I’m looking forward to the Dartmouth Book Festival in September, and making preparations for it. Browser Books have invited me to be on the historical fiction panel at the Flavel. I was asked to come up with a name for my talk. I came up with “Falling into Historical Fiction”, but as always I sought Claire’s thoughts, and she suggested “Meeting the Tudor James Bond”, which I thought was much better. However, Clare at Browser Books thought that Falling into Historical Fiction was a better introduction to the historical fiction panel.
The place to start my preparations seemed to be working on what I’m going to say. I’m sharing the stage with Tim Pears, another historical fiction author. We have 45 minutes between us for talking about our work, reading an extract from one of our books, and Q&A. So I’ve drawn upon a recent guest blog, and tried several scenes from The Spy who Sank the Armada, timing myself as I read aloud. My talk and reading come to eleven minutes, which would leave about the same for questions and answers. I’m not sure what preparations I can make for questions and answers. I’ll ask Claire, and I’ll also ask my fellow writers at MilkTownWriters tomorrow.
The other preparations are more straightforward. I’ll get some bookmarks printed with my book covers and website address on. I’ll order some books for the event, and keep practicing my talk and reading. Although I’m focussed on preparation for my part of the festival, I’m also really looking forward to just enjoying the festival. The historical fiction panel comes immediately before the crime fiction panel, and the Sir Anthony Standen Adventures are historical crime fiction, so there’s a good link. There are also talks on publishing which may help me think about preparations for publishing the fifth book, when I finish it.