Author on the prowl

While we're putting together the paperback - next week I'll look at putting the blurb and quotes together - publicity continues for the hardback.

Our author - Michael Cannon - has been at the Edinburgh Festival doing a reading and sitting on a small panel to promote Lachlan's War and to meet his public. I thought it might be interesting to get two different perspectives on how the event went – the author's and his editor's.

Here is Michael's take:

I'd decided to read the first chapter because it was brief, it set the historical context and it introduced the two main protagonists.  There were two other authors, Alan Bissett and Nick Brooks, reading and I thought we would be allocated fifteen minutes each.  I can't remember where I got that idea from, but I had timed the reading and managed bring it in just on time.

Just as we were getting microphones attached to our shirts the chair of the event told us we had ten minutes maximum in which to read.  Luckily I was the last to go the lectern, so while the other two did their bit I frantically searched through the book looking for a shorter chapter.  The only ones I could find would have required an introduction.  I went back to chapter one and tried to work out which paragraphs I could excise without compromising the meaning.  My wife later told me she could see me on the podium silently mouthing the words.  I must have looked like one of those people you see arguing with themselves in the street, and who had accidentally found themselves on stage.  My turn came and I decided to overcome the problem by reading quickly, which, combined with nerves, had the effect of making me sound like a runaway locomotive that had jumped the points. I don’t know how comprehensible a lot of it was to the audience. 

The question and answer session was interesting.  Both other authors were younger, and had both come through a creative writing course (one taught creative writing).  I on the other hand had learned to write by a process of osmosis, trying to find a consensus of opinion from a pile of rejection letters.  Whatever I managed to learn was through dogged perseverance, rather than camaraderie.  We talked about character. Nick and Alan talked about the unexpected development of character on the page.  They were sometimes surprised what characters said and did.  My characters do exactly what I tell them - they are effectively galley slaves.  Lachlan’s War is also very episodic because my writing time is limited.  I wrote much of the novel on the train home from work, with papers balanced precariously on my lap.  I knew what I had to achieve in each scene and what the characters had to communicate to one another, but not necessarily the way they would say it.  If there was any opportunity for characters speaking ex tempore, as it were, they had to say it by the time they reached Clarkston Station.

Two genteel Edinburgh ladies intercepted me on the way to the book signings, and told me I wrote beautifully but read far too quickly.  It was an oblique compliment, but you have take compliments where you find them.  By the time I explained my dilemma most of  the audience seemed to have left.  I found the bookshop tent and signed a gratifying number of books (I'm easily pleased) including one for each of the genteel ladies.

Mary took me for a nice lunch.  The sun shone and Edinburgh looked beautiful.  

While here's what Mary, Michael's editor, had to say:

Having worked in book publishing for ten years it is a bit shaming to admit that until this year I had never been to the Edinburgh Book Festival. If you haven’t been, I highly recommend it. It is just what a book festival should be. The city is buzzing with what seems like every art form - from an exhibition of Ron Mueck's extraordinary sculptures at the Royal Scottish Academy, to a Radiohead concert in Meadowbank stadium making the taxi drivers complain about the traffic; from some pretty terrible street theatre in the old town to the apparently terrific new play, Black Watch, for which tickets could not be had for love nor money.

In amongst this was a beautifully organised festival of books where events were packed with audiences of all ages, where established authors and newer writers rubbed shoulders in the authors’ ‘yurt’. The organiser, Catherine Lockerbie, puts very interesting writers together and, perhaps as importantly, finds very good chair people to direct the events. Michael Cannon’s event was no exception. Michael’s new book, Lachlan’s War, is a very moving novel set on the west coast of Scotland in the 1940s. He shared the stage with two other Scottish writers, Alan Bissett and Nick Brooks, who had written very different books and were of a different generation which led to an interesting discussion on a range of subjects: creative writing schools; the influence, or not, of the older generation of Scottish writers; how novelists research their novels (if they feel the need to).

The very different readings, the utterly different answers given by the three writers reinforced the idea, if reinforcement were needed, that writing is a wholly idiosyncratic process, where rules are impossible to apply and writers are impossible to predict! After working on Michael’s wonderful book over the last year it was so terrific to hear him read it and to see the queue of people asking him to sign copies after the event. I hope that those readers will spread the word about this really remarkable writer.

The discussion, the atmosphere in the book festival, the city, the delicious lunch with Michael and his wife afterwards were all so enjoyable that I failed to realise that my train had left Waverley Station half an hour earlier. I arrived home in the middle of the night wondering why I don’t live in Scotland. 

VB

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Comments

[John Gooley]

You were right to give Michael Cannon free reign here. "My characters do exactly what I tell them - they are effectively galley slaves." Love it.

[Jennifer]

I'm green with envy.