Death in the garden

I am quite a powerful witch, when all is said and done. A mere few weeks ago I was sitting in my garden, chatting to a visiting friend. I mentioned how tired I was of online book launches, and that now someone could just have a small gathering in their garden, to celebrate a new book. An hour later the invitation arrived. Alex Nye must have good ears to have heard my instructions so clearly.

Alex also had the good sense to arrange fine weather, and we had one of those rare, but warm and sunny September evenings. To, erm, celebrate her new book about Death. It’s a similar Death to the one you might have encountered in other people’s books, except here she – yes, she – is being interviewed by a journalist, over afternoon tea.

The Resident IT Consultant gave me a lift there, and we only drove the wrong way twice. He then very wisely went for a walk – instead of drinking prosecco – because that’s what Resident IT Consultants do.

Me, I said hello to Clare Cain, Alex’s publisher, said hello to a can of nicely chilled Cola (I must learn how to do that ice in a bucket thing!) and then went over to bother Sarah Broadley and Kirkland Ciccone. Thanks to social media it didn’t feel quite as long ago as two years, but it was still nice to see someone who is not of the witch clan in person. Even young master Nye came up and talked to me, when he was not taking lots of photos and chatting about drones.

The star of the ‘show’ was the Nye dog, who was literally in stitches after a recent incident, but who walked among the guests and only looked longingly at the sliced meat for about 90% of the time. Kirkie did his best to feed me, but that sausage roll had to sort of do the rounds a few times before there was a taker. Paper plates are hard to balance. Especially after such a long break in the ‘being out’ business.

Alex did a reading from her book, even the birds grow silent, but I missed most of it due to me trying to arrive not too early. She has a nice forceful way about her, so I’m certain not a single person left without a copy of the book. Except for me, who instead returned it. (I’d been sent more than one.)

We chatted about the book festival. Kirkie asked the French intern who had come along, about his childhood yoghurts, and was disappointed to learn there was no exciting French involved that he’d failed to understand. (Never ask!) The garden was – and probably still is – filled to the rafters with lovely things growing in ‘quite a few’ pots.

The house, when I passed through on the way to the Ladies’ proved to be filled with books. Very suitable. And Kirkie clearly knows his way around, making what looked like a bucketful of coffee for Clare as she womanned her bookstall.

Then the Resident IT Consultant came and took me home again. A different way.

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The Fake News launch

You already know there was a launch last night for C J Dunford and her Fake News, talking to Dr Noir, aka Jacky Collins, about what she had done and why and how.

Caroline, as she’s really called, is completely new and unknown to me, which makes her all the more interesting. She has her own teenagers, and her youngest son is also a non-reader, and she dedicated Fake News to him in the hopes that he’ll start reading. There was a little bit of adult pressure on him last night, so I’ll be contrary and hope that he can withstand this push to read.

But anyway, Caroline knows teenagers and what they are like, which as I said shows in the book. She spoke for a while with Dr Noir, and we were promised some mystery guests, which, being me, I didn’t relish at all.

They turned out to be Alex Nye and Philip Caveney, also with Fledgling Press, and so were totally welcome and it was good to see them. I should learn that they are unlikely to drag strangers in off the streets to discuss literature. Dr Noir withdrew and left the three of them to chat about how they write, and to compare notes, and to sing the praises of Fledgling.

I have to agree. Fledgling publish a bunch of varied books for all kinds of readers, all with some Scottish connection.

This was another event where the Resident IT Consultant was quite satisfied, because he’d just finished Fake News and was feeling enthusiastic. Even Daughter muttered positive comments about what she heard, so clearly it’s an interesting sounding story, whether or not one ends up reading.

Caroline is already writing a second book, about something else, but didn’t rule out returning to our Fake News team later on. Although, as she so nicely put it, she feels she left them in a good place, so they don’t absolutely need a sequel.

So, that was quite an acceptable book launch!

And we’re out

We emerged from Bookwitch Towers, a little bit like the Moomins after hibernation. After over a hundred days of only seeing the Sainsbury’s delivery driver and the odd medical person, or limiting chatting to the neighbours on a one-to-one basis, this new freedom felt strange.

And the weather was good! While nice, it’s not essential, but did mean we could ‘party’ at long last. The very kind Helen Grant volunteered to be our first this week, and she came and sat in our garden and drank tea and talked, and we were quite literary and almost intellectual for a while there.

(We’d obviously been frightfully interesting all by ourselves for months on end, but this was different.)

After a pleasant interlude midweek at the dentist’s, came Friday, and our next volunteers. It seemed only fitting that on a day when quite a few people mentioned Shakespeare for some reason or other, we should have two authors visiting.

Alex Nye and Kirkland Ciccone braved the even hotter and sunnier weather for, yes, tea and some Krispy Kremes in the garden. We were loud. (Sorry.) And we gossiped long and hard and some ears are bound to have burned a bit, somewhere. There are a lot of interesting things one can discuss when finally meeting in person. Like, does Orion wear trousers?

And I don’t think we are done. There will have to be more tea. Our first three are always welcome back, and other volunteers can apply here. Today’s got properly fried in the sunshine, but we worked out one can go all Victorian and use umbrellas. And those would work in that other kind of weather too, I suppose. The wet, Scottish kind.

Launching Allie

You could tell it has been cold in Edinburgh. For the launch of his new book The Sins of Allie Lawrence on social media, Philip Caveney has walked, or been made to walk, all over the place to be filmed saying stuff about his book. This is good. I reckon authors should be made to work hard. And Philip looks reasonably handsome in a knitted hat, so that’s not the disaster it could have been.

He started by reading from this, his 54th, or maybe 55th, book. He’s been at it for 43 years (which fact made Helen Grant say something less well thought through), so that could be why he’s not counting so well. But at least the flowers in the background were not plastic. Kirkland Ciccone wondered about that.

As you can tell, this launch was well attended by quite a few of Philip’s peers, and it felt almost as if we were meeting in real life. Except there was no cake. Apparently I was meant to do the cake. Oops.

Philip took us round past Söderberg’s and round some fancy apartment near the Meadows, and at least two theatres, plus other Edinburgh sights. It made us all wish we were there.

Once this prancing around town was over, it was question time, with lots of people asking, both from before and also during the event, as well as some recorded questions from three child readers. He likes his covers. In fact, he seemed to have some of them framed on the wall behind him.

‘The ideas will come’, he said ominously regarding where he gets his ideas from. And he does like all his children, I mean books, because if he doesn’t, then how can he expect the rest of us to like them? Good question.

There will be at least three drafts of a book, taking two to three months to begin with. Philip quite fancies being picked by Netflix, and who wouldn’t? His alter ego, Danny Weston, was originally a character in one his early books, and someone he needs for the really creepy stuff. Like his most evil character, Mr Sparks, in the book dedicated to me. Such a relief to know that.

Having autonomy when he writes  might be the best thing about being an author. In fact, if no publisher were to be interested in his books, Philip would still write them. He said something about ‘howling into the void’ but mercifully I have already forgotten what that was about. Sounds desperate. And just think, if his then 10-year-old daughter hadn’t wanted to read his totally unsuitable adult novel, there might never have been these books to entertain, or scare, younger readers.

Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. He’s still not quite Ray Bradbury (but it can’t be long now), author of his favourite book, the book that changed his life. As to why Allie comes from Killiecrankie, Philip simply needed a ridiculous name. But not even this passed without argument (from a man closer to Killiecrankie than some of us).

That’s book launches for you. All sorts of people attend them.

Stay at Home!

It’s not only sourdough bread that has happened over the last three months. Many authors have come up with online material to offer readers. In fact, there’s been such a glut that I’ve not been able to keep up. I just know there is much to find.

Small Scottish publisher Cranachan Publishing has a free ebook offering a wide variety of things to read. Their ‘Stay at Home! Poems and Prose for Children in Lockdown is a a free, illustrated anthology of poems and stories for children aged 8-12, comprising specially written lockdown-themed contributions by 40 writers based in Scotland.’

Try it! There are household names, and there are names you might not have heard of. Yet. But this is a nice collection, and what’s almost nicer still, is how people have pulled together to make it happen.

Launching When We Get To the Island

When he discovered he was wanted to drive me to Alex Nye’s book launch last night, the Resident IT Consultant spent the afternoon reading her book, When We Get To the Island. And as he said, it’s very Thirty-Nine Steps and a bit James Bond and quite exciting.

It was a successful evening. The librarians kept carrying in more chairs, and then some more, and offering tea because it was such a wet and stormy night, as well as the wine and crisps. They have a nice library in Dunblane. And enough chairs, eventually…

Alex started by telling us a bit about the background to the book, the refugees being smuggled into the country, and the state of being a ‘looked after’ child in foster care. She read an excerpt from the last bit of the train journey, only partially insulting the Duke of Sutherland. (Not much at all, really.)

Talking about the petrochemical industry near ‘Grangefield’ her dog worriedly joined in. I had thought the ‘carrot topping’ business in the story somewhat farfetched, but it seems Alex has experience of this herself, including the dangers of trying to cut semi-frozen carrots with a sharp knife.

She had had some difficulty seeing a happy ending to a book about trafficking and fostering, which both the Resident IT Consultant and the Nye dog loudly agreed with. Here Alex’s publisher Clare pointed out that it’s an exciting adventure book, and the dog on my right reckoned she was right. (She is.)

Before we were allowed to mingle again Alex read another short piece about her characters in a flooded tunnel and then she stopped right there, leaving a library full of people on a cliffhanger! They’d need to buy the book after that.

Clare Cain was selling books in a corner, but rejected the dollar bills offered by Alex’s sister who was visiting. It’s hard to remember what money goes where…

And then we gossiped a bit with Kirkland Ciccone before braving the storm to go home again.

When We Get to the Island

This new children’s story by Alex Nye, When We Get to the Island, wasn’t what I had been expecting. It’s the story about Hani who’s an illegal refugee in Scotland, and Mia, who’s a teenager in care, also in Scotland. They run away, separately, but are soon thrown together, and continue running away, helping each other.

Hani wants to find his sister Reena who has been removed from the place they have been forced to live and work like slaves. Mia just wants to not have to live with her foster parents or go to the school where she is bullied.

So I rather thought we’d follow a hard and slow search for where Reena might have gone, coupled with the idyllic island Mia wants to return to, maybe with success at the end. Maybe not.

Instead this is a fast-paced tale of two young teens who really run away, but also towards the place Hani thinks Reena has been taken to. And in place of a difficult search, we have a Thirty-Nine Steps kind of chase all over Scotland, with Hani’s enemies in hot pursuit.

It’s probably not as realistic as it might have been, but it’s a page-turner where you keep wanting to know what will come next. I couldn’t see how this could end up well, even if Reena and the island were to be found. After all, refugees without papers are never in a good position, and a child in care will not suddenly grow loving relatives to look after them instead.

The 2019 Yay! YA+

It was time for another instalment of Kirkland Ciccone’s vendetta against the Edinburgh Book Festival yesterday.

Only joking. (But if you at first don’t get invited, start your own book festival.) This was the last time at the old Cumbernauld theatre, with great plans for what it’ll be like in the new one. Bistro. With chips. Or so I gather.

After introducing all his authors, Alex Nye, L J MacWhirter, Moira McPartlin, Philip Caveney/Danny Weston, Paul Murdoch and Ross Sayers, Kirkie sent the others off to their respective bars and dressing rooms, while he and Alex stayed in the main theatre for their longer performances.

Considering that many of the school children who came, are less used to reading and book festivals, it was good to hear Kirkie talk about his own humble background. We got the lot; the exploding council house, his mother’s ‘apple juice’ and his older brother, Scotland’s worst armed robber. Yes, he mentioned the lamp post incident, Kev. And going to collect the benefits Kirkie discovered the library in Cumbernauld and it changed his life, starting with Meg&Mog.

The only reason Roald Dahl didn’t adopt him, despite his repeated entreaties, was that Dahl was already dead. After Dahl and Matilda we quickly covered Nancy Drew, Sweet Valley High, Point Horror, Jane Austen, Agatha Christie, Robert Cormier, Harry Potter and Twilight and Stephen King. All these were somehow responsible for Kirkland’s own books that have since been released into the wild.

Alex Nye’s turn next, where she took us back to the morning of the roof of Cumbernauld Castle falling down and how Mary Queen of Scots helped tidy up afterwards. Then we were in the snow on Sheriffmuir, in the ghostly tales of Chill and Shiver, before moving on to Glen Coe and Darker Ends.

She bemoaned the fact that not enough Scottish history is taught in Scottish schools, and that it’s more British history. Mentioning the new film about Mary she said it was good, but featured a fake meeting between Mary and Elizabeth I and some laundry. This year Alex has two new books out, one about Mary Shelley and another about children from Syria.

When Kirkie turned up again to tell me that lunch was ready, I ordered him to assist Alex in coming to an end, so that the entire lunch break wasn’t taken up with questions from the audience.

Over lunch I was struck by the fact that out of the eight of us sitting round the table, three had a past in Stockport. Bit of a coincidence. Four if Danny Weston counts as a person… We ate fruit, and discussed the latest phenomenon of how to eat a pineapple. And when the children came with books to sign, the authors were surprisingly badly equipped with pens!

Photos and selfies were taken and books got bought, before everyone was herded back to their bars and dressing rooms for the afternoon. Having sworn never to return to the nether regions of the theatre, I’m afraid I missed Paul Murdoch and Ross Sayers, which was a double shame as they were the ones new to me.

I began in the bar where L J MacWhirter had music and candles and string lights to help her talk about her book featuring dreams back in the 1500s. She talked about the characters in the novel that took her 15 years to write. L J read to us, until the bell went and it was time to up and change to another author in another bar.

I went to hear Moira in ‘the Fireplace’ where she had bluetacked photos of her inspirations for her characters; Nicole Kidman and Sheila Hancock among them. Moira had purple badges with Celtic knots to hand out, and she told us how she got started writing, being bored when travelling on business. Then she was a runner up in a story competition, where Gillian Philip was a judge, and she told her this was material for a full novel. So she wrote a book.

Moira read a piece from the first book in her trilogy, and it sounded pretty good, I have to say. With time for just one question, it was lucky it was an excellent one, about technology in her future. Good children, who paid attention.

Moving to the next bar where Philip/Danny was, I stayed for two talks, seeing as he alternated between his two personalities, and I didn’t want to miss one of them. Danny was born out of necessity, when Philip wanted to go darker in his writing, and the publisher wished to avoid upsetting his fans. And is there anything scarier than a ventriloquist’s dummy? Hence Mr Sparks, which he read in a variety of accents.

By the time Danny became Philip again, he complained his voice was going, but ‘I don’t know where.’ He read from The Slithers, and it was no less disgusting than when I read the book. He reckons that writing fiction is ‘one time in your life you have autonomy.’ There were good questions, and Philip also had a great technique for dealing with the not so good ones, not to mention a way to force unwilling children to come up with questions. This was clearly not his first time out.

At this point I discovered the bookshop was closed, which was a slight disappointment. I went back into the main theatre and listened to the end of Alex’s talk again, before all the authors congregated down ‘in the pit’ to answer the odd question – very odd, in fact – from Kirkie and the children. Someone wanted to know why they were all so ‘dark.’ It seems it’s what makes writing interesting, so I suspect the time for happily ever after is long gone.

The seven/eight signed books and exercise books and bits of paper, and were photographed with ever bolder fans. I saw at least one boy clutching three books, and it gladdened my heart. I will now imagine him sitting at home reading.

Carrot topping was discussed at least twice, and I for one am glad Alex still has all her fingers. And then L J went and mentioned Macbeth. In a theatre.

To be on the safe side, Moira drove L J and Philip/Danny to their train and then she gave me a lift home. Let’s hope for the best.

…and the Christmas tagliatelle

The Fledgling Girls booked themselves in for Christmas lunch at Corrieri’s yesterday, and they allowed me to tag along, in all my un-Fledglingness.

It was good. Corrieri’s used to be somewhere the Resident IT Consultant’s relatives gathered for Christmas Eve pizzas in the semi-olden days, so it has Christmassy connotations for me. And what could be more seasonal than mushrooms and tagliatelle? Fish and chips. Pizza. It was all good.

We exchanged gifts and cards.

We exchanged opinions on a lot of things, from all that stuff in the news, to literary agents, authors having large incomes (hah), second husbands, incidents with cars, art, lemon desserts, having nice offspring, 1980s music, getting on with one’s parents. You know, perfectly normal conversation.

At least I think it was…

We might have stayed longer than the restaurant expected us to, but it’s hard to stop chatting mid-gossip. If there is a next time, I’ll have Moira’s dessert.

More handsome sitting down

Those were Michael Morpurgo’s words, but we would have loved him whatever he did. He decided he was most comfortable sitting down. His [event]chair, Alex Nye, grew so comfortable that she re-titled Michael’s book which he’d come to talk about, making it In the Mouth of the Lion, until Michael mildly said ‘I thought it was the Wolf..?’

You don’t get much past Michael Morpurgo. He must be a dream to ‘chair’ because he knows quite well what he’s going to be doing and he will go ahead and do it, no matter what. Never mind that he ‘mocked’ his illustrator for his Frenchness; you could tell there was much respect between the two of them, and he told us we must buy Barroux’s In the Line of Fire.

He began by reading to us, sitting down and being handsome, the first two chapters from In the Mouth of the Wolf. ‘They’re quite short. Don’t worry, it won’t be too boring.’ It wasn’t. And even those early chapters were enough to make us want to cry.

While Michael read, Barroux illustrated, showing us the views from [Michael’s uncle] Francis’s bedroom windows, saying he’s not a good illustrator. He prefers a bad drawing with a lot of emotion in it. Barroux also showed us his three different cover ideas for the book, explaining that it’s the publisher’s choice; not his.

When it was time for questions, the first was about Kensuke’s Kingdom. Michael was a little startled by this, but gave a long, considered answer, and then asked for the remaining questions to be about his new book. Because what authors need is to sell books, so they can have new socks, and J K Rowling has many many cupboards full of socks.

Barroux ‘hates fairies and unicorns’ because he can’t draw them, and he’s only recently learned to do dolphins. As Michael answered a question on freedom for his characters – who, of course, are not characters, but were real people – Barroux stealthily began to draw a dolphin. When discovered in the act, he was told that the whole entente cordiale was just then in danger.

Michael pointed out to his audience that in WWII, and for centuries before that, Britain was never occupied, while Europe was. In fact, not since William the Conqueror a thousand years ago… And we know where he came from.

Asked about his passion for books, Michael said he’s more passionate about the reading of books. You should catch fire when reading, to reach those who never read. Currently he is working on several things; translating Le Petit Prince, putting words to The Snowman, and writing a new version of Gulliver’s Travels with Michael Foreman illustrating. He’s portraying Gulliver as a recent refugee, washing up somewhere new.

By then we’d overrun by at least five minutes, but Michael said he was going to sing for Barroux. There is a film being made of Waiting for Anya, and in it there is a song Michael likes very much. He sings it in the bath.

And ignoring his suggestion that we think of him in the bath – or not – or that he pretended the theatre’s doors would have to be locked to prevent us escaping, Michael stood up, still handsome, and he sang to us, and to Barroux.

It was a beautiful ending to a beautiful event, and to our book festival.