Blogathon 17/26: Out!

Stand by with your smelling salts, kids, last night I went out and yes, it was as much a traumatic experience for the rest of the world as it was for me.

Leaving home in lots of good time and aiming for Waterstones in Nottingham, I made it with only 15 minutes to spare, thanks to the wonderfully fruitful experience that is Nottingham’s pothole-dodging rush-hour traffic. Straight away you’re hooked, eh? I can tell.

I bought a book. Actually, I bought 2 books, one of which was the reason behind my brief and spaniel-less sojourn into the dank and mysterious unknown Nottingham City Centre.

Last night I attended a talk by James Alistair Henry, author of Pagans, the novel wowing the critics and shooting up the bestseller charts (in a good way, not in a “gonna bust a cap in your ass” way).

Now this bit is slightly awkward. I’ve ‘known’ James for more than 10 and possibly less than 20 years (though never met him before). I can’t be precise on this because I’ve ‘known him’ through a couple of social mediae (I think that’s the plural of ‘medium’?) products, one of which I no longer have access to for reasons. So I’m going to share some info about the evening and, at the same time, try not to feel that I’m ratting out ‘a friend’.

James began the evening with a confident reading from his well-thumbed and bookmarked copy of Pagans. And then we were into the Q&A where a Waterstones member of staff did the Q and James did the A. It was a nervous start but they soon hit their rhythms. James relaxed into sharing anecdotes from his past, answering questions on Pagans (how this bit came about, why that bit happened, and this is the social and cultural geography in the book), and talking about some of the writers he’s encountered along the way. His sidebar anecdotes on being a TV comedy scriptwriter were revealing and amusing. His ‘how we write dialogue on Shaun The Sheep’ was illuminating.

There was a brief patch of inspiration in the evening for me when James (a man of many of accents, BTW, though his Cornish sounded a bit Hot Fuzish to my ear. Just the one ear though), when he mimicked an angry south coast man he’d worked with. The innocent sentence, delivered in scarily angry tones, inspired me to make a note to include an angry character in the fantasy project I’m working on.

The Q and A concluded and it was over to the floor for questions and a loooong moment of silence from the floor, so I stepped in. Now, the question I’d thought of on the drive into town was ‘James, what is the best comedy show you’ve written for and why is the answer Smack The Pony?’ (brushing aside his work on Green Wing, because I carried a torch for Doon Mackichan, and probably still do). I tucked that away, though, and instead I asked about ‘the plan’ and whether characters, their dialogue, and situations wrote themselves (because mine do, all the flippin’ time!). I was disappointed when James began by saying no, but then he wibbled and wavered and admitted there was wiggle room where situations adapted themselves.

The evening concluded with the obligatory book-signing. I introduced myself, we shook hands, had a chat about how weird it is to meet people we know from the socials and then I headed back to the car and the potholey delights of the A52. It was a nice touch to get a ‘hello’ from James on Bluesky when I got back home.

I’m really looking forward to reading Pagans which I’ve promoted to the top of my TBR list. I’ll get into it as soon as I’ve finished my current night-time book. I promise.