One of the benefits of writing a book, and better still, of getting published, is the way it opens doors to lots of other writerly activities, such as giving talks, running workshops, and attending Literary Festivals as a performer, as well as being a member of the audience. Another enjoyable aspect of being a writer (with or without being published) is making friends with other writers.

Last Thursday I was able to combine a visit to my writing friend, Crysse Morrison, with an opportunity to be one of eight castaways in an event listed in the Frome Festival Programme as Desert Island Reads. Crysse herself had to step in at the last minute to take the place of a performer who was unable to attend. You can read more about the event on her blog.
I’d left my own camera in her house so thanks are due to Crysse’s camera and to Wendy, one of the festival organisers, who took this picture, which features, from left to right:
Me, Kevan Manwaring,Keely Beresford,
Sue Boyle,
Crysse, David Johnson, Philip de Glanville and Adrian Tinniswood
Desert Island Reads was described as “eight local celebrities share a favourite literary extract and tell us why they chose it.” I felt a bit of a fraud as I was neither “local”, not a “celebrity” but no one seemed to notice. When Crysse had first invited me to take part, I’d thought about including some real-life letters, because of the role that real-life letters had played in my novel Paper Lanterns, but it was proving quite difficult to find something that not only had inspired me in the past, but still lived up to the memories of it.

After searching my bookshelves I found an edition of the letters and poems of John Keats and was relieved to find that the he could still work his magic on me. I’ll quote some of the extracts that I read in a future post. Take a look at the on-line programme for the ten-day Festival and you’ll be amazed by the wide variety of all the events.

Crysse was heavily involved in the organisation of several events, but she’d booked tickets for us both so that she could relax with me for the evening at ‘Cabaret Sans Frontiers’, a totally surreal and highly entertaining event –

and here I quote from her own blog: “the eccentric energy of Cabaret sans Frontieres, this year offering its macabre and madcap medley from a ship bound for ‘the edge of the edge of possibilities, and beyond.’ “

Here are a few more photos of the music

and strange exhibits that we were encouraged to inspect during the interval, such as this ’spider’ appearing to rest on the top of a cabinet, to whom I offered a sip of my white wine spritzer.

The next morning, before I set off for Sussex to visit my mother for the weekend, Crysse insisted on taking me to an amazing exhibition featuring the intricate, imaginative, and brilliantly bizarre constructions and sketches of Ralph Steadman.

If you’re anywhere near Frome, make sure you take a look.

There were no signs anywhere asking people not to take photos of the exhibits, so I’m hoping that no one will object to these.

On my return from Sussex
I was greeted by the sight of multiple copies of The Birmingham Sunday Mercury that Gardening Husband had bought for me to use as marketing material for my novel, Paper Lanterns.

I’d been told that it would be published today, and I was delighted with the double page spread, giving the story of the cache of real life letters that inspired the middle section of the book.

Here’s a photo of the man on the receiving end of the love letters from two different women,

and here’s the young Chinese girl, with a small selection of the letters behind her. It’s fascinating stuff, and anyone who’s read the book is likely to enjoy seeing the originals of the letters that I have adapted for the novel.

It’s been a good week for yet more book-related activities after the excitement at Winchester Writers Conference last weekend:

1)SOMETHING NICE, but not unexpected: I received an email from the Lamma-zine reviewer of Paper Lanterns, John Cairns, with a link to his own e-zine, Cairns Media. He’d previously asked if he could quote an excerpt from my novel there, and here it is, complete with some of his own pictures to illustrate the scene from Paper Lanterns when Ann arrives at the ferry pier on Lamma island.

If you’ve read it already, you might like to see the photos, and if you haven’t, you’ll get a flavour of the book and the accuracy of my descriptions when writing the novel.

2) SOMETHING NICE AND TOTALLY UNEXPECTED: I solved the mystery of how Tammy from Tennessee had come across a brief description of my novel, Paper Lanterns. You might not find anything extraordinary about this until you think of the thousands of novels published each year, many with the weight of a huge marketing machine behind them, and then consider the fact that Novel Press is a frail new-born, with Paper Lanterns as its only product so far, and nothing behind it at all except my efforts, and the good wishes of my small group of fellow writers.

The only way I could think of that might have led Tammy to my book, would have been the lovely review from the excellent Rhaposdy in Books, with its large following of readers, most of whom are also Americans.But no,Tammy had arrived there through sheer happenstance (as I’ll explain in a later post). Until this week, I was too involved in discussing the most convenient way of getting the ten copies safely to her home in Tennessee, and it was only when I heard that the package had arrived,(two days after being picked up by the carriers, DHL) and the copies distributed to the other members of her group, that I thought of asking her how she’d come across it in the first place.

3) SOMETHING NICE that had been planned a couple of months ago: an ‘author’s talk’ that I gave on Thursday morning at Erdington library. Last month I was talking to a writing group there. This time, it was a reading group. One member who had read and enjoyed Paper Lanterns, commented on her perception of the way that novels these days are presented to the reading public. She felt that the we, the readers are being manipulated by the needs of the publishing world to produce sure best-sellers, and that many of the books that are promoted in bookshops have been written with an eye on an imaginary camera, as if they were packaging their stories in a way that would easily convert to film scripts.

I was glad to hear her views, as they seem to accord to those of Jonathan Davidson of Writing West Midlands in his article ‘New Ways of Publishing’ in which he expresses the hope that “poor writing won’t be quite so often foisted upon us in an attempt to get a return on investment or to distort our reading tastes for purely commercial gain.”

And now for the fifth and final question in my Virtual Treasure Hunt. Congratulations to everyone who’s already emailed me the correct answers to the first four questions (It’s still not too late to find the answers – you can start here, and then find the links back to the earlier questions)

QUESTION 5
(a)What is the fourth statement about Writing a Book that I won’t immediately want to contradict?
AND,(HINT) if you’ve found the right page, you’ll also be able to tell me the answer to this, linked, question
(b)Which author re-wrote one of his novels 30 years after its publication?

The first five people to ‘contact me’ with the correct five answers will win a copy of either The Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society, or my latest novel, Paper Lanterns:

GOOD LUCK!

Before I launch into my brief visit to the Winchester Writers Conference last weekend,

I have to tell you about my excitement when I opened my email just now, to find that Google Alert had spotted an enthusiastic review of my first published novel, The Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society.
As you can see here it’s the responses of ‘my’ readers that helps to keep me going when the going gets tough.

Any opportunity for mixing with other writers gives me a boost, whether I’m leading a workshop for aspiring writers, or joining in as a participant myself, or listening to talks and readings from other authors, I always find some new understanding to add to my store of knowledge and skills. One of the most stimulating of these events in the UK has to be the annual Winchester Writers Festival that takes place at the end of June.

I’d heard about it several years earlier, and was thinking of signing up for the 2005 Conference, when I received that phone call from Transita, saying that they wanted to publish my novel. I’d reached my goal of publication, and foolishly imagined that I’d learned everything I needed about writing a book and getting it published. How could I have foreseen the sad demise of Transita, and my return to square one in a search for a publisher for my next novel, Paper Lanterns? I won’t go into details now, but you can read about some of the resulting difficulties here.

Eventually, I realised that although I’d learned a huge amount about marketing and the difficulties of getting published, I still had more to learn, so I signed up for the 2008 Winchester Writers Conference. That turned out to be an extremely useful decision. No, I didn’t find an agent or publisher to take me on, though, as usual, there were plenty of them milling around the University campus, giving pre-booked one-to-one advice, or delivering lectures. However, I did learn more about how to bring what I’d thought was a finished product to a properly publishable state. (I’ll write more about this in future posts).

When I’d implemented all the necessary chopping and changing, I sent it out again. And again. And again…until I came to the dead-end of every possible path. I knew that Paper Lanterns would be appreciated by many of my previous readers, and many new ones too, and if it was ever going to appear in print, I would have to do it myself. And here’s how I did it.

I was so delighted with the Novel Press’s first product that I sent a copy to Barbara Large, MBE, the amazingly energetic, enthusiastic, supportive and perceptive Director of the conference, and she very kindly invited me to attend the plenary address on the Saturday morning, and say a few words about Novel Press and Paper Lanterns.

If I hadn’t already committed myself to a family event at my mother’s house in Sussex, I’d have signed up for the whole weekend.

It was lovely to be back there, even for a short while, meeting up with writing friends, Adrienne Dines, and Crysse Morrison, as well as talking to strangers. (Though when a writer gets talking to other writers at such an event, they don’t remain strangers for more than a minute or two).

The plenary address was delivered by the indomitable Sir Terry Pratchett – what a fantastic(al) story he tells about his own experience of getting published. No one would imagine in their wildest dreams (that is, no one who knows anything of the current state of publishing) of being taken on so casually by agent with their first book, and some time later receiving a publisher’s cheque and a commission for a second book. ‘Oh, so that’s how it happens,’ thought the young Terry P, ‘You send off your manuscript, and back comes a cheque.’ He spent it on a greenhouse!’

Among the numerous amusing anecdotes and fascinating insights into his own writing practice, was what he described as ‘The valley of clouds’. Once he’d unravelled the analogy, I was delighted to find that his approach to plotting a novel accords with mine. As he explained, he can see the distant peak across the valley, and knows where/what he’s heading for, but the details of how the story will unfold is shrouded in the mist. He discovers these as he writes.

But there the similarity with this hugely talented and successful author ends. According to Wikipedia, as of December 2007 he had sold more than 55 million books worldwide, while I was happy with my sales of (nearly) 3,000 copies of the Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society.

ENTRANTS IN MY VIRTUAL TREASURE HUNT, WILL FIND THE FIFTH AND FINAL QUESTION IN MY NEXT POST.

Is it ever acceptable to read other people’s personal letters? ( This isn’t Question Three in my Virtual Treasure Hunt, you’ll find that further down the page.) I’ll get back to those letters in a minute or two.

Meanwhile, I want to mention that more correct answers to my Virtual Treasure Hunt are still arriving in my in-box, and it’s not too late to join in. For those of you who haven’t yet entered the TREASURE HUNT, you’ll find Question Two here

You’ll find the THIRD QUESTION below, and I’ll be posting a few more over the next couple of weeks. The first five people to contact me with all the correct answers will receive a free copy of either Paper Lanterns or The Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society.

It’s exactly a year since I posted this picture of a Greek Island – If you didn’t read that post, you’d probably wonder what possible connection there could be between a course on Novel Writing in that idyllic setting and the terrible Foot and Mouth outbreak of 2001. (There’s more than one HINT in this paragraph that will lead you to the answer to this question – via a link to another post)

QUESTION THREE:
What was the last line of the poem which won me a cheque for £100?

As for other people’s letters, I wouldn’t dream of reading something personal that wasn’t meant for me. However, when the letters were written nearly one hundred years ago, it’s a different matter. Though, as I explained in an earlier post, it is still a very strange and moving experience.

Here is one that was written in 1916 by a young Chinese woman. You’ll need to read Paper Lanterns to see how I’ve woven this into the novel, which is set mainly in Hong Kong.

“Dear Sir

Shing Mui”

I have to admit that I experienced a twinge of annoyance and a dollop of disappointment last Saturday morning at the Spring Thing Literature event, organised by the Birmingham Book Festival. But before I tell you why I felt like that, I have to make it clear that those feelings were quickly replaced by enjoyment and I was grateful that the organisers had kept some last-minute information close to their chest.

I’d been looking forward to hearing Helen Dunmore giving a talk about her latest novel and prize-winning poetry, and it wasn’t until I’d seated myself in the large auditorium of the Birmingham Conservatoire that I found out that she was unable to attend, and two other novelists would be taking her place. I had a lot on my plate that weekend (a long drive down to South Wales that evening, followed by an even longer drive to East Sussex the next day) and if I’d been informed beforehand, I’d have chosen to miss that first session – so I’m now grateful to the organisers, because I’d have missed hearing Judith Allnatt (The Poet’s Wife) and Clare Clark Savage Lands) in Conversation with each other, expertly led by Jonathan Davidson of Writing West Midlands .

It was fascinating to hear both authors explain what had inspired them to write their historical novels and compare the particular logistical problems they encountered and how they resolved them. They make a very good combination for a session like this.

When they were talking about their research methods, I particularly enjoyed Judith’s description of the process of accumulating information almost randomly, following whatever paths presented themselves, immersing herself in her chosen period almost randomly until she ‘knew’ it so thoroughly she didn’t need to think about it – it had become a part of her. The analogy of growing a crystal in her school lab was something I understood at the time, but couldn’t explain it clearly now!

The next session was also excellent: a Panel Discussion, again chaired by Jonathan, with three more novelists, Aifric Campbell ,(The Loss Adjustor) Samantha Harvey (The Wilderness), and Amanda Smyth (Black Rock).

The only difficulty for me was to resist the temptation of buying all three of those novels to add to my To-be-Read mountain.

Stuart Maconie’s books sounded amusing informative and I felt that his latest, Adventures on the High Teas, (wandering through Middle England) would make an ideal present but at that time my mind couldn’t come up with the exact person to give it to.

The day itself was a satisfying feast, with just enough down-time between each of the five sessions and plenty of opportunity to chat to other readers and writers over coffee and lunch. I was sorry that I had to leave early, missing Carol-Ann Duffy’s session at the end, and only allowing myself a brief taste of Jo Bell
and another last-minute stand-in, Nick Walter, stepping in to the gap left by Jenn Ashworth. (That was another disappointment, as I’d been looking forward to Jo and Jenn’s ‘Too Much Information’ . Maybe I’ll be able to catch that show somewhere else on its journey.

Oh! and I mustn’t forget to do my share of eavesdropping on July 1st!

No, I haven’t really got the recipe, but right now there are three subjects in my head that in a strange way seem to link up.
1: Getting published.
2: A novel for young adults called Wasted
3: An inspiring poetry Workshop
If you’ve visited this blog before, you’ll know that it’s mainly about my writing life as a poet and novelist, and that this can be split into two stages: before and after publication. The ‘before’ part is a good deal longer – I‘m an expert in the art of dealing with rejection: : it took me twenty years from completing my first novel to finding a publisher for my fourth.

You can find out here about Novel oneand Novel two. I nearly made it with Novel three, when I won a competition to receive a free read from The Literary Consultancy. Several amendments later, the novel was recommended as ‘deserving to be published’ . That was where the luck ran out: although I now had the backing of T.L.C., the agents on their list of contacts turned it down. They loved it, but not enough to take me on.

After at least forty more rejections, Novel Four was recommended for a free read from… The Literacy Consultancy! This didn’t feel like good luck to me. I’d been editing this novel, The Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society, for over a year, and I knew that it had reached its final form. I wasn’t going to attempt yet another re-write.

I sent it anyway. Was that luck, or chance or sheer doggedness? All I know is that if I hadn’t grasped that opportunity, I wouldn’t have heard of “the new publisher, Transita about to bring out its first novel in a few months’ time”, and I wouldn’t have become the published author of The Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society in October 2005. You’ll find a mention about the demise of Transita here ,and there’ll soon be more about my second way of being published.

2: A novel for young adults called Wasted by Nicola Morgan which I finished last night, made me think about the role of luck or chance in our lives, and for me, specifically, the chance that led to publication at last. Nicola has an inspiring blog, ‘Help I need a Publisher’ and has set up another for her new novel, Wasted: which, in spite of my reluctance to buy yet another novel for my t.b.a. pile, I bought.

Although when I taught English in secondary schools, I used to enjoy reading fiction for teenagers, I haven’t done so since my own children were in their teens. I’m not going to say much about Wasted here – apart from saying ‘BUY IT!’ and quoting from an email I sent her after I’d read the first six chapters: “ I love the way you kind of dance through the words on the page with such energy and sensitivity. You’re ridiculously, arrogantly original and you’re making me want to write for teenagers. (not that I could)”

Last night I couldn’t sleep until I’d finished Wasted. This morning I visited the Wasted blog and came across this review.. It expresses my thoughts and feelings exactly.On another blog, where Nicola was responding to questions about Wasted, I find her voicing my own sentiments:
“As Jack says in Wasted, “Luck is just what we call it.” I think we very largely make our own luck. Terrible things happen to people through no fault of their own, and sometimes good things happen to those who don’t deserve it, but I believe that there are lots of ways of maximising our chances in all aspects of life. With trying to be published, there are right things to do and wrong things. The more right things you do, the more likely you are to be “lucky”…”

3: Yesterday afternoon I was at an inspiring poetry Workshop in the beautiful Shakespeare Memorial Room in Birmingham, led by Mario Petrucci and organised by Jaqui Rowe of Poetry Bites. I came away feeling grounded again, and with a few notes that might become a poem. I’ve been reminded of what I need to do and, more importantly, not do. I’ll write more about this soon, but meanwhile I shall follow Mario’s advice and do - what might look like to anyone who might see me – nothing!

It started on Monday morning with a talk to a group at Northfield library – what a treat to start the week like that!. Quite apart from my personal use of libraries, especially for their unabridged audio books on CDs, which allow me to catch up on ‘reading ‘ novels, I love visiting the different libraries around Birmingham. After The Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Societywas published, I was invited to talk to reading groups and other interested people in libraries all around the city, but for some reason that I can’t now remember, a planned visit to Northfield library didn’t happen, so I was delighted to be invited there by Lesley.

It’s a bit of a Tardis: once you step inside, there seem to be all sorts of bright open spaces on different levels. There were lots of people already seated in the large meeting room upstairs, and when I found that none of them had yet read my first novel, I realised that I’d need to make time for Agnes Borrowdale, the 75 year old heroine, before I moved on to talk about my new novel, Paper Lanterns.

Because part of that novel was inspired by some real-life letters, I usually start by reading one from the married English woman in 1920, and then one from the young Chinese girl. I think in future I’ll have to suggest that people bring some tissues with them as I’m sure there were hints of tears on some faces. You’ll see why, when you read that letter in one of my next posts, (or in the book itself!)

I didn’t really know what to expect from the event on Thursday. I’d been emailed by Tim, the organiser of Three Act Structure, saying: “We are hosting a celebration of Birmingham’s Literature at Birmingham City University School of Art, Margaret Street, Birmingham on Thursday 13th May 2010.”

I was familiar with the building, a beautiful Victorian structure with a stunning interior featuring oak panelled walls and stained glass windows but the event itself was something of a mystery for me – “The exhibition will follow a Three Act Structure with a beginning, middle and end. The focus being on the past, present and future of Birmingham’s Literature and the New Birmingham Library.”
Would it be mainly about creative writing or a celebration of an as yet un-built library?

Whatever! I always sit up and take notice when there’s anything that looks like an opportunity for networking with other writers and I was especially pleased with this next sentence as it shows that I must be on somebody’s list: “As a local author we would be delighted if you could attend to join fellow and aspiring writers for a day of mutual performance, critique and appreciation.”

“Try anything once“, is one of my mottoes, and ‘go with the flow’ is another. It always pays off in one way or another, and Thursday was no exception: lively poetry performances from a previous Birmingham Poet Laureate, Charlie Jordan, the current one, Adrian Johnson, and Matt Nunn, well known Birmingham Poet, and co-founder of Nine Arches Press.

Since this event was all about Birmingham I decided to give a brief talk about the Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society which is set mainly in the Midlands. I’ve really enjoyed dipping in to that book again - all those characters are still very real in my head so it was nice to be able to give some of them an airing.

I’d have liked to stay for Suzanne Wright’swriting workshop, but this was my first opportunity to nip across to the Ikon Gallery, the scene of my wonderful launch of Paper Lanterns a couple of weeks ago. The Ikon Bookshop (mainly for Art books) is one of the very few Independent Bookshops in Birmingham now, and I’d promised, Eva, the manager, that I’d pop in and sign the copies of both my novels that are now on sale there.

I was back in time for the Third Act, and had a chance to give another short talk and reading to a different audience - Up till then, I’d not really taken much notice of the fact that the construction of the new Central Library has started. If I hadn’t taken part in Thursday’s event, with its inspiring presentation about the new library, I wouldn’t be feeling as excited as I am now about this project – it looks as though it really will be a fantastic facility for us all.

It’s a whole week since my book launch and I still smile with delight when I go over the events of that evening, so I’m about to indulge myself shamelessly by giving a few more details of my conversation with Clarissa about Paper Lanterns, and how my writing career has been linked to our friendship as you can also see in my profile, published last week in the Birmingham Post, and now available to read on-line

As I said last week, we’d been treated royally by the Ikon Cafe staff, and you can read here about Clarissa’s comments on the food.

Friendships forged in childhood, especially those based on shared incarceration at boarding school, can last for a lifetime, and Clarissa felt that the best way of explaining how we’d met was to read a short extract from her autobiography, Spilling The Beans.

Our lives have taken very different paths through adulthood. It’s no secret that Clarissa is a recovering alcoholic, and when her drinking was getting more and more out of hand, I was so worried about her that I wrote a short story based on this.

I entered it for a competition run by BRMB and the Birmingham Readers & Writers Festival in 1985(the forerunner of the Birmingham Book festival) and I still have the clipping from the (then) Sutton Coldfield Times with the account of my prize winning story.

That was my first ever success with my writing, and in 2005, Clarissa was there to introduce me at the Birmingham Book Festival’s launch of my first novel,The Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society.

Neither of us could have predicted this wonderful event and the changes in both of our lives 20 years later – Clarissa was no longer drinking and had forged an amazing new career for herself in television, and I was a published novelist at last.

We talked about other events in my writing career, and the ups and downs of my attempts to get published, and then I explained the ideas, inspirations and themes that produced Paper Lanterns. This included the story of how I discovered the original letters from 1920

First I read a long letter from the married English woman, and then the one from the young Chinese woman written 4 years before that to the same man. (I’ll post that one soon, but meanwhile, here’s an extract from the English woman. As I explained during the launch last Tuesday, I brought the dates forward to 1930, and changed the setting from Canton to Hong Kong, as this is a place I know well. In my novel, I’ve kept as closely as I could to the original letters, and have invented a series of journal entries, involving a totally fictional story line for a key section of Paper Lanterns.

Thursday
Ah, Mr McFarlane, you are a disturber! What do you mean by upsetting the equilibrium of two highly respectable (!) ladies in their heretofore blissful states of married and single blessedness? And two at once, mind you! And you so young and all. The poor young idlers that we endeavour to teach to shoot must certainly not have got their money’s worth this morning and now at our first opportunity (recess) we two rush together to weep on each other’s shoulders for what we haven’t got and will never get. It’s a great bond, this being crazy about the same person. I only hope I’ll be able to preserve enough of a sense of decency from the wreck to give her the chance I wish I could take myself.

After these letters I read more extracts from the novel itself, and then went on to explain about the founding of Novel Press. I was delighted with the comments of Jonathan Davidson on the Writing West Midlands blog, where he suggests in his article “New Ways of Publishing” that:

“the means of production is moving away from being held in the hands of one conglomorate… Good writing will surface for us all to enjoy: poor writing won’t be quite so often foisted upon us in an attempt to get a return on investment or to distort our reading tastes for purely commercial gain.”

What a week this has been for me and for my latest ‘babies’: Paper Lanterns, and my publishing venture, Novel Press. On top of all this, I nearly jumped out of my skin this morning when I was leafing through today’s Birmingham Post. I was scanning for an article and a photo that I’d been informed would appear last week.

It didn’t.

Although I don’t tend to expect more than my share of luck to land on my doorstep, I have to admit that I was rather disappointed, especially as the photographer had come to take my photo the Tuesday before. ‘Oh well! Never mind,’ I thought. ‘It’s a shame, but they’ve obviously got better things to print.’

However, I never let myself be put off by low expectations , so before I went to work I stopped at the useful shop at the top of the hill. I slowly turned the pages, thinking, ‘Not likely to be in this week with all this election stuff jostling for space.’

It wasn’t in Books, Films, History, Outdoors, Motoring, or Travel. Business Briefing? Not likely! Then, over the page, under the heading, Business Profile there was my face occupying the entire page! And on the facing page, another photo and a whole long article about ME!! AUTHOR AND PUBLISHER CHRISTINE COLEMAN

But I’m running ahead of myself. This amazing double-page spread happened today, and I haven’t yet said anything about Tuesday evening at the Ikon Gallery. What a fabulous venue for my launch! This was all thanks to Sara Beadle and staff at the Birmingham Book Festival who organised the whole event, liaising with the staff at the Ikon Gallery.

They were all keen to help promote me as a local author and publisher, together with my childhood friend, Clarissa Dickson Wright who has loyally supported me in my writing endeavours (more of this in my next post)

When we arrived, Clarissa and I posed for photographs, in the Ikon Cafe and then we and my husband were treated to an excellent meal of tapas and other mouth-watering dishes. Clarissa is well known for her interest in good food, and was genuinely enthusiastic in her praise of our meal.

We were then taken up in a glass lift . Here’s the description from their website
“The dramatic second floor galleries offer 228.2m² of space and are light and airy, retaining the original arched gothic ceiling.”

The Ikon staff and volunteers had to wait till the gallery had been closed to the public before they could bring in the 90 chairs, erect the platform for me and Clarissa, arrange the copies of Paper Lanterns and my first novel, The Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society on a table at the far end, and lay out the drinks for the audience at the other end. It was all done with amazing speed and efficiency, ready to welcome the audience at the appointed time of 6.45.

All the seats were taken and everyone in the audience was wonderfully attentive and appreciative. They laughed in the right places and I was amazed and delighted at their reactions to my readings of two of the original letters that partly inspired the novel. I’ll be writing more about this event (including book sales and Novel Press in future posts,) and about the Birmingham Post article.

In the meantime, take a look at this excellent article by Jonathan Davidson, Chief Executive of Writing West Midlands, with his hard-hitting piece ‘New ways of Publishing’

If you can’t get a ticket for my book launch next week, you do have a chance to hear me talking about Paper Lanterns, thanks to Radio Wildfire. “The Loop” is always worth listening to in its own right, and not just because it’ll let you hear me talking about the real-life letters that partly inspired Paper Lanterns. It’s a nonstop transmission between their live monthly broadcasts - two hours of lively interviews with writers , musicians and generally creative types from around the West Midlands region.

The whole ‘menu’ is there for you to read, so you can see what’ll be coming up next. You can’t predict which part you’ll land on, but you’ll be able to see whether or not I’m next on the list. If you’ve worked out that you’ve just missed me, and my turn won’t come round again for ages , you can decide to go out for a walk or dig the garden and then come back to listen to me. (There are lots of other interesting things though, so you might prefer to listen to everything else (instead, or as well!)
All you need to do is click on this link then click ‘Listen’

So what about those letters? Briefly, the story behind the novel relates to some original love letters that were written in China in 1920 by a married English woman to a young colleague of her husband. There were five letters that related to her, and the final of these had been written by a female friend of this woman, informing the young man why he had not heard from her friend. It turned out that the husband had discovered that ‘something’ was going on, so the errant wife had given up her would-be lover for the sake of her children.

Reading these letters, I felt like an intruder even though the writer herself must have been dead by the time I came across this material. I was intensely moved by this glimpse into the private life of a woman from a different era, but then, when I then found that there were the two short letters in broken English, written in 1916, I was almost in tears for the young Chinese girl as she struggled to express her grief at his absence.

There were a few other accompanying documents in the same package, and when I turned to these I realised that both sets of letters had been addressed to the same young man. In spite of my feelings of sympathy towards both these women, the writer in me was already dreaming up ways in which the stories of those two women could be woven into fiction.

I’ll be writing more about these letters soon, but meanwhile, in case you were wondering why I’ve included pictures of a peacock and pink magnolia, it’s because these were taken on a gloriously sunny day in Kew Gardens, while we were visiting our daughter and her fiance in Chiswick for the weekend.

Getting back to recommending other websites to visit, you might like to follow this link I’ve already mentioned Nicola Morgan (aka ‘crabbit old bat’) in a previous post, and the new link is to her new novel, with lord knows how many exciting competitions etc. What a wildfire of energy the woman is!