Last Saturday was dedicated to STATES OF INDEPENDENCE, a regional event held at De Montfort University in Leicester, with its main focus on independent publishers and their books. It was organised by Five Leaves Publications in Nottingham and the Creative Writing Team at De Montfort University

I’d first heard about the event via Soundswrite, the wonderful poetry group that I try to attend every fortnight, and I volunteered to help out on their stall.
Although I take great pleasure in promoting other writers, I’m an incorrigible self-promoter too, so my next step was to contact the organiser, Ross Bradshaw, Director of Five Leaves Publications, and see if he could squeeze in a table for my Novel Press.

My experiences in marketing my previous novel had made me fully aware of the difficulties, but my policy has always been ‘try, regardless, and see what happens,’ so as I was driving through the pouring rain yesterday morning, I had no expectations for myself at all in terms of selling books.

What I had planned to do, in between helping with the display of poetry books published by Soundswrite Press, was to browse some of the other forty stalls attend some of the talks and readings. Top of my list was this enticing preview:
Literary forgery with David Belbin
David Belbin’s novel The Pretender is about literary forgery (and small press magazines) covering the forging of stories by Ernest Hemingway, Graham Greene and Roald Dahl. For the cover his publisher forged an edition of a non-existent magazine. David will read from the novel, but also touch on that long history of literary forgery, plagiarism and theft.

Unfortunately I didn’t make it, but every cloud.. silver lining etc. In this case, it was because I was too busy talking to interested writers and readers, and by the time I was free, it was too late to barge in. Apart from the enticing nature of the write-up on his talk, I also wanted to meet David in person because he now runs the Creative Writing M.A. at Nottingham Trent University – an organisation to which I owe a lot. (see some of my earlier posts for more details of why I might never have been published without it.)

It’s a shame I can’t be in two (or even more than two) places at one time, as there were lots of other interesting talks on the menu, but I thoroughly enjoyed talking to people who stopped by my table. I sold several copies of both Paper Lanterns,
and
The Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society, but it was the conversations that reminded me yet again of how much I enjoy discussing writing with those start of their writing journeys, and others, well on the way to publication, and now, my added interest, all the processes of publishing and marketing. (I didn’t realise I hadn’t reduced the size of this pic enough! Might alter it later)

It was also refreshing to chat to some of the young students who are finishing off the 3rd year of their degrees. When I heard that some of them were giving readings of their own work, I went to hear them (this happened at a moment when there was no one at my stall!). There was an interesting range of short stories and poems, but the highlight for me was from a young man named Nathan (I think?), whose ability to recite a long and very entertaining rhyming monologue perched crossed legged on a table and looking and sounding perfectly at ease, reminded me of the poet and stand-up comic, Luke Wright (see my previous post about that performance)

All in all, it was a great day! Thank you Ross and the team from De Montford University.