London Book Fair Sandal Scandal!

Yesterday I took part in a panel discussion at the London Book Fair.

It was for a masterclass entitled How to Get Published and my fellow panellists were the literary agent Carol Blake, Hodder publisher Mark Booth and award-winning novelists Lionel Shriver and Meg Rosoff.

Several hundred people came, and it ended up being a very sparky and interesting two hours.

It had been a couple of years since I’d taken part in an event of that size so I was pretty nervous as I arrived at Earl’s Court.

Although four of my books have been published by mainstream publishers (including Hodder) I knew I had been invited to talk about the rise of self-publishing and my decision to self publish my last two books and as such would be somewhat of an outsider on the panel. I also knew that this would mean a fair amount of verbal sparring between myself and some of my fellow panellists.

What I hadn’t bargained for however, was that I would almost be banned from entering the book fair because of my footwear!

Picture the scene (here’s a photo to help you)…

I’m walking up to Earl’s Court thinking, holy crap I’m about to talk in front of 500 people in there, when suddenly a steward came running over to me shouting, ‘Are you here for the book fair?’

‘Yes,’ I replied.

She pointed at my shoes with her walkie talkie. ‘Well I’m sorry, you can’t go in wearing those.’

I looked down at my sandals in shock. ‘What’s wrong with them?’ I asked, baffled. Was London Book Fair so exclusive that they even employed their very own literary fashion police? Should I have worn some black buckled affair a la Will Shakespeare?

‘No open-toed shoes allowed,’ she explained.

‘But it’s sunny,’ was all I could think of in reply. ‘And I have to go in – I’m one of the guest speakers.

She looked at me and frowned. Then got on her walkie talke. Then came off her walkie talkie and asked to see my paperwork.

At this point I started looking around for the candid camera. Surely this had to be some kind of wind-up? But apparently not.

My mind started going into over-drive. How was I going to explain to the organisers that the reason for my no-show was that I like wearing sandals when it gets warm?!

‘I don’t have any paperwork,’ I replied. ‘I was asked to come and take part in the panel discussion at 11am.’

Some builders who were having a smoking break on an adjacent wall started staring at my offending sandals and chuckling – just what you need when you’re trying to remain calm and confident.

I took a deep breath. ‘Why can’t I wear open-toed shoes to the book fair?’ I asked her.

‘Because it’s a building site,’ came her somewhat baffling reply.

Right. So I had been asked to take part in a literary discussion in a building site. Could the morning really get any more surreal?!

‘But I’m taking part in a talk,’ I bleated.

She frowned. ‘Oh hang on a minute. You must be in the conference centre,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ I replied.

‘Oh that’s fine. Go ahead.’

‘What?’

‘Go ahead. Follow the building round to the left.’

‘Yes I know. That’s where I was going before you came over!’

‘Good-o,’ she said, walking away.

‘Thanks!’ I replied.

It all worked out fine in the end.

I got into the building. I held my own in the discussion. And I was intrigued to witness the negativity and arrogance coming from certain quarters.

But most importantly, I came away more convinced than ever that the advances in self-publishing and internet marketing are the best things to have happened to writers. If yesterday’s discussion is anything to go by I’d say the cliquey and closed shop traditional publishing world is a rapidly dying beast.

My New FREE book

My new book, Dear Dylan is now available as a free electronic download via this website.

Please go to the Dear Dylan page for more information.

Hope you like it!

Dreamed into Life

Today I took delivery of my first copy of my new book Dear Dylan.

There is no greater feeling as an author than seeing your book ‘in the flesh’ for the very first time.

In may ways it is like giving birth. Something that began as the mere seed of an idea, that you then spent months nurturing, working on (and stressing over!) is finally delivered – only in this case by a very nice DHL man rather than a midwife!

It never ceases to amaze me how something that begins life as a random, single thought can somehow end up becoming a fully formed book, complete with its very own cover, blurb and ISBN number!

Earlier on this evening I was sat at my desk, where I wrote Dear Dylan, and I thought it would be a nice idea to take a photo of the place where it all began complete with the finished product…

Dear Dylan began life as a thought I had at a drama workshop I was running for teenagers one school holiday.

It was a what if thought. What if a teenage girl started emailing her favourite actor as a way of getting things off her chest and then one day he emailed her back?

This led to another what if?

But what if it wasn’t actually the actor emailing her at all?

And so the idea for the novel was born.

I wanted to blog about this because I wanted to show that sometimes dreams can come true.

If you want something badly enough and you are prepared to put in the hard graft then I believe it is possible to dream almost anything into life. One of my favourite quotes from Goethe sums it up beautifully:

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”

So go on then, what are you waiting for?!!