Manx Lit Fest 2013

Just a quick post this, to say how much I enjoyed Manx Lit Fest last weekend. I'm not an aficionado of literary festivals, in fact I have never been to one before, but I loved it and am so glad I was involved. There was a lot going on; the organisers really went to town with a quiz night, a poetry slam, writing workshops, school visits, library visits, book signings, local authors' event, lots of talks (my favourite title: 'Killing people for pleasure and profit' by crime writers Andrew Taylor and Alan Bradley).

I wonder whether it was by design or coincidence that another of Alan Bradley's talks (on the genesis of his main character, 11 year old poison enthusiast Flavia De Luce) took place in the gothic environs of King William's College science department? Because location and subject-matter complemented one another eerily well. That gentle Canadian voice explaining all about strychnine and the properties of distilled pigeon poo, while the wind gusted against the windows and the Bunsen burners glinted wickedly in the lab across the way.....

The best thing about the whole Lit Fest thing was meeting and chatting to other bookish people. It's not every day you come across folk who sympathise with your own most pressing preoccupations (Should you plan your novel out in detail before you start? Do you find you get a bit possessed by your own characters? What do you do when it's a stark choice between ironing the school uniform and writing? that sort of thing) and it's very nice when you do.

Mind, I had a cold with a sense of humour that did it's best to spoil the whole experience. No, not so much a cold as an evil spirit that manifested itself in different ways according to which event I was attending. So, for example, at the launch party I was in deeply anti-social sniffling&sneezing mode. For the one-to-one sessions with publisher and literary agent I had metamorphosed into Frankenstein's bride, with a bright red, desiccated nose and one itchy, swollen eye (why only one? At least I would have been symmetrical with two). At the local author's event on Sunday the cold had got to my voice and I delivered my reading with all the mellifluousness of chain-smoking crow. Never mind. If that cold was trying to put me off Manx Lit Fest it failed miserably. Ha! Roll on 2014!