Now in its second year, the cosy, relaxed feel of the festival belies its astonishing ambition and scope. This year’s participants include Sir Terry Pratchett, Sir Andrew Motion, Michael Wood, Robert McCrum, Charlie Higson, Allison Pearson…I could go on and on. Talks and readings are interspersed with events such as a Crime Fiction Tea complete with Delicious Death cake while aspiring writers can take part in a Creative Writing session run by the bestselling author Celia Brayfield.

I participated in the festival last year as an author but took my 8 year old daughter along this time around to enjoy it from the other side of the fence. We listened enraptured to award-winning children’s author Anthony McGowan whose hilarious new book Einstein’s Underpants – And How They Saved The World is out now. Equally enthralling, and coping manfully with an audience whose age range spanned everything from toddlers to grown-ups, was Josh Lacey who has just published the latest in his brilliant Grk series, Grk Down Under.

Kudos to the indefatigable Torin Douglas and his team for what is a thoroughly enjoyable event. It pulls off the rare feat of appealing to a wide range of reading tastes while always remaining entertaining and informative. The festival runs through until tomorrow evening, Sunday 19th September, so you still have time to catch this evening’s events, which include Sir Andrew Motion, as well as Sadie Jones, Rebecca Frayn, Adele Parks et al. And the best thing about it? All the money raised goes to good causes including reading related charities. Now that’s what I call a literary festival with heart!

And not just because she’s my daughter but because it reminded me of how I used to relish words for their own sake, scattering them through my writing like jewels which drew the reader in with their sparkle. A professional writer sometimes loses sight of the sheer joy of words, just as a professional chef become inured to the taste, smell and beauty of individual ingredients.

Thanks to my daughter, I have had a fresh burst of inspiration, not to mention motherly pride. What she wrote was pure poetry and I share it with you as a piece that rightly stands on its own merits and not merely as the work of a child…or even my child.

Here is what she wrote:

Once a castle a frigid, glacial place. Its turrets were lofty and shameful and its arrow slits were left forlorn and untouched. A palace so flamboyant and fluid, the doors so burnished and sleek, its flags fluttering in the rousy wind. The forest silently sits there, the trees a light or dark green among the others, their musty brown trunks slowly grow puffy mushrooms over the years. An ocean, sea blue as the shimmering red fish hide from the zinc white and grey seagulls. A house, the cement has crumbled, the roof has the tiles slated off and the flowers are beautiful.

Of course, we are facing a world in which digital forms of entertainment have gained rapid ground. For younger people, in particular, they are the the first resort when it comes to choosing how they wish to spend that segment of their leisure time.

I touched on the subject of digitization in my previous post and its effects will have far-reaching consequences for all creators of original entertainment. Those who fail to adapt to the new environment may find that there is no longer a place for their work on any platform.

You can read what Anthony Horowitz has to say on the subject here:

Horowitz Blogging at The Bookseller

I suggest you head on over there and read the debate in its entirety.  It’s fascinating to see it from all sides, some authors clearly very unhappy with their experience of agents and others coming at it from a more positive angle.

Here’s what I had to say:

This is the cover of the German edition of Kumari, Goddess of Gotham, which has just been published by Fischer Schatzinsel in Frankfurt. Like every author on the planet (and if they deny it they’re lying) I’ve checked on Amazon.de and it seems to be going down well with four and five star reviews. For all I know, as I don’t speak German, they could be scathing in their content but, in this case, I’ll settle for blissful ignorance.

What I love about foreign editions are the variations on a title – in this case it has become Prinzessin in New York. I also love the illustration by Annabelle von Sperber and the satisfyingly chunky feel of this hardback edition. That’s the other great thing about translations…sometimes your work acquires epic proportions in the process.

We came home after a gloriously sunny day spent at the fair in our local park to find an OB van parked in our street and press camped outside the church opposite our house.  We knew nothing of the plane crash or the fact that the priest who had been in charge of the church for the past eight years had perished in it.  It was a BBC World Service reporter who told me the news and it felt like a punch to my gut.

I’ve learned from reading reports since that Father Gostomski was both a Canon and personal chaplain to the Polish President.  We knew him simply as Father and as the man who brought order and unity to a sometimes disparate congregation.  Polish accession into the EU brought hundreds of thousands of Poles to London, swelling the congregation at the church to often unmanageable proportions.  This has had a profound impact on what is a narrow street in a residential area of West London and on the streets around.

To try to ameliorate the detrimental effect on the neighbourhood and the growing tensions between locals and the Polish congregation, I was asked to sit on the Ward Panel committee run by the Metropolitan Police. Father Gostomski was also a member and it was then that I began to appreciate his straightforward, positive approach coupled to immense energy and drive.

It was this charisma and personal warmth that enabled him to raise over a million pounds to restore the church as well as £10,000 in a single day to help the citizens of Haiti.  It was his positivity and deep faith, I am sure, that also fuelled his recovery from throat cancer.  He was given the all clear only a week or so before he boarded that plane.  But it was through our frequent chats outside the church or in the street that I came to know a man who loved fishing so much he wanted to retire by a lake with his rods and who was not averse to a great belly laugh when the situation merited it.

Father Gostomski was no pushover – several times I saw him physically eject a drunk from the church garden and he once saw off a bunch of menacing teenagers so effectively that they never came back.  He would chastise his congregation when necessary, exhorting them to pick up their detritus, including flowers left in the remembrance garden which had since rotted.  He was deeply loved, however, for his ability to draw old and young together – to unite the emigres who had been here for years and the new immigrants with their entirely different attitudes. He believed in community above all else and it is as a community that we will miss him.

We watched from our garden gate as 400 people gathered last night to remember him and all those who had died.  We heard the strains of a violin playing before the portrait of him placed on the altar and I felt my heart ache.  As the evening grew chillier my daughter stole away inside to draw her picture in privacy.  I stood there until the last member of the congregation had left and the press had departed, taking their cameras with them.  Then I crossed over the road and placed a candle beside the plain white Madonna that Father Gostomski had personally chosen to adorn the garden.  I said a silent prayer for a good man and, as ever, I wondered why.

It is with another of his often misquoted sayings, however, that I take issue, especially as today is Mother’s Day for it was also Connolly who said: “There is no more sombre enemy of good art than a pram in the hall.”  Given that Connolly died in 1974 at the age of 71, it is reasonable to assume that he was referring mainly to women artists and writers as hands-on parenting was yet to become fashionable amongst fathers.  In my experience and his vernacular, Connolly was talking utter tosh.

Post motherhood, most creative women I know become even more so.  Sure, we no longer have the luxury of endless stretches of unbroken time to dedicate to our work but, then again, who does?  Live, as ever, intervenes and what more valuable intervention can there be than a child?  In fact, I would hazard that most artistic mothers achieve even more and do so with greater efficiency.  We learn to wring every atom of productivity out of the time we have and push boundaries farther than we did pre-motherhood.

After all, if you can heave out the average-sized child and deal with the dollops of maternal guilt ladled out by society you can certainly handle the odd wayward plot or tricky character.   I think Connolly put it better when he said:  “A lazy person, whatever the talents with which he starts forth, will have condemned himself to second-hand thoughts, and to second-rate friends.”  Now that, Cyril, is more like it.

I was reading about the music industry at the weekend and how there is a surge in purchases of good old fashioned records.  Some labels are only releasing new stuff on vinyl.  I like that.  It feels authentic.  And so does my refusal to be sucked in by the endless quicksand that is social media.  Sure, I still do all of the above but not when I am supposed to be writing. 

I am one of those writers who becomes wholly absorbed in their work.  Hell, I don’t even play the radio when I’m writing.  I need peace.  Silence. Endless acres of imaginative potential.  I see writers Twittering away all the time and wonder how they do it.  Do I envy them?  No.  I prefer to give everything I have to the work at hand.  For me, social media drains my work of vital energy.  So I might at times feel like a party-pooper but frankly I prefer writing in joined up sentences to producing endless 140 character soundbites.

While you’re there, check out her new book: The Ice Cream Girls.  As thought-provoking, warm and insightful as her other books, this is sure to be a huge hit.  Here’s what the blurb has to say:

As teenagers Poppy Carlisle and Serena Gorringe were the only witnesses to a tragic event. Amid heated public debate, the two seemingly glamorous teens were dubbed ‘The Ice Cream Girls’ by the press and were dealt with by the courts.

Years later, having led very different lives, Poppy is keen to set the record straight about what really happened, while married mother-of-two Serena wants no one in her present to find out about her past. But some secrets will not stay buried – and if theirs is revealed, everything will become a living hell all over again . . .

Gripping, thought-provoking and heart-warming, The Ice Cream Girls will make you wonder if you can ever truly know the people you love

The Optimist’s Creed

by Christian Larson

Promise Yourself …

To be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind.

To talk health, happiness, and proseprity to every person
you meet.

To make all your friends feel that there is something
worthwhile in them.

To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism
come true.

To think only of the best, to work only for the best and to
expect only the best.

To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you
are about your own.

To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater
achievements of the future.

To wear a cheerful expression at all times and give a smile
to every living creature you meet.

To give so much time to improving yourself that you have no
time to criticize others.

To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong
for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.

To think well of yourself and to proclaim this fact to the
world, not in loud word, but in great deeds.

To live in the faith that the whole world is on your side,
so long as you are true to the best that is in you.

Have an amazing 2010!