BEFORE YOU READ ABOUT Radio Wildfire Live, Click here for my BOOK COVER DESIGN CHALLENGE and give yourself the chance of winning a FREE copy of Paper Lanterns(CLOSING DATE: 31st December)

I’ve been so busy replying to the numerous kind people who entered, that that this is the first new post for a couple of weeks

One of the many nice things about the Writers’ Conference I attended a couple of weeks ago, was the chance of catching up with former writing friends and making new ones. The only other Writing Conference I’d attended was a residential weekend in Winchester in June 2008. It was inspiring, informative and great fun, and it made me wonder why there was never anything like that in Birmingham. (Even the East Midlands seemed to have more going on for writers then those of us in the West)

That is, until Jonathan Davidson puts things right with his Writers’ Toolkit. James Walker, a writer from East Mids, has written an excellent report of that day – I’ve just spent time I haven’t really got to spare, browsing his own site. But then again, he’s saved me some of that time by expressing a lot of what I’d intended to say myself.

So now I can skip that and get to Dave Reeves, director and programmer of Radio Wildfire,a spoken word radio station that streams content 24 hours a day over the internet. It’s the LIVE transmission that is the really exciting part for me, as Dave has invited me to take part in this TOMORROW, Monday 7th December, between 8.00 and 10.00 pm UK time.

Dave has a great way with words – I’d sent him a few short paragraphs about my writing life, and here’s how he introduces his Monday evening guests: “A Laureate, a Plinther, and a mountain climbing Guinness drinker.” (that last phrase is the way he’s chosen to present me – it’s made me quite nostalgic for those far off days in Dublin)

The Laureate and Plinther is Adrian Johnson, “the current Birmingham Poet Laureate and a man with an enthusiasm for storytelling… Earlier this year he became a ‘plinther’ in Trafalgar Square, standing in the sunshine at 3pm on a Saturday - almost exactly 20 years from when the Poll Tax riot erupted on 31 March 1990.” He’s a great performer of his own poems, and from this YouTube video,it looks as though it’ll be a lively evening.

Here’s the more serious part of what Dave has written about me: “Christine Coleman’s first novel The Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society came out in 2005. While that was mainly set in Birmingham and Sutton Coldfield, her forthcoming book, Paper Lanterns, was inspired by finding a cache of love letters written in China by two separate women to the same man.”

And there’ll be a lot more to squeeze into this couple of hours:
“Amongst the artists we’ll be playing from CD is Coventry based Chris Hoskins from her collection of monologues Relatively Speaking, and singing with the superb a’cappella trio Free Harmony. And there’ll be some of the sort of Christmas literary offerings that you’ll only get on Radio Wildfire as we look at office parties with Roz Goddard; Christmas presents with Brendan Hawthorne; and reinterpret a couple of well worn seasonal tales.”

And now I’d better go and sort out which extracts from my books the listeners might like to hear me reading on Monday evening

1. Looping the Loop with Free Harmony | ChristineColeman.net Says:
   December 23rd, 2009 at 10:06 pm

   [...] throwing himself under a high speed train on New Street Station. I shared the ‘live’ part of the broadcast, on Monday 7th December, with Adrian Johnson, the current Birmingham Poet Laureate, but although I had the pleasure of [...]