lizwilliams | Bath Literary Festival

A lovely time was had, basically. T couldn't come with me, as he was doing the Pagan Federation con in Reading, so I drove up to Bath (26 miles but an hour's drive no matter which way you go) in time for lunch, parked the car (this is a big deal in Bath: any Georgian town was designed for coaches and horses, not the modern vehicular conveyance) and found lunch in a very nice noodle bar near the station.

After this, I located the Guildhall and was immediately sucked into the engine that is the Bath Lit Fest - this is a seriously professional operation, with sound checks, teams of staff, and am imposing green room that is, in real life, the Mayor's parlour. My fellow interviewee, author Alan Campbell, was already there and shortly we were joined by Christopher Cook, the interviewer: Cook is a BBC R4 broadcaster, if I have this correctly, and is the artistic director of Cheltenham Lit Fest. He is a delightful, avuncular and thoroughly professional man. He'd read Alan's book, SCAR NIGHT, and also mine, and he was extremely well informed about SF and about the process of writing. Alan and I both did short readings, and then the interview itself.

palecast or Cheryl M can assess this better than I can, but I thought it went very well.

MUST read SCAR NIGHT, now. It sounds great. Go and check it out - he's another Tor Macmillan author.

After this, we were back in the green room for a short chat with some of the festival staff - all SF readers, and this is good to see. Genre is, as we all know, under-represented on the lit fest circuit.

And then Alan made the radical suggestion that we go to the pub. So we did, although due to the nature of driving, a wild time was not had - at least not by me! I got back home in time to rescue our house guests and watch a small, bloody moon be eaten away by the eclipse. Even before the eclipse, it was stunning coming back over the Mendips and seeing the huge yellow moon rising over the brow of the hills. It's weather for hares.