Life Writing with my friend Christine Partington
So many events in the South West I was spoilt for choice. But I chose Sherborne, Yeovil and Bristol. All very inspiring in their different ways. At Sherborne I had a chance to discuss the outline of my new novel with festival ‘Writer in Residence’ Diana Cambridge. Talking it through has really fired me up to get down to writing it. Attending Sophie King’s Life Writing workshop produced more ideas to develop the plot as well as providing a fascinating afternoon listening to the other participants.
Author chat with Yvonne Payne
In Bristol I went to the Book Bazaar and Seminars. Learnt loads from Lucienne Boyce’s informative talk on researching historical settings, was inspired by Ira Rainey’s book ‘From Fat man to Green Man’ and enjoyed a lovely chat over hot chocolate with author Yvonne Payne, about the importance of place in writing. Something which is very obvious in her novel ‘Kritsotopoula’ set in the Greek village where she lives. We also talked about book launches. Very useful as mine for Revenge Ritual is all fixed for the 17th of December. More about this later.
In Yeovil, the talks ranged from the full on battle charge of Andy McNab to a quieter but informative chat from Tim Weaver on the latest novel in his ‘David Riker’ series ‘What Remains’. It was a very helpful discussion on writing serial characters. I shall remember Tim’s comment ‘What happens in the first book of the series will have a long term effect in future books’ but also ‘that the character needs to abide by the rules of the world of the series that the author creates, or readers will be disappointed.’ So far I’m half way through ‘What Remains’ and I can see what he means already. I’ll be reviewing Tim’s book in my next blog post.
C J Browne 