copy of his book Torn? Now he’s just gone and won the Lancashire Book of the Year, which just proves I move in the right chicken circles. The ceremony isn’t yet (can’t find when…), but the announcement came yesterday.

Walker Books and a witch with wet hands

As usual it was a case of waving your hands (or in this case, my hands) under the drier for absolutely forever, wipe them on your clothes, or go wet, hoping there’d be no hands to shake. You can guess which I chose, and what happened next, can’t you?

I was at the presentation of Walker Books’ and Constable & Robinson’s Autumn Highlights in Manchester on Wednesday evening, when I came face to face with Jo for the first time, and had to quickly get out of the handshaking she had in mind. This flustered me so much I forgot to mention my name. (But everyone knows me, right?) Besides, I’d already got the decrepit old woman treatment. Staff at the venue saw me negotiating the steps outside (which had NO handrail) and quickly bundled me into the lift before I caused more trouble.

Super-Jake was there, but I forgot to check his footwear. Representatives of our local LitFest and bookshops and that most Wondrous of blogs could also be seen. I was quite restrained prior to the talk, as I noticed there were partybags in one corner, which meant I did no stealing or anything beforehand.

Constable & Robinson went first, and I’d not realised that books on prescription, which I have heard of, is for non-fiction self-help type books, rather than patients being made to feel better after a dose of Pride and Prejudice…

They are big on halogen oven books. (Don’t ask.) They are the leaders in cosy crime. You can have books on WWII pets for Christmas. Obviously. C & R have begun offering children’s books, and they had an instructive video on how to fight zombies. (Head removal is recommended.) Gross. Shaun Ryder on UFOs. (It would have helped if I knew who Shaun Ryder is.) Joan Collins is nearly 80, in case you wanted to know. They have a book titled Going on a Bar Hunt. Droll.

This being very much a presentation for booksellers, I now know a lot more about which books are commercial, something I rarely consider in my narrow little world. There will be joke books for Christmas. And they have just begun a relationship with Brian McGilloway, who I am very interested in.

On to Walker Books, who are planning a picture book party. I think that means they have lots of picture books to offer. Vivian French has something new going; Stargirl Academy. Looks good. Pink. Anthony Browne is a Marmite author, which I can understand. That gorilla still scares me.

Cassandra Clare was there last year, before she grew so big that she doesn’t do this kind of talk. She has a film on the way. Nice for her.

Walker have travel guides, and there is new stuff for fans of GHMILY (Guess How Much I Love You books). Mumsnet have done a story collection. In fact, I reckon there is one thing parents want more than anything else. They want their children to fall asleep. Lots of books for that purpose.

Manatees and bears. A book about someone pecking (I’m thinking – hoping – woodpecker) all the way through.  Going on a Bear Hunt is out again. Michael Morpurgo will be 70, and four of his books are being re-issued, including one about funny old men who are famous artists.

Speaking of funny, Tommy Donbavand has a new series called Fangs. Walker are really really really really thrilled to be working with Anthony McGowan and his new book Hello Darkness. Patrick Ness wasn’t there except on video, where he did his best to sound interesting while not giving too much away about his new novel More Than This. His Chaos trilogy, meanwhile, is being revamped for old people.

My notes say ‘spider skeleton.’ I think there’s a book about things like spider skeletons. Kate DiCamillo and her dog spoke to us all the way from their Minneapolis dining room. While the dog made dog noises, Kate told us about her mother’s obsession with her 1952 vacuum cleaner and what would happen to it after she died. Kate’s new book Flora and Ulysses also features squirrels.

Anthony Horowitz has finally come to the end of his Power of Five books, so has had time to write Russian Roulette, the Alex Rider prequel he has had in mind for absolutely ages. He is quite satisfied with it.

Lizzy Bennet (I apologise for sounding so informal) wrote a diary in her pre-Darcy days, which will give us an opportunity to find out all kinds of stuff.

Finally, Walker are publishing the Little Island imprint, which is foreign fiction. I spied a Swedish title in among the covers they showed us, and think it’s high time there are more books from other countries.

As you can see, they had a lot to tell us. They hadn’t rehearsed, so were surprised to find it took them so long. But at the end there were canapés and more drinks and even a few authors; Steve Tasane, Sarah Webb and Katy Moran. Someone else, too. At least I think there was.

I grabbed my partybag and hobbled away home. There was NO handrail on the way out either…

Mortal Fire

Let me tell you, I have had to twist arms to get this review. My very dear friend L Lee Löwe reads a lot and she reads well, and she has a lot of opinions on all that she reads. But she has this strange notion about writing reviews. She thinks they have to be good. So there is no problem, because this is a good review. Both in the respect of it being favourable, but mostly because it is well written.

I know very little about Elizabeth Knox, but she happens to be a favourite of Lee’s. I know that much, because when I sent Daughter to her for a visit, she returned home with a copy of one of Elizabeth’s books, and simply had to buy the next one… And the trouble is, after reading the excerpt from Mortal Fire, I happen to think it looks really very tempting.

Before I ado even more, here is the review:

“In a perfect world, we’d all be canny. Or Canny, the heroine of Elizabeth Knox’s latest YA novel, Mortal Fire. Canny is a 16-year-old maths prodigy whose genius is matched by her loyalty to her only friend, Marli, a polio victim confined to an iron lung, and by her own uncanny ability to see Extra – ‘cryptic letters salted like frost between a certain pair of gate posts, or floating like thistledown above the grandstand when she was at the racetrack with Marli’s family’, a script only Canny sees yet whose purpose has always been incomprehensible to her. A fully stand-alone story, Mortal Fire is set in the same alternate South Pacific world as Knox’s award-winning and well-loved Dreamhunter Duet, but about 50 years later.

Canny is obliged by her famously fierce mother and professor father to accompany her stepbrother Sholto and his girlfriend to a remote region of Southland, where they chance upon the Zarene Valley. Canny is left to her own devices while Sholto researches an earlier, and increasingly suspicious, mining disaster for his father. There is magic in the valley, and Canny soon recognises its affinity with her own Extra. As if driven by the power of her name – ‘canny’ derives, via Scots, from the Old English word ‘cunnan’ – she is determined to know more. Once she encounters the reclusive and hostile Zarene family, who use magic signs to protect themselves and their valley, and then the intriguing 17-year-old Ghislain, imprisoned in a house since 1929 by a powerful spell which keeps him from ageing, she learns just how powerful her own magic can be.

And it takes the magic of a fine writer to bring characters as complex, idiosyncratic, and infuriating as Knox’s to life. She writes with a lushness about the natural world which at times can be overwhelming, but we never doubt that we are right there in the valley, struggling  alongside Canny to discover her true nature and use it to free the many prisoners in Mortal Fire - her friend Marli, Ghislain, the Zarenes themselves. Life is indeed as intricate as Knox’s plotting, as vivid as her insights, and though the device by which Canny proves to have acted cannily – far-sightedly – seems rather too convenient, and I’d have wished for a glimpse of Ghislain’s despair during the three years which precede the final chapters, Mortal Fire is an exceptional fantasy novel – not perfect, but a perfect choice for the canny (and discerning) reader.

Read an excerpt of Mortal Fire.”

(The book will be published in the US on June 11th.)

Bringing it down to 40

The idea for some kind of Desert Island Books has been with me for years, but I’ve not got round to doing anything about it. Yet. Relax, I’m not going to start now, either.

But as the panic over pruning my library was beginning to slosh around in my brain, someone posted a link to a rather interesting article. Geoffrey Best in History Today mused about his book collecting, and then the reverse; the process where he’s had to get rid of one category after the other.

It makes for sad reading, actually. (Much sadder than the chap in the paper the other day who sold off his wine collection…) On re-reading the article I noticed two things. One was that as this was a collection, Geoffrey had not read all the books. That made me feel less inadequate. I sometimes believe I’m the only one who can’t keep up.

The other was that his potential final goal wasn’t for five books. It was for one.

Shudder.

His first awful ambition was which books to choose for when you can only keep 40 books. He arrived at this figure when visiting someone in a home, where he looked around and worked out that 40 might be the limit.

I reckon 40 might be possible. Hard, but doable. You’d need good criteria for how you pick, and that probably depends on who you are. I’ve always marvelled at the choice of the Bible and Shakespeare in Desert Island Discs. Obviously they had to become standard issue once almost everyone felt they had to ask for them, whether because they genuinely loved them that much, or felt they wouldn’t be seen on a desert island without them…

Yes. Quite.

While I don’t know what I’d choose, I’m fairly certain it would be neither of those.

And while I thought the end goal was five books, I toyed with the idea of How I Live Now and Code Name Verity. Both favourites, both quite short. So perhaps you can’t do it that way?

Right now I am also having some problems with working out if I’m going to be sitting on an island or in some old people’s home. Would it be more of a blessing if – when the time comes – I am past reading, to save me doing the final prune, or am I better off with any small pile of books?

Will the grandchildren visit the old witch and bring books?

Fickle news

In the end my agonising wait resolved itself. I heard about David Fickling’s plans to set up his own publishing company back in January. I wasn’t sure I was allowed to mention it, so thought I’d ask David. I suppose I kept back from doing that, in order to save him having to tell me to mind my own business.

Not that he would be so rude, but you know what I mean.

So the official news a week or two ago was very welcome. It was out in the open. I didn’t have to ask any awkward questions (I might still, actually). The one thing that did surprise me was to find I’d got it wrong. I’d always thought David set up on his own, and was later taken in under the Random House umbrella. But it seems this is the first time David Fickling Books will be independent.

Poor, but independent.

I’ll be very interested to see how it goes. The principles for publishing should be what DFB will try to do; working with what you believe in, at the pace you decide, and with as little glancing at ‘what sells’ as possible. Please make this a success!

I wonder if they will [be able to] hang on to their lovely home in central Oxford? The place where Daughter and I encountered Simon Mason in the cellar. Now that Simon is going to be managing director, it might be unseemly to have him stashed away below street level?

We’ll see. When the news came, I’d already had witchy thoughts about tiny houses where you couldn’t even swing a kitten, because I remember David talking about modern houses with deceptively tiny furniture. I hope that doesn’t mean he needs to shrink his publishing palace, where the MD sits in the cellar and there is a dentist on top. Always so handy.

(The Book of Dust, could come in useful. Some people would be willing to hand over good money for a copy of that. In fact, my first introduction to David Fickling came through a letter I was sent while we were all waiting for The Amber Spyglass. [Long time ago!] In it David was telling the impatient fan of how wonderful the bits Philip Pullman had been reading to him from his work in progress had been. There was something about David’s enthusiasm, and the way he shared this with the fans, that suggested he was no ordinary editor.)

Moving tales #2 – the books

The books. Some will simply have to go. About half would be good.

So, one question: Does it make more sense to hang on to old books already read and thoroughly enjoyed, or those not yet read at all? I’m beginning to think that some used ones ought to go, and some new ones should stay, in the hopes they will come into favour at some point. But not too many.

Some books have moved around with me before. A lot. I used to be of the opinion that if I’d liked something, I’d hang on to it. Part of the family and all that. Now that this looks like an impossible ambition, I suspect I can chuck out quite a few books. I look at them and ask myself if I’m at all likely to re-read, even were I not so blessed with new incoming books on a daily basis.

More often than you’d think, the answer is no. And for every 19 books successfully Oxfammed, there is bound to be a 20th I will regret. But there are libraries and secondhand bookshops, and even firsthand bookshops, whence mistakes might be rectified.

Libraries. I must have imagined I actually am a library in the past. Thoughts like ‘that could be handy to have if …’ have confused me. I have hung on to books because I am a snob. It would look impressive – or at least marginally good – to have certain books on my shelves.

And, it’s so useful to have a nice selection if visitors want to read while staying with us. Pah! I don’t like lending books, and we don’t exactly run a hotel here. The only people impressed by our books have been Son’s reception teacher and our former GP. The Grandmother sometimes finds something she will read (which she then takes home with her to finish).

I have been known to feel that if I adore a writer, I must keep all of his or her books, when a few of the best will do. Now that I own a lot of signed books I have felt I can’t part with any of those. But I’ll just have to. (The embarrassing fact is that anything signed to Bookwitch will be rather obvious. Please don’t hate me.)

I can’t get rid of books written by the very nice people I am now reasonably acquainted with. But I will have to. You are still absolutely lovely people. So are your books. Lovely, I mean, not that they are people.

Several copies of the ‘same’ book makes little sense. So does keeping [all of] Offspring’s books. Unless they at least spring clean a little, so we don’t keep every single one. Son could prune his multiple copies of Terry Pratchett and Eoin Colfer. Daughter could decide she won’t bl**dy re-read Cathy Hopkins, again. Actually, no, perhaps she couldn’t.

Some of my fiction is quite easy to decide on. But what about Shakespeare? One collected works is enough, which means the other can go. But the plays we also have separately? What will we want to return to at some point? Which Tom Stoppard play do I like best? Shaw? Do we need two Swedish hymn books?*

*This backfired a little. When the Resident IT Consultant was reminded of Shaw, for instance, he promptly sat down and read one of the plays. He told me off for wanting to deprive him of the poetry of Dylan Thomas. Oh, dear. He claimed the Zen motorbike book was his, and not mine to chuck out. And so it went.

But some books went.

The #3 profile – Michelle Lovric

I expect I’ve left it too late to get Michelle Lovric to be my godmother… Sigh. Anyway, here she is, my profile #3, and as you can see Michelle has a great profile. And she looks relaxed, for someone embroiled in writing three novels, and working, and answering stupid witchy questions.

How many books did you write before the one that was your first published book?

None. I was amazingly lucky. I took six weeks off my work as a book packager to go to Venice and write Carnevale, my first novel. I got an agent in a month and a deal with Virago a month later.

Best place for inspiration?

You’re all going to yawn hugely, but, yes, Venice.

My part of London is also inspiring: I live in gritty Bankside, in the shadow of the Shard.

I also like to write anywhere there’s a chance of the sun on my face, or a cup of good coffee. In both cases, Italy is more likely. But recently I had both at Chartwell and Nymans.

Would you ever consider writing under a pseudonym? Perhaps you already do?

I have used the initials M.R. Lovric, when publishers thought it might be better if my gender was ambiguous. Given my shape, that was not something that was going to remain in question if a journalist or a reader ever met me.

So, with the increasing demand for authors to put ourselves about, I have re-acquired my first name.

Of course I’d rather be called Mimosina Dolcezza, or Amneris D’Ago, or Temistocle Molin, or Ermintrudina Fava, like some of my characters … but my parents had other ideas. In fact, I was named after a black poodle.

What would you never write about?

I honestly can’t think of anything I would baulk at. It is the way you write it that counts. I’ve done child sacrifice and cat cruelty in The Fate in the Box … and cat sacrifice and child cruelty in The Mourning Emporium, come to think of it. So long as there is redemption, there can be evil.

Through your writing: the most unexpected person you’ve met, or the most unexpected place you’ve ended up in?

The great eccentrics of this world always gravitate towards writers, even if you’re just sitting on a bus. I think they have a homing instinct. But you also meet people who are dedicated to their trades and who are only to happy to see a writer come to share their passion with a wider audience, especially when that involves children. So I’ve met an interesting casts of real characters while writing each piece of fiction.

With The Fate in the Box, I’ve really enjoyed meeting Margherita Fusco, a curator at The Natural History Museum in Venice. She’s one of the nicest and happiest people I’ve ever met. She grew up by the museum as a child, went to school nearby, loved visiting it, and now works there herself, and still lives in the vicinity, working at what she loves. It was she who told me that the fearsome gorilla killed in the Congo in 1929 has a hairless belly because of all the generations of children who have stroked it.

Which of your characters would you most like to be?

None, really, because I tend to put them through hell.

That’s what a story is about. One makes characters uniquely equipped to deal with uniquely awful things. And then the awful things happen.

However, I endowed Amneris, the girl in The Fate in the Box, with a skill in maths I’d love to have. And then I turn her into a human sacrifice.

See what I mean?

Do you think that having a film made of one of your books would be a good or a bad thing?

Most of my adult books have been optioned for films at one time or another, but one learns not to expect anything more than a mild ego massage and a small cheque to result. The kind of books I write would require casts of thousands, costly costumes, special effects because of all the magic, a lot of latex for the creaturing etc. Teaching cats to talk and fly would be quite expensive and time-consuming, I imagine. So I don’t see much hope for a film of my books, unless animated.

Of course I would like a film made because it would bring my characters to life. Whether they would still be my characters at the end of the process is another question. One would need to have the clout of J.K. (Rowling) to have one’s oeuvre treated with the cherishing respect one would like.

That said, I am enchanted that a very nice company called VooDooDog currently have an option on making a picturesque animation of The Undrowned Child.

What is the strangest question you’ve been asked at an event?

I have been a reluctant eventer, as I prefer to be in a darkened room, writing. But I’ve done a few, and I’m going to do more. The funniest thing that happened to me at an event was when a boy bought a book and told me to keep the change.

Do you have any unexpected skills?

I can truly cook. I am a devoted aunt and godmother. I give great themed parties, the latest being a Victorian Gothic party for my god-daughter. Apart from everything you’d expect by way of skulls, crows and blood to drink, I took the girls, fully gothed up, out into the darkening streets bearing candles, and they stood silently and motionlessly in front of diners in the local restaurants, scaring the hell out of them.

But it is more that I am lacking in skills. I can’t sing, knit, ride a bicycle. So it’s just as well that Venice is my favourite place. Not much call for bicycles.

Speaking of film treatments, someone wanted to animate one of my books and their treatment introduced a new character, a mouse on a motorcycle. I had to explain to the disbelieving American producer that this would not work in Venice.

The Famous Five or Narnia?

Narnia!

Love men with goaty legs. Love cruel witches. Love big cats.

Who is your most favourite Swede?

I have my favourite Swede all ready: my role model through my life, the late Swedish publisher Solveig Nellinge, who was my friend and mentor for years. I used to spend a couple of weeks at her publishing company, Trevi, every February, working and devouring semlor, delightful light buns with cream and marzipan inside.  Trevi had a lovely tradition of meeting in their beautiful dining room every morning by candlelight, with coffee and cake, to discuss the important things happening that day. Trevi translated many of the twentieth century’s great women authors, including Doris Lessing, into Swedish. I learned a great deal about being a human being as well as a publisher from Solveig, who tucked me under her wing like a cygnet. She was wildly intelligent, gracious, kind, loved cats, good manners, sharp wit. I even wear Solveig’s perfume still. It is called Antilope by Weil, and it is very surprising… and works very quickly.

How do you arrange your books at home? In a Billy? By colour, or alphabetically?

By genre. Which, to hear recent gossip from the London Book Fair, should now include ‘Hot Dragon Sex’. I don’t have any Hot Dragon Sex yet, though I’m sure it’s better than Fifty Shades of Grey. So I have a poetry cabinet, sections for letters, biographies, novels worth keeping and my particular interests, the history of medicine and drugs,

Which book would you put in the hands of an unwilling eight-year-old boy reader?

Ros Asquith’s Letters from an Alien Schoolboy.

If you have to choose between reading or writing, which would it be?

Writing. If I didn’t write, I would probably explode. There’s still a lot pent up inside. Have to go now and do a bit more …

Thank you for asking me, Bookwitch!

You’re welcome, Michelle. I’m so pleased to find you are not only slightly crazy, but that you have picked a good Swede. Thank you too for all those fantastic photos.

Putting your house in order

What do five-year-olds read? And does it matter if they play football?

We’ve recently had cause to use the services of a joiner. He looks about 25 (and I know I am being ageist), but I was delighted to hear he has not only a wife, but two small children. I have taken to preying on people with young ones.

As usual I am hoping to get rid of – sorry, pass on – books, and a new age category is always good. Besides, children grow so fast. Yesterday’s seven-year-old is a teenager before you know what’s going on.

The thing is, when I started looking to see what I have that would suit someone who is five, I found I just wasn’t sure. First year at school? Probably. They can’t read. Or can they? So, someone reads to them. Or not? If so, what?

You see. I know nothing.

In the end I picked out mostly ‘picture books’ that seemed too mature for a toddler, and more childish than what I think I know a seven-year-old might read. This one apparently plays football. Does that mean he isn’t into books?

I’m supposed to know about these things.

After the joiner comes the decorator, to cover up what his colleague has worked on. As I’ve already mentioned on here, he does have useful children. And they have cousins, or so I’ve been told. Between them they cover a good many ages, so it’s been easier to pick out more books for them.

Before these fathers of young readers so conveniently turned up, I was planning to cart books to Offspring’s primary school. But I’d been agonising over what to choose for them as well. I can almost recall what was in the junior school library, but my mind goes blank when thinking back to what was in the infants’ library. As with the young soccer fan, surely they must be past picture books?

Or not?

Chicken House at Cornerhouse

Not every book event can be reached by 19-minute train trips from the bottom of my garden. I almost wish they could. So, full marks to Chicken House for coming ‘up north’ in the first place, and second for picking that rather excellent watering hole Cornerhouse as their venue for breakfast on Thursday morning. Good and convenient.

It was quite nice meeting authors there, too. Melvin Burgess, being one of our token Mancunians, I had not seen since our Christmas dinner, and newbie Fletcher Moss not since that coffee-less morning coffee a couple of months ago. They were the only advertised star turns, but there were more Chicken people present; a fact which had me resorting to stealing. (Sorry.)

Fletcher introduced me to Dan Smith, whose book I had not thought to bring. So I sort of helped myself to another copy of My Friend the Enemy (out in July) in order that Dan could sign it. I had to lend him my pen – which he actually returned after some further borrowing – but at least he didn’t need to practise his signature. (By the time Fletcher had warned him that I’d head straight home to write all kinds of stuff about everyone, it was too late for Dan.)

That was one wonderful breakfast! I have rarely been so well fed at an event. By the time I’d checked out the double buns with sausages on Tony Higginson’s plate (did I mention Formby’s no. 1 bookseller was there?), I noticed Melvin and raised my camera to photograph him, which caused the poor man to pause his sausage bun eating… They had a veggie version too, meaning I could join in, and it was Very Delicious! (Now that I think about it, maybe it was Fletcher who had a double helping. Or someone.)

At this point Barry Cunningham started the chatshow, so the eating had to cease. First Barry told us why children’s books are so good. We knew that already. He mentioned the peculiar fact that it wasn’t raining. Apparently you can’t use the words sunshine and Manchester in the same sentence. Then he talked to Melvin about the background to The Hit, and after that Melvin read the first chapter. (He’d done some research into the willingness of teenagers to sleep with someone who was about to die a virgin…)

Our second Mancunian was Fletcher, who talked about winning a book competition only to have to re-write the whole thing. He read the first chapter of Poison Boy, by which time I had liberated a chair to sit on, right at the back where I could do as I wanted.

The third author was Sam Hepburn, who is a girl, despite the name. Sam writes what Barry wants most; crime for and about young people. I’ve had my copy of Chasing the Dark in my tbr pile for a while, and I knew I wanted to read it even before hearing Sam read a chapter to us. She told us her children thought she’d based the really horrible aunt character on herself!

Author no. four was former bookseller Stuart Hill, who wrote lots of – unpublished – books before finally sitting down to write the one he really wanted to write; the one no one would read anyway, so he could do what he wanted. And that’s the one Barry published. Apparently his prequel Prince of the Icemark happened because readers wanted to know what went before Cry of the Icemark. And you know, I don’t exactly love zombies and werewolves, but I liked what Stuart read. Even though I was under the impression he had a witch called Cadwallader. It turned out to be the cat.

Dan Smith (about whose name I said some less than polite things, on account of it being a bit common) and David Massey were not there to read, but mingled nicely, and I helped myself to a copy of David’s book Torn.

It was good to meet some new people, and nice to see old acquaintances like children’s books expert Jake Hope (wearing very snazzy shoes). I noticed from the un-claimed badges that I could have met up with even more old friends, and I hope they are now thoroughly regretting their absence from this culinary-literary event.

Then I went back for another of those sausagey things. I don’t know what I was thinking. Not only did it make my subsequent chat with Sam a little difficult, but it was very filling. As I stood staring at the cake selection, I realised just how filling. I ate a slab of carrot cake. Large piece, since it was the only size available. (I reasoned the icing made it impossible to smuggle home in a napkin.)

I witnessed someone else wrap a blueberry muffin (ginormous variety) to take home, so went to get a napkin to do the same thing, seeing as my earlier stealing of books had gone so well. Had barely touched the napkin when Tony demanded I take a photograph of him and some of his closest author pals. So I did.

As I got closer to the muffins again, I was waylaid by the lovely Tina who had organised the whole shebang, and we had a nice long chat, seeing as it was our first meeting in person. She was also vaguely thinking of pocketing muffins.

When I finally thought I was in the clear, Waterstones new events manager Louise came up to talk, while valiantly dealing with some carrot cake. So we talked events, we talked John Green – as you do – and books in general. Barry came up and discovered Louise had moved here from Reading, which is a most suitable place for someone involved with books. (Even when you know how to pronounce it correctly.)

With Barry’s blessing I finally helped myself to the muffin, while he apologised for having said bad things about the Mancunian weather. Which was when I happened to glance at my watch, realising I had just enough time to catch my train home so I could make dinner. There was a Resident IT Consultant who needed feeding.

I – on the other hand – didn’t.