But that’s cheating!

Candice.  A couple of weeks ago I went to see a book reading by an author called Kate Morton.  I’ll be honest, I’d not heard of her but my friend promised a free glass of wine on arrival and a chance to pick the writer’s brains.  It was held in the Library Theatre in the middle of Birmingham, a lovely historic setting.

So after we’d eaten various types of food for dinner, as there was a food fair on in Brum, off we trooped to see this lady.  In the mean time I’d looked at her website and thought, “Hum, her writing is not really my cup of tea but I’ll give it a go.”

Anyway, a lovely evening was had with some gossiping with my friend, but no free wine (council cuts, we think), and Kate was actually a lot more interesting than I thought.

She began by explaining how she came to be a writer and then her writing process. One of the most interesting things was, she’s an Aussie, but her books are set in the UK.  One of the audience asked her why, and she said it just seemed natural as all the books she’d read when she was growing up were set in the UK, and she’d grown up in a place called Tambourine Mountain outside Brisbane which was a little British enclave. Gave her a good excuse to come to the UK regularly for some research too!

However, after 45 mins of patter and abit of book reading we got to the most interesting section.  Up went my hand first, but she wasn’t looking at my side of the room.  After abit of desperate attention seeking, “Me Miss, Me Me” I got to ask my question.

“So, how did you get published?”

“Well”, says our Kate in her lovely Brisbane accent, ” I had a friend who was a published author and I gave my first book to her agent.”

“Oh,” says I, though quietly.  And turned to my friend, “That’s cheating.”

Kate did go on to explain it took three manuscripts before someone finally picked up on her, but she had an AGENT!  Needless to say I left the event most miffed!

But, I might still give one of her books a go – I quite got into it when she read the first chapter. I’ll let you know what I think.

And, as Phil quite rightly pointed out afterwards, yes I did sit in the theatre and think, “that should be me!”