Palaces of books

So I had a break from writing and spent a couple of days in London, as I was delighted to be taking part in a Salt panel discussion at the London Book Fair, on Building Brand and Social Equity on a Shoestring (that means creating a brand - essential now: the fair was fair buzzing with that word - and promoting and selling books thereby, all without a budget via social media). I was speaking alongside our publisher Chris Hamilton-Emery, my irrepressible fellow Salt author and blogging colleague, poet Katy Evans-Bush, and Salt crime writer Christina James, whom I was delighted to meet for the first time. It was lovely too to meet Elaine Aldred, who chaired us in excellent and tactful fashion (10 mins each didn't seem nearly enough for all the things we had to say!). Elaine will be writing up the gist of the whole discussion, and I'll link to her piece when it appears. We had a receptive and communicative audience - about 200 people, I'd say, consisting of authors, a few journalists and a majority of publishers. I enjoyed it immensely, and found my fellow panelists' contributions practical and helpful. Christina has blogged about it here.

Then (after waiting to pay in a long queue of literary types hugging plastic pots of salad) I had a catch-up over lunch with Katy, who always cheers and inspires me (she's so good with words!) before attending a very interesting session on the Future of the Literary Agent, which I've written about a bit on my Fictionbitch blog.

After that session I went back to my nearby hotel for a short while and, all ready to put into practice my own advice on social networking, tweeting on the hop and uploading the pics I'd taken on my iphone, I dropped the thing down the loo and it was kaput!

Well, I'd never been to a book fair before - oh, that's not quite true, I've been to alternative book fairs - and this really was amazing: a place two or three times the size of an aeroplane hangar filled with publishers and industry professionals in their tellingly differently-sized sections, from the shared shelves of members of the Independent Publishers' Guild, to Bloomsbury's section which was, as Katy said, like a palace, and HarperCollins's, well.. city, really.

Bit of an eye-opener, really.

And, do you know, there's a pub near Euston station with a cat that always comes and sits on your knees?

Author Blog Awards

I've been asked to let you know about the Author Blog Awards being run by CompletelyNovel in association with Quartet, Allison and Busby, Simon and Schuster and BookBrunch. Here's what they say they're all about:

There are over 10,000 published and unpublished authors blogging to readers, writers and industry professionals. Despite huge loyal followings and a remarkable wealth of new content, many readers remain unaware of these blogs.

The Author Blog Awards aim to honour the best blogs by both published and unpublished writers. They will recognise the writers who use their blogs to connect with readers in the most imaginative, engaging and inspiring ways. At the same time we hope to attract new audiences to these blogs and help readers find out more about the authors they love…and new authors too.

You can nominate your favourite author blog to win an award and will also have the chance to win something from a selection of prizes including free eReaders, new books, free eBooks, and book tokens. There are three categories: Best Published Author Blog, Best Unpublished Author Blog, and Best Author Microblog. The winners will be announced in April.

Go to the site here.

Crossposted with FictionBitch.

Into the clouds again

Back in Wales, and I don't think the cloud has gone the whole time we've been away. The tub of logs near the front door was full to the brim with rainwater and the logs were sprouting huge fungi...

I've got the internet this morning though (after several tries), and I'll blog when I can during the next 10 days or so.

And it's September on Monday, and you know, September is traditionally better weather in these hills than August. Well, we'll see...

And never mind about the times I can't hook up, I've got walls to whitewash and woodwork to paint and a novel I want to write to think about, and several stories jostling to be written and a bagful of books I want to read...

Hold up

OK, I give up. I bought mobile broadband, and it didn't even work on that hill - there was no connection, even though the website said there would be a rudimentary one. So sorry about the silence again. And for one reason or another I won't be blogging again for another 10 days to a fortnight, or dealing with comments I'm afraid.

Brit Lit Blogs

You may notice I've just put a Brit Lit Blogs widgety thing on my side bar, as I'm tickled to say that this blog has just gone up in the world on that site. It's a great site - many brilliant book bloggers available at one click, and if you're not in the habit of doing so already, I urge you to click on over there.

Blogging for Writers workshop

Just back from the workshop 'Blogging for Writers' at MDDA, where I learnt something new: that I can't work on a computer and talk to a group at the same time - I lost my thread two or three or times! Interesting: I hadn't realised how utterly silent and private and inward this space at my keyboard was: because of the interactivity of the blogosphere, I had thought of it as quite the opposite. Now I understand why, when I've been doing a spot of blogging, John acts as though I've been away somewhere!

It was a great group of writers, with varying levels of knowledge about blogging. Kate Feld did a great job of explaining the fundamentals of blogging, and by the end of the session everyone, even complete beginners, had set up their own blog and was ready to join us all. I was going to take a photo if people had been willing, but guess what, that was another thing I forgot...