Waterstone's Bath

Well thank goodness for good friends! See photo of me with Rosalind & Antony. This pic was actually at the book launch, but it was down to Rosalind (and Sophie at MNW) that I got a book reading/signing at Bath Waterstones. Rosalind is a great writer and was also my first writing teacher when I lived in Bath. Hence the Bath event. A bit of a shambles that turned out well in the end, because of bloody Waterstones I can tell you. First of all, as I mentioned below, I was supposed to be doing the event with Edward Charles, but he had to cancel on the day as Waterstones had no books of his after assuring the Macmillan New Writing HQ they had plenty. His book In The Shadow of Lady Jane is being reprinted (well done Ted!) so a last minute rummage to try and come up with more stock proved fruitless, so he cancelled. I, poor little shrinking violet me (yeah right!) was reduced to doing the event alone. I arrived to find as Waterstones had only sold ten tickets pre the event they'd only put out ten chairs and ten wine glasses and ten copies of the book. I was hopeful for more on the door and even tried loitering with intent around the fiction section to persuade a few more to come. I even managed to persuade one couple they really needed to be at my reading, even though it was their anniversary and they really wanted to go out for a quiet romantic meal. Bless 'em they even bought the book! Thanks! Anyway, then people started turning up, and more people and more people, they soon ran out of tickets, chairs, wine glasses, and wine. Even my chair and wine glass disappeared. The place was heaving! The staff looked for more chairs, sod the chairs I said, we need more wine, they managed to rummage in a dusty cupboard and find a couple of dusty bottles of Gerwurztraminer. I had to sit in an arm chair looking like a refugee from a Lemsip advert, drinking corked wine with a fly in it! Ottakers was never like this! It went very well though.

And the Grumpy Old Bookman turned up.He doesn't live too far away and has been a good supporter of Macmillan New Writing all along, so it was great to see him and Mrs GOB even bought my book, why I don't know as he should have a free review copy anyway, but maybe he liked it so much he doesn't want to share it!

So all in all, it was a pretty good night, I caught up with some old friends and made some new ones, but perhaps Waterstones shouldn't judge a book by it's cover (ha!ha! clever me!) We MNW authors may not be such non-entities as you think. Give us a chance to prove ourselves. Also I do remember when I lived in Bath, Rosalind and I often went to Literary evenings at Waterstones, some were well known writers, others less so, and of course I never dreamed I'd be doing one one day (well OK I did, but not seriously) however, I imagined it might have been a lot better organised than this!

second freebie of Selfish Jean set free on the world

First of all thanks Lydia for helping me sort my blog page. I can now do HTML well when I say "do", I mean I can follow instructions scibbled on a dog-earred bit of paper, still don't understand it, but as Lydia said her generation were using computers almost as soon as they came out of the womb. Anyway, I was in London for a wedding this weekend, very enjoyable, great weather and great company. Congratulations Patrick & Mary, you are individual, idiosyncratic, hospitable, warm people. I arrived Friday evening, and decided I was having a serendipity day. You know when things seem to go very well, parking spaces are found, trains run on time, people don't run a pram into the back of your ankles, or swing rucksacks in your face all things go smoothly and in flow. Well, Friday was like that.

I got to my Travel Lodge just behind the Tate Modern and decided to go out to leave my freebie copy of Selfish Jean somewhere. I'd wanted to see Galileo at the National Theatre but knew it was sold out. I wondered whether to go anyway see if I could blag a standby, and also leave the book there, when I saw an ad for free theatre, that evening, actually The Caucasian Chalk Circle, another Brecht play for those who don't know, and as that drama ends up being about a trial between a foster mother and a real mother, and it was free, it seemed serendipitous that I leave Selfish Jean there! I thought the production might be a bit ropey, but it was brilliant, really, really good and easily the best version of that play I have seen. I didn't even mind risking piles sitting on a stone step to watch it in the shadow of the Tower Bridge and City Hall along the South Bank. See photo above. I wrote my message in my book and left it on one of the stone step seats at the interval. I felt quite nervous and wondered whether anyone would take it, but after the show it had gone! haven't had any message from whoever took it though, so maybe they threw it into the Thames! Hope not. A great weekend all round.