My greatest test to date …
Kensal Library, Thursday night: The biggest audience that I’d ever faced as a published author.
Maybe 30 or so people there, all of them eager, eager to learn about what it takes to get published. A number of them with note-pads and pens poised, the better to scribble down every pearl as it fell from my lips.
On the panel side, we had Judith the agent - who was the only person that anyone was genuinely interested in hearing from.
And we had four of Idle Tom’s writers, there to tout our wares: me, Lee, Jae and Josie.
The audience was perfectly polite as they listened to us authors go through our schtick. But it was only Judith who actually had them on the edge of their seats.
My sales pitch went okay. Some of the gags worked.
But then Josie rattled the swill-drum. And THAT’S when they audience sat up.
"Go on," she said. "Tell them about Daisy Dooley."
"If I must."
But actually I was particularly grateful that Josie did mention the Daisy Dooley stuff. It’s a damn funny story - that Amazon’s "Perfect Partner" for The Well-Tempered Clavier is none other than my ex-wife’s own novel "Daisy Dooley Does Divorce" - and it gets better with every telling. When I came to the punch-line, there was an absolute detonation of laughter.
Best laugh of the night.
I’ll be trying to work it into my talks next Tuesday - two libraries in Havering. Slavering, no doubt, for a flavouring of romance.