Winter Conference Highlights

Yesterday was the Pan Macmillan Winter Sales Conference – my first ever book event, which I attended as part of the Ford Street delegation. It was a long day in the Yarra Valley full of free food, speed dating with sales reps, speeches and free wine, although not necessarily in that order, and I had an absolute blast. So here, recorded for posterity, are some of the highlights:

1. Spending the day with the wonderful George Ivanoff and Meredith Costain.

2. The proliferation of tiny little custard tarts topped with glazed strawberries, of which I devoured my own bodyweight.

3. The self-help author whose pitch to a room full of publishers included the words ‘nobody reads books anymore’ and the admission that he didn’t read, either.

4. The number of sales reps/Pan Macmillian people who were not only lovely and interesting, but fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

5. The speed-dating session, wherein I repeated myself umpteen times in the pursuit of marketing my book, but nonetheless had a fabulous time. And also, it was actually timed speed-dating. With table numbers and a stopwatch.

6. The free drinks from 5:30 onwards.

7. Bradley Trevor Grieve’s speech at dinner, which included a toast in Swahili and a rousing defence of dogs, and which made reference, among other things, to Hitler, skydiving, French cinema, fevered morphine dreams, Egyptian mythology, Paris Hilton and hermaphroditism.  

8. The part where I was awarded a soft toy Siamese cat for asking a vociferous and pedantic question about undines. 

9. The fact that, due to the effects of free alcohol and the suggestions of not one, but two lovely PanMac people and also my own madness, said toy cat was promptly dubbed Selina James Grieve. Thanks, Anita and Robin!

10. And this was only my first conference.

Midway Point

We’re halfway through the year.

This is exciting on many levels, not least of which is that in 43 days, I’ll be entering the UK for a glorious five months. Already, so much of significance has happened in 2009 – Solace and Grief being accepted for publication, joining the excellent SuperNova writing group, planning our trip – that part of me finds it hard to believe how much else is yet to come. Tomorrow, for instance, I’ll be meeting my publisher at Ford Street, Paul Collins, face-to-face for the first time. Later this month, I’ll be attending my first ever event as a writer, the Pan Macmillan winter sales conference, about which I am both exhilirated and nervous. Once we’re in the UK, Toby and I will have our second wedding anniversary in Bristol; we’ll be in Scotland for winter and Surry for Christmas, which will be a new experience for both of us. I’ve started writing short stories, which is a new and fascinating thing – not that they’re brilliant so far, but I’m working on it, and the more I write them, the more confident I feel. Perhaps that’s why I’ve been blogging less: my strange ideas are ending up in stories rather than expository posts, refracted through a fictitious lens instead of a journalistic one.

I’m loving 2009. My only worry is that so much will have happened by December 31 that the sheer volume of significance will cause a mental implosion – that it will be too hard to remember each little thing, and so I’ll forget everything instead, swept away by the Big Event of 2010, which will be the book release itself. But at least I’ll be able to use my blog as a reminder. After all, that’s part of why it’s here.