The Season of Festivals...

Where has the time gone?

I know book festivals take place throughout the year, but the summer months are particularly popular.

For me, June means  it's Lowdham Book Festival, 17th-25th. So I'll be doing my usual stint at the writers' club stall on the 25th.

 I need to dig out the bag with the see-through acrylic stands and leaflet holders ready for this year's display material.

Every year is a learning experience, seeing what works and what is an absolute failure in display terms.

This year 's Lowdham Book Festival is in its 17th year, and I've attended the free Saturday events day for at least eleven of the last twelve years.

Of course events develop and change over time, but I've always found the Saturday a good indicator of how the local and even national economy is affecting people.

 Do people buy one or two new books, or will they buy half a dozen? Modern second-hand books always seem to weather the ups and downs...

Buying books...

The last couple of years have been good, and it's reassuring to all writers to see a healthy trade in books, whether new, very old, or second-hand.

I scour the attending antiquarian type book stalls every year, but set myself a budget, otherwise I'd need a suitcase- and a lottery win... :D

This year's free Saturday events will be taking place the day after the results of the EU referendum have been announced, plus it's also a busy day for assorted events around the immediate region so fingers crossed for sunshine, or at least a dry day.

Besides Lowdham, Derby Book Festival is now running until the 11th June; and hopefully there will be another Books at the Castle in Newark (held for the first time August 2015).

If you're in the area then do look at the Lowdham festival programme; you can download it from The Bookcase website, here.

Do you have a local book festival that you attend? Or do you prefer the bigger festivals like Hay, or

Edinburgh?



image courtesy of Danilo Rizzuti & www.freedigitalphotos.net

Character or Plot- Which Arrives First?

Do you have a favourite series that you hate to miss?

Well Saturday night in the my house is NCIS night. Now to be honest across the week NCIS: seasons 10, 11 and 12 are being shown on assorted digital channels (along with the New Orleans and Los Angeles versions), which can be confusing as one night a relative of one character can be dead, and the next week on a different channel the dead character is still alive...

This is where box-sets come in useful.

Anyway, my OH just watches the story and whoever is in that episode- he calls it moving wallpaper; I told him that the characters and what's happening to them is as important as the story. He wasn't convinced...

That is what got me thinking about plot versus character, and which comes first?

Which arrives first?

If you define plot as "a sequence of events" that occur through the story, then I'd have to say no that doesn't come first- at least for me.

In fact whenever I've had a story idea and some of the plot before finding the characters for it, they have never made any progress no matter how much time I've put in. The last time I tried that it was three wasted months.

For me, it runs: initial idea (that is usually the result of two random incidents/thoughts/information) - a vague scene of one or two characters, but enough to start developing them - more ideas - research - basic bios of my characters- chapter outlines - write the first draft and discover more about the characters and plot as I work.

Looking at the process that way it's 50/50.

Every writer has their own way of doing things, so someone else may have the plot and then looks for their characters to fill the story.

Others discover as they go along.

So are you plot first? Characters first? Or somewhere in-between?