BEST ENDEAVOURSJane Cable’s blog about what happens once that digital publishing deal is in the bag continues.
BEST BIB & TUCKER
Parties, it seems, are like buses; writers’ parties even more so, with two in one week and a book club sandwiched between them. A book club which was incredibly interesting, but will need to be deferred to another blog to do it justice.
Regular readers will know that I belong to two writers’ organisations (well, three including the Society of Authors) and both held events last week. Wednesday was fun and networking with the Romantic Novelists’ Association and Friday was the serious business of raising money for Dyslexia Action with Chindi Authors.
I had discovered three important things in advance of the RNA Winter Party; that drink would be taken (beforehand and during), that it would be incredibly noisy, and incredibly hot. On no level did it disappoint, although the fact that a rather nice New Zealand sauvignon blanc was only £10 a bottle in the restaurant beforehand meant I spent the whole party sipping a single increasingly warm glass of fizz, thankful that over the years of drinking I have learnt when to stop.
The wall of sound was unbelievable; a high ceilinged room filled to the brim with almost exclusively female voices meant it was practically impossible to hold a conversation with softly spoken fellow Endeavour author, Maggie Greenwood. I soon discovered that the best way of catching people’s names and making the link permanent was to find them on Twitter on my phone. It felt terribly modern after years of swapping (and losing) business cards. I was only sorry I didn’t meet more authors because in true RNA style the whole evening was incredibly friendly and sociable.
Back on home turf on Friday was Chindi Authors’ #LovetoRead party. To be fair, before the doors opened not everything went smoothly. Husband lost count of the number of times he moved tables from one end of the hall to the other and re-arranged chairs. The phrase ‘how many writers does it take to set up a room’ came frequently to mind, despite organiser Helen Christmas’ best attempts to impose order. It must have felt like herding cats. And that was before one author turned up so late that three others had split his table space between them.
As usual I buddied up with my close friend and children’s author Christopher Joyce. It makes sense when you’re sharing a table; Chris has five Creatures of Chichester books, including ‘The One About the Edible Aliens’, which he was launching. I have only two, so I can squeeze into a corner. We’ve become good at selling each other’s books over the years – and our other halfs well used to enjoying a pint together.
But this time I was one of three authors lucky enough to be reading (Chris having been a perfect gentleman and given up his slot to a dyslexia specialist). I chose the first chapter of The Faerie Tree – the book starts just before Christmas so it felt right. Luckily four of my closest friends sat in the front row so I could pretend I was just reading to them and it must have worked; it’s an amazing feeling to hear people in an audience gasp when you reach a certain point. That, and the fact we raised over £700 for Dyslexia Action, made my night.
Jane Cable is the author of two independently published romantic suspense novels, The Cheesemaker’s House and The Faerie Tree, and a sporadic contributor to Frost. If you’d like to read the first chapter of The Faerie Tree you can find it here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/
The Seahorse Summer (or whatever it ends up being called) tells the tale of how two American soldiers born sixty years apart help forty-something Marie Johnson to rebuild her shattered confidence and find new love. Discover more at www.janecable.com.