As I was saying...
Apr. 25th, 2006 10:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gervase_fenWell I'm back, after a slightly longer break than I'd planned.
The dinner is one of two highlights of the past month for me. Not so much for the surroundings - Old Dining Hall, SEH, pleasant, not too formal - but for the conversation. I don't get much of a chance to talk about crime fiction outside of work, let alone talk about the various advance proofs that have been doing the rounds.
I did a little bit of homework before travelling up, reading a book by one of the four authors attending -Veronica Stallwood's latest Kate Ivory novel, "Oxford Letters". The two and a half hour train journey was the perfect opportunity to polish off chapters three to twenty nine, and I was pretty impressed by the end. (I've since read the first, "Death and the Oxford Box".) The books are traditional, fairly cosy, straight down the line mystery thrillers. The scam at the centre of "Oxford Letters" was one that I hadn't encountered before, and better still, the relationship between Kate and her independent mother Roz is beautifully drawn. There's also the pleasure - one which I used to get from the Morse books - of reading about the changes to Oxford over the years.
I was sat at the end of one of the long tables, next to a charming Polish lady who looks after foreign rights for Headline, and opposite Susie, the Crime specialist from the Windsor store, and Mr K, a man who had once managed Maidenhead for three months and is still talked about with a slight shudder by some of the staff there. (He's a lovely, charming person, and had a fund of tall stories about author events that he'd organised - but I could imagine how he might have infuriated some of my colleagues - sociable, smooth and a bit slippery.)
My favourite story of Mr K's was about Terry Wogan, requesting M&S smoked salmon sandwiches for lunch, and getting doorstep sized slices of bread, smothered in margarine, presented on paper hand towels from the staff toilet.
At the end of night I picked up about ten books from Veronica Stallwood's backlist, a couple of Ann Granger's, and one of Michael Jecks' medieval mysteries. I scored a brownie point with Mr Jecks by saying how loyal his customers were, buying his (to my mind over-priced) hardbacks - and probably cancelled it out by clearly being more excited at the prospect of his forthcoming collaboration with C J Sansom, a writer whose first two books have probably easily outsold Mr Jecks' last half dozen. (The fourth author, incidentally, was a chap called Andrew Nugent, a clergyman in his sixties whose debut novel comes out in August.)
The other highlight was on Good Friday, and the chance to see Hayseed Dixie on stage at Ferneham Hall as part of the Easter Folk Festival. Up close, the musicianship on display is phenomenal - particularly the banjo playing; the band leader works his socks off, playing a character role of a hill billy hellfire preacher, convincing the loyal congregation that Hank Williams' Lonesome Highway and AC/DC's Highway to Hell are, in fact, the same highway. Amen to that.
The dinner is one of two highlights of the past month for me. Not so much for the surroundings - Old Dining Hall, SEH, pleasant, not too formal - but for the conversation. I don't get much of a chance to talk about crime fiction outside of work, let alone talk about the various advance proofs that have been doing the rounds.
I did a little bit of homework before travelling up, reading a book by one of the four authors attending -Veronica Stallwood's latest Kate Ivory novel, "Oxford Letters". The two and a half hour train journey was the perfect opportunity to polish off chapters three to twenty nine, and I was pretty impressed by the end. (I've since read the first, "Death and the Oxford Box".) The books are traditional, fairly cosy, straight down the line mystery thrillers. The scam at the centre of "Oxford Letters" was one that I hadn't encountered before, and better still, the relationship between Kate and her independent mother Roz is beautifully drawn. There's also the pleasure - one which I used to get from the Morse books - of reading about the changes to Oxford over the years.
I was sat at the end of one of the long tables, next to a charming Polish lady who looks after foreign rights for Headline, and opposite Susie, the Crime specialist from the Windsor store, and Mr K, a man who had once managed Maidenhead for three months and is still talked about with a slight shudder by some of the staff there. (He's a lovely, charming person, and had a fund of tall stories about author events that he'd organised - but I could imagine how he might have infuriated some of my colleagues - sociable, smooth and a bit slippery.)
My favourite story of Mr K's was about Terry Wogan, requesting M&S smoked salmon sandwiches for lunch, and getting doorstep sized slices of bread, smothered in margarine, presented on paper hand towels from the staff toilet.
At the end of night I picked up about ten books from Veronica Stallwood's backlist, a couple of Ann Granger's, and one of Michael Jecks' medieval mysteries. I scored a brownie point with Mr Jecks by saying how loyal his customers were, buying his (to my mind over-priced) hardbacks - and probably cancelled it out by clearly being more excited at the prospect of his forthcoming collaboration with C J Sansom, a writer whose first two books have probably easily outsold Mr Jecks' last half dozen. (The fourth author, incidentally, was a chap called Andrew Nugent, a clergyman in his sixties whose debut novel comes out in August.)
The other highlight was on Good Friday, and the chance to see Hayseed Dixie on stage at Ferneham Hall as part of the Easter Folk Festival. Up close, the musicianship on display is phenomenal - particularly the banjo playing; the band leader works his socks off, playing a character role of a hill billy hellfire preacher, convincing the loyal congregation that Hank Williams' Lonesome Highway and AC/DC's Highway to Hell are, in fact, the same highway. Amen to that.
