Of goths, books and authors

[karohemd]

I was distracted by sorting through the prints and watching Garth Marenghi's Darkplace last night that I didn't get round to posting about the Heffers thing.

I arrived in plenty of time to find locked shutters so I waited around a bit until devalmont appeared who left again to look for _ebb_ at "his" shop. While he was gone she arrived so we chatted for a bit until he got back. _ebb_ introduced me to a children's book by SF Said called Varjak Paw which is quite wonderfully illustrated by Dave McKean. simonsatori arrived and said hi and then left for Heffers to see what he was supposed to be doing.
The doors opened, we got our ticket and I bought two copies of simonsatori's book, Assumptions and Carnations (I got yours, robinbloke) and then generally milled about.
I think there was some general confusion as to what was actually supposed to be happening and most people seemed to browse the shop until it became clear that it was a chat and mingle with the authors rather than any kind of organised talk thing (which at least I had assumed).

So after getting simonsatori to sign books for robinbloke and me and chatting for a bit, I asked SF Said about his books and found out that he's a really nice bloke (and, despite his Middle Eastern ancestry looked and seemed thoroughly British to me, only helped by the fact that indeed looks like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall as so keenly pointed out by scy11a). I asked him how he managed to get Dave McKean to illustrate his novel and his simple reply was "By asking him and being really really lucky". Apparently, his publisher had asked him who he would like and Said said, oh McKean would be nice so they sent the manuscript to McKean who read it to his daughter (who randomly was in the perfect target group at the time) and they both thoroughly enjoyed it and that was that... Lucky Bastard...
I also spoke to one of the authors (name escapes me) who was using a puppet on a string to promote his books. That puppet had come from his parents' puppet theatre whose characters and plays he loosely based his books on (or at least some of the characters were the same).

We ended up chatting to SF Said again and he mentioned that they are working with Dave McKean and the Henson Company on an animated film of the first Varjak Paw book (very early stages, they just got the first draft of the screenplay back) which could be terribly exciting. He was also mean because he mentioned that they had been doing short stories on flickr but then wouldn't tell me the user name which led to the odd moment of me writing my name into a brochure for him as I didn't have any of my cards on me. Bah. I need to make another run, anyway, one that's just photography.

I didn't really speak to any of the other authors which was a big of a shame, I think but the argument in my head was that my reading pile is too high already and I would have felt bad if I hadn't bought any books. I also felt a bit inadequate as I didn't know any of them and starting a conversation with "So, what are your books about, then?" would have been awkward, at least for me. They might have been happy to chat, I'm sure. Oh well.

Comments

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

Thanks very much :)

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

12 quid to you, sir.

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

Bargain! Will bring cash next tues

[psychokatuk.livejournal.com]

Very proud of me old mate Simon, must pick up a copy myself :o)

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

And again the world has become a little smaller. :o)

Although the likelihood of you knowing Simon is a lot higher than a random German friend of stellalive being friends with a portion of my Cambridge friends list...

[psychokatuk.livejournal.com]

I did live in Cambridge (the lovely Portugal Place) for over a year, and attended the very first Calling!

Steve and I popped into Cambridge with Stella on the way back from InFest last year... maybe she ran around making friends while I was at the bar of the Cambridge Arms! :o)

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, I remember now.

Bah! Stella didn't say Hi to me. :o(
Curiously, we first met in real life at the K17 in Berlin when I was visiting lsur last year (I didn't know she'd be there but she might have read my plans on my LJ):
We stood in a corner watching the dancefloor when this tall blonde comes up to me and says "Hi! How are you?"
Me: *blinks* (attractive women don't usually chat me up in clubs) "Erm?"
Stella: "It's me, Stella!"
Me: *penny drops*

Very very random.

[daevid.livejournal.com]

It was interesting, if a little disorganised :)

[lslaw.livejournal.com]

Envy.