Tag: A Face Like Glass
ArmadaCon 2013
Last weekend, the appropriately named Future Inn opened its doors to the 25th ArmadaCon. This is Plymouth’s annual science fiction/fantasy/cult TV/anime convention. As I discovered, it’s also a den of colossal good humour, terrible jokes and swashbuckling geekery. And the attendees have all the best toys.
Aside from giving a couple of guest panels, I helped judge the ‘Masquerade’, where contestants were assessed on their costume, performance and flair. The overall winners were a duo who performed the whole of What’s Opera, Doc.
However there were many fine costumes that weren’t even entered into the Masquerade.
On Saturday morning I discovered that I had a stunt double.
On Sunday the lovely Anna came back with a costume based on my fifth book, A Face Like Glass. She even let me keep the goose and apron!
My fellow guest author David Wake spent the Sunday dressing as every Doctor Who ever invented, one at a time, including little known variants that had never reached TV.
Other high points over the weekend:
- The Turkey Readings. Dreadful books are read out, whilst the audience bids loose change to get the reader to stop, or continue in funny voices. Dire crimes against fiction are greatly improved when read in the voices of Winston Churchill, Jessica Rabbit, Gollum, Dr Evil or Dr Watt from Carry on Screaming.
- A stop-motion ‘silent film’ episode of Doctor Who, starring all the Doctors and featuring an entirely knitted cast. (Woollen daleks are unfeasibly cute.)
- The auction, where strange and wondrous things were sold to raise over £1300 for the RNIB’s Talking Books.
- Champagne and chocolate Tardises.
- Readings. Selkie tales, steampunk narrow escapes, and group readings/performances of scenes from The Derring Do Club and the Empire of the Dead and David Wake’s other works. (The latter included the confrontation of an evil Father Christmas, the perils of a particularly smart phone and an amusing case of steampunk hankypanky.)
- Tea duels
As a wonderful finale, on Sunday afternoon Mitch Benn arrived. He treated us to some of his clever, very funny and diabolically catchy songs, and was in some danger of being forced at sonic-screwdriver-point to sing all night. (I was privately delighted that he included my favourite, the “Bouncy Druid” song, but the miniature rock opera based on The Very Hungry Caterpillar is also required listening.)
Many thanks to everyone I met at ArmadaCon for a fantastic weekend!
UKLA Award Ceremony and Party
On 5th July I headed to Liverpool for the UKLA Book Award Ceremony, since A Face Like Glass was one of the shortlisted books for the 7-11 category.
I didn’t win the award, but all the authors on the shortlists were presented with certificates and had a fuss made of us. The prize for my category went to the excellent The Weight of Water by Sarah Crossan. (The Weight of Water is a verse novel, which makes it particularly unusual. It’s good to see the prize going to such an adventurous and interesting book!)
After a lovely dinner spent gossipping with some of the judges (who were all exceptionally good fun) I headed to the bar for the poetry readings. There were some excellent offerings from the talented Claire Kirwan of the Dead Good Poets Society (great name), but lots of other people also stepped up to read poems, including a show-stopping demonstration of ‘baby rap’ by Rebecca Patterson.
I can neither confirm nor deny rumours of a late night slumber party involving giggling and false moustaches.
World Book Week
World Book Week an inspirational celebration of reading. It’s also an excuse for me to escape from my computer, and bounce from school to school like a book-obsessed pinball, waving my arms and enthusing about writing. I’m trying to pretend that this still counts as ‘work’.
Pop-Up Festival Booklinks Programme
On Monday 4th March, I took part in the Booklinks Programme, with visits to Our Lady’s Convent High School and Clapton Girls’ Academy.
I’d barely arrived at Our Lady’s Convent High School when my eye fell on some fantastic posters that Year 8 had created, advertising an imaginary movie of A Face Like Glass. (One of them had Eddie Murphy and Jim Carrey in the ‘cast list’ – good choices for a tale of facial contortion.)
Photo taken by Jane McLoughlin
Clapton Girls’ Academy Year 8 had also prepared for my visit, working together to create a list of really original, well-considered questions. It was a bit like being interviewed, but with a different interviewer for every question.
Q. Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?
A. Yes. It doesn’t stop me writing, it just means that for a while nothing I write or re-write works.
Q. If you had to sum up A Face Like Glass in three words, what would they be?
A. Innocence. Betrayal. Revolution.
Q. Do you see yourself in any of your characters?
A. Yes. All of them. Even the homicidal goose in Fly by Night.
Royal Ballet School
On Wednesday 6th March I walked through beautiful Richmond Park to the White Lodge, previously a Royal hunting lodge and now the Lower School of the Royal Ballet School.
English teacher Charlotte Taylor kindly gave me a guided tour of the building (including a ballet museum, Pavlova’s furniture, vaulted corridors that used to be the servants’ tunnels and a rather splendid room where Nelson once planned the Battle of Trafalgar).
The students proved to be welcoming, enthusiastic and full of ingenious queries that forced me to think on my feet.
Q. If you had written your first book differently, do you think that would have affected the way you wrote all your other books?
A. Yes. My first book taught me that I could get away with weird.
Q. Can you give us tips for world-building?
A. Try to understand how your world works, who’s in charge of what, and how the people there get boring things like food, water, clothes and money. Imagine living there for a month.
Q. Have you ever changed your mind halfway through a book, and abandoned your plan?
A. I’ve never completely abandoned the plan, though I’ve sometimes changed my mind about major aspects of the book while writing it. It was still really useful to have the plan, though.
At the end of my presentation, I was even given a big bunch of flowers and a bag of goodies. Excuse me while I drink more tea from my new Royal Ballet School mug…
Chandlings Manor School
On World Book Day itself I visited Chandlings Manor School for a double session, talking to Years 5 and 6 in turn. My taxi was late, but fortunately Mark Thornton of Mostly Books valiantly held the fort for five minutes until I arrived. During that time, the students apparently decided that he was my bodyguard.
Chandlings is full of interesting gothic touches, including a blazing open hearth in the front hall and a sort of minstrels’ gallery in the library. Apparently there’s even an unsolved historic mystery linked to the building. (Given all these resemblances to a school from a book, I secretly hope that the pupils spend all their free time roasting chestnuts, investigating ghosts and solving mysteries.)
Favourite moment: Being asked if I’d ever been so frustrated that I just wanted to give up being a writer… and realising that, no, I never had. Not even when my books were driving me mad.
Interview with BBC Radio Oxford
My last World Book Day engagement was an interview by Jo Anthony of BBC Radio Oxford. Thanks to Jo’s skilful questions, I forgot to be terrified of the microphone, and babbled happily about A Face Like Glass, hats, my fascination with expressions and the path to publication.
Ah. I suppose I should probably stop enthusing about books now, and go back to writing them…
