Author Events - Nottingham

 by The Mole

 Last week was a busy week for us with two separate and very different author events being held in Nottingham.

The first event was Alison Moore, author of The Lighthouse which was, of course, Booker Prize short listed. The event was to cover the launch of her latest book The Pre-War House and other stories, published by Salt and nominated for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award 2013. The event was held on the ground floor of Waterstones which offers a cosy environment amongst the book shelves laden with their cargo of stories. When we arrived we were greeted by a glass of bubbly as this was, after all, a book launch. The audience was the usual mix of couples and after a brief introduction to her route into publishing - which started as many authors do, through short stories -she read a couple of complete stories from the collection, Jetsam and The Smell of the Slaughterhouse. She then followed this with a reading from the beginning of The Pre-War House. The Q&A seemed to focus, unsurprisingly, more on The Lighthouse and how she got published (a topic that so many of these events tend to raise). The book signing and one-on-one that goes with it ensued.    

Rachel Caine's event was the second event she had held at the store and so the larger, more formal location of the Sillitoe room was chosen. The event was to promote Fall of Night, the penultimate book in the The Morganville Vampire series. With most seats taken, it brought a smile to my face when I looked around the room and found less than 10 men in the room and most of them were accompanying their partners, although there were one or two that had come on their own. Rachel started by explaining her name. Yes, it's a pen-name but she explained she has also written as Roxanne Longstreet and Roxanne Conrad. She has written under a couple of other names as well but these she didn't mention. Rather surprisingly there was no reading but instead she recounted events along the way to getting Fall of Night published and how the first book came about. Although the emphasis was on The Morganville Vampire series she has written a few other series of books namely Outcast Season, The Revivalist and The Weather Warden. Neither Maryom nor The Mole has read any of her books (though our daughter has) but despite that the evening was very entertaining and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. The last Morganville book comes out before the end of the year and she has another book out later this year in The Revivalist series. Clearly she is not only a great speaker and entertainer (everything was tinged with humour) but she is also a prolific author. After a Q&A which focusssed on The Morganville Vampires the book signing snaked slowly around the room and people left gleefully excited that THEY had spoken to Rachel Caine. Another great event from Waterstones.