Venue: Goldsboro Books, Cecil Court, London's west end. (A veritable trove of stocks for book-loving collectors.)
The book: L.C.Tyler's Ten Little Herrings from Macmillan.
The date and time: Thursday 30 July 2009 @ 18:30.
The purpose: launch PARTY!
Now for the people...
Len (to his friends) does a short reading from the comic crime novel which is the second in his Ethelred and Elsie series. And he picked a good bit: Elsie the lit agent's rules, read with panache.
The team: from the left Sophie Portas (PR with Macmillan); David Headley (host with Goldsboro Books); Will Atkins (editor with Macmillan's MNW imprint); the lovely Len (purveyor of proper comic crime fiction); Toby Did-Not-Get-the-Surname (sales at Macmillan and who knows an awful lot about Berlin).
A good time was had by all and it was great to meet Len's wife again. I finally got to meet Sophie after a good couple of years of email correspondence and supremely efficient delivery of books. Ditto for Aliya Whiteley, MNW author of Light Reading who is currently working on the follow up. Shock of the night (for both of us) was bumping into Chris Ewan of The Good Thief's Guide to... who had been invited along by Will when they met at Harrogate last weekend and he discovered that Chris and his wife were in town for a wedding this weekend. We later went for a bite to eat and what a lovely couple they are.
Not only is Goldsboro Books is great place to add to your collection, but David Headley proved to be a massive resource of knowledge on the "coming up front." If you visit, as well you should when in the vicinity, do seek him out.
Killing two birds with one stone in one trip, I was delighted that the lady in charge of management of the stage door of the Duke of York's Theatre round the corner arranged for my copy of Neil Pearson's Obelisk to be signed. Thank you Mr P. Len, very kindly signed my copy of Ten Little Herrings after signing some 80 copies of his most recent novels for Goldsboro Books.
Len confirmed that he has bitten the bullet and is about to embark on writing full time. He and Ann are also planning some travel.
I have about 20 pages still to read but in a preview of my thoughts Ten Little Herrings was hard to read. This is because the novel put a permanent smile on my face, thus creasing up my eyes and seeing out proved difficult. Advice on coping with such a predicament is this: close book, close eyes, take a deep breath and then pick up where you left off. Repeat many, many times and enjoy.
I'll post on the book on the weekend, but don't feel you have to wait for the benefits. Amazon may say the publication date is 7 August, but a good friend of mine received a copy via Waterstone's yesterday. Just plough in and enjoy, folks!
Now for those last pages...
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