Tag: public appearance
World Fantasy Convention 2013
Shortly after the St Jude storm had batted the British Isles around like a bored cat with a paper boat, I travelled down to Brighton for the World Fantasy Convention. Nobody had told the local winds that the storm was over, so whenever I ventured out I kept both hands clamped protectively over my hat.
Once again I had the joy of meeting a lot of people I only knew through Twitter, email and the mailing list of the Scattered Authors’ Society. (I grew quite accustomed to the words ‘I recognised you from your hat!’)
I was also introduced to Shadwell, one of the small felt pigeons acting as ‘ambassadors’ for Loncon 3 next year.
The first evening of the convention was Halloween, so there were many splendid costumes on display.
There were also magnificent displays of steampunk regalia, and three gentlemen with four-foot-wide hats made out of modelling balloons and flashing lights.
On the Friday I appeared in a panel with a stellar collection of authors – Garth Nix, Holly Black, Sarah Rees Brennan, Chris Priestley and Chris Wooding. This was the brief.
The Next Generation” Not in Front of the Children: How Far Should You Go in Young Adult Fiction? (Oxford)
Our chair, Sarah Rees Brennan, gave a wonderfully tongue-in-cheek performance as the Voice of Moral Outrage, declared us all ‘sinners’ and corrupting influences from the very start, and introduced us by ominous nicknames. I’m very happy with my new title, “The Grande Dame of Darkness”…
I have long held the view that young readers are tougher and smarter than many adults realise, and are generally the best judges of whether they are ready to read certain kinds of material. It became clear that most of the panel was broadly in agreement, but it was still a fun and interesting discussion. Chris Priestley gave an eloquent defence of books that purely entertain, rather than making heavy-handed attempts to educate or ‘improve’. Holly Black discussed the perpetual nervousness with which the adult world regards teenagers. Garth Nix stated that YA should not be considered subset of children’s fiction, but of adult fiction (hence the name). By age sixteen Chris Wooding had been not only reading horror novels but writing them.
On Sunday I took part in a joint reading with other children’s/YA authors from the Scattered Authors’ Society – a ‘taster menu’ of extracts offering a mix of comic, haunting, exciting and chilling. My fellow readers were Emma Barnes, Cecilia Busby, Teresa Flavin, Amy Butler Greenfield, Katherine Langrish, Katherine Roberts, Linda Strachan and Lucy Coats.
Over the weekend I had the chance to listen to a number of fascinating panels, covering subjects such as world-building, YA as a genre, historical fantasy and the influence of real landscapes and places upon fantasy writing.
In the upstairs art gallery, like everyone else I was hypnotised by Tessa Farmer‘s otherworldly aerial battle made almost entirely out of dead things, suspended from the ceiling by threads. Sheep skulls were dreadnaughts, and tiny ant-like fairies rode dead bees, beetles and sea-horses into combat. I also took a shine to Autun Purser’s Fantastic Travel Destinations, advertising trips to the likes of Yuggoth, Midwich and the end of the Earth with cheery 1940s style posters.
Now I have convention withdrawal symptoms… and I have to find somewhere to store all my loot.
Edinburgh International Book Festival 2013
I love Edinburgh. Whoever designed it apparently decided that you would be able to to see all the dramatic buildings much better if you crumpled the landscape like this.
It’s a beautifully precipitous city, with lots of drops, leaps and skylines standing on tiptoe.
The Edinburgh International Book Festival celebrated its 30th year by featuring unprecedented amounts of me. (Translation: it was the first time I’d been invited.)
As authors we got our own private yurt. (I don’t have pictures of it, since nobody was allowed to take photos inside. As shy, retiring little animals, we had to be allowed a shady, comfortable retreat where we could graze in peace without being startled by photography.)
On Saturday 17th I was lucky enough to appear on panel with the brilliant China Miéville (author of Railsea, Un Lun Dun and The City and the City). The event was expertly chaired by Charlie Fletcher (author of the Stoneheart trilogy). We discussed the joys of the subterreanean, ampersands, divination through theft, railway tracks as symbols of infinite possibility, YA fantasy as rebellion against over-protection, skewing a reader’s sense of the normal and the role of romance in fantasy.
Later that afternoon, I took part in the Imprisoned Writers Series, organised by Amnesty International and Scottish Pen. This daily event gives attending authors the chance to show solidarity with persecuted, imprisoned or censored writers around the world, by reading out their work or a piece about their lives.
The evening was spent at the Macmillan Children’s Books Edinburgh Festival Summer Party. Fireworks from the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo were just visible through the window, and I lost track of time while comparing volcano reminiscences with Rebecca Cobb.
Over the weekend, I even had time to see a Fringe comedy show with the lovely people from Macmillan, and catch some of the street performers…
A wonderful weekend, though I’m still sorry that I missed these beautiful and mysterious book-birds.
English Graduate Conference Keynote Speech
Once upon a time, *coughcough* years ago, I studied English Literature and Language at Oxford University, coming away with a BA and a Master of Studies. It never really crossed my mind that I would find myself back in the lecture theatres of the English Faculty again.
It certainly didn’t occur to me that, the next time I visited Lecture Room 2, I would be standing at the podium rather than sitting in the audience.
On Friday 31st, I had the great honour of giving the keynote speech at the Oxford University’s English Graduate Conference. The theme of the conference was ‘Object’ – not exactly a narrow topic.
Perhaps it’s not surprising that the ‘objects’ I chose to discuss were my own books.
Books are contrary objects – peculiar, manipulative, aggressive, untameable, dangerous and wonderful. In the Fractured Realm, the setting for my books Fly by Night and Twilight Robbery, most people are terrified of the printed word. There’s a fear that books will indelibly imprint dangerous, maddening notions onto the waiting page of the reader’s brain. In Fly by Night, the people of the city of Mandelion are being terrorised by a monster – not a creature of claw and sinew, but a thing of iron and ink. It’s a rogue printing press, and fear of its presence is tearing the city apart.
People are used to the idea that books change readers, for better or worse. I went on to talk, however, about the way in which books can also change the very person that is creating them. I am no longer precisely the individual who wrote Fly by Night all those years ago. The very process of writing the book, the watershed of getting published, my life since as a professional author and the bizarre process of creating a ‘public author profile’ have all changed me. In a way, I have been reshaped and rewritten by my own book.
Fortunately, I don’t mind. I can’t wait to see how my future books rewrite me…
Many thanks to Erin Johnson for inviting me to give the speech, Alex Paddock for organising the conference, and all the other attendees for making me feel so welcome! It was also lovely to meet the conference’s panelists, Stephen Walter (artist and ‘psychogeographer’), Nick Cross (Digital Product Manager at OUP and Undiscovered Voices winner) and Dr Paul Nash (Oxford University”s chief Printing Tutor and winner of the 2013 CILIP Walford Award).
School visits in Hammersmith and Hoddesdon
On Tuesday 19th April, I visited Latymer Preparatory School, which already had a number of impressive projects on display.
The discussion at the end of my talk covered the unnatural pallour of people living underground, alternative forms of technology (kitepunk!), etc. Finally I signed a stack of books supplied by the Lion and Unicorn Bookshop.
A week later, on Tuesday 22nd March, I ventured into snowbound Hertfordshire for two events organised by Books@Hoddesdon.
The first took place at The John Warner School in Hoddesdon, where I talked to two hundred members of Year 7.
A Memorable Question:
Q. Does being an author change the way you read books, and has it made you analyse them more?
A. My degree was in English, so I already tended to be a bit analytical as a reader. But yes, I am now more likely to sympathise with what an author is trying to do. I’m also much more likely to read a really good part and think, drat, I wish I’d written that…
There seemed to be a lot of keen readers, including a young contest winner who had read 60 books since September, excluding all the books she had read at home…
After lunch I visted the impressive campus of Haileybury School to talk to groups from Year 7 of the Lower School.
A Memorable Question:
Q: Do you ever brag to your friends about the books you’re writing?
A: I didn’t used to like talking about them at all. When people asked me sign books I used to hide under tables. But now a certain sort of ‘bragging about my books’ is part of my job. It’s called ‘self-promotion’.
I then signed a small mountain of books – some dedicated to ‘Brancombeast’ and ‘Manstrangler’…
Greenwich Schools Book Quiz
On 14th March I travelled to the Shooter’s Hill Post 16 Campus, where the final of the Greenwich Schools Book Quiz was being run by an elite team of sixth formers. (It was also great to meet Caroline Fielding and the other school librarians responsible for coming up with the questions.)
Unlike the competing teams, I only had to answer questions about my own books.
The other author present was Ellie Daines, who talked about her debut, Lolly Luck. (Her next book, a tale of amnesia and family disruption, also sounds fascinating.)
Ellie and I were given the task of declaring the winners and runners-up, and presenting gold, silver and bronze medals, all of which made me feel like an Olympic dignitary. Congratulations to ‘St. Ursula’s Hardinge’ team for taking the gold, and to all the other teams for doing so well in a close-fought contest!
