The Early Days of a Better Nation

Friday, June 25, 2010



Reading in The Illicit Still



Yesterday's West Port Book Festival went well. I did a reading from The Restoration Game, followed by a brief Q&A and a signing session. About 15 people turned up, not bad for a sunny Thursday afternoon, the questions were well chosen and a good half dozen books were sold and signed. (Advance copies are still available at Edinburgh Books until Wednesday.)

Pictures can be found here and here (from which the above pic by chrisdonia is taken under Creative Commons Licence).

This is only the second time I've done a reading from this book. The first time, at its sort-of-pre-launch, I stayed on the safe side by reading from a section that's the diary of a male character whose accent is more or less mine. This time I dived straight in and read from the first chapter, a first-person narration by the heroine, Lucy, whose only dialogues in the chapter are with other female characters. The audience seemed to take this in their stride despite my age, accent and sex being completely different from Lucy's, not to mention her mother's and grandmother's. I think it's called imagination.

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7 Comments:

Whaaat? Nobody told me!

Yikes! Sorry, Charlie. It's on my blog, but I should have emailed around.

I thought your Lucy accent was good! I really enjoyed the event and I've written up my notes about it here:

http://helencaldwell.wordpress.com/2010/06/29/ken-macleod-west-port-book-festival-2010/

I'm looking forward to getting stuck into The Restoration Game.

Thanks Helen. I've linked to your blog on my sidebar, under 'Literary Edinburgh'. And I'll comment there in a mo.

Bloody hell, you do a signing in my mates pub and I don't find out until it's too late. I was actually in Shetland but I might have been able to get someone to get me a signed copy...

Stewart, you can get a signed copy at Transreal in the Grassmarket - see two posts up for the links.

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