John Connolly - Author Event.

By The Mole

Yesterday we went to see our second author event of the week - John Connolly at Waterstones in Nottingham introducing his new book "A Song of Shadows" - a Charlie Parker Thriller.

As is customary on such occasions John opened the evening with a reading - but with a difference as this turned out to be a short story called "The Hollow King" from a collection of short stories that is due to be published later this year. By way of introduction he recounted an incident of a short story reading he attended previously and managed to get the audience laughing from the off. This short story was, as promised, short and contained a twist in the tail that I didn't much like - which is how I like my short stories. An excellent start to the evening.

John then set about telling us a story that started in a bar and led onto a recounting of bringing war criminals to justice - or not - from the time of the second world war to date. I genuinely found this story fascinating - although John managed to tastefully include some humour where appropriate. Throughout this tale I tried to understand its context to "The Hollow King" but not hugely successfully. He then invited questions and the first one was whether this research he had undertaken on war criminals was to be the subject of a future Charlie Parker book. At this point after a moment of enlightenment the room was once again brought to laughter when he explained that he had completely forgotten to explain the context and that this story related to this current book.

In response to questioning he explained that he knew where the Charlie Parker stories would end but had no plans to get to it at the moment but a slow, logical progression was being followed towards that goal. If the publisher pulled the plug then he could produce that story but so long as the publisher is happy then he has no plans to end the Charlie Parker story yet.

John's Connolly's publisher's page is at Hodder and Stoughton
John's own website is here

Another most excellent evening spent the company of another best selling author and we look forward to hopefully seeing James North, who worked in the United States Naval Intelligence department before writing his novels Deep Deception and The Last Chameleon. James will be at Waterstones in Nottingham on 25th April at 7pm. James North sounds like a real life "Jack Ryan".

John Connolly and Mark Billingham - author event

John Connolly

By The Mole 

Last night (18th Sept 2012) saw another author event with John Connolly and Mark Billingham at Waterstones in Nottingham. Both are successful crime writers and could easily have held the night on their own, but we had a double treat. Both authors have books out and work in the pipeline. But there is one other thing they have in common and that is "Books to Die For" which is a collection of 'essays' that 120 different writers have produced telling why their choice of mystery novel is a book "to die for". Not all the selections are gritty murder mysteries - the brief was 'mystery' and didn't include the word 'murder'. Authors like AS Byatt (Possesion) are included as well as Douglas Adams (Dirk Gently) also murder mysteries including Agatha Christie (Hercules Poirot) and Reginald Hill (Dalziel & Pascoe).

Mark Billingham

Connolly and Declan Burke edited the collection as well as contributing to the book. Billingham also contributed and that was the link between these two authors' presentation.

The evening started with Billingham giving a brief introduction of himself and then reading a very short story "Fifty Shades of Thorne" - an extremely entertaining satirical piece that had the room laughing from the off. He then read from the next Tom Thorne novel - a work in progress which he didn't give the title to because he said it would probably change yet.

Connolly then talked to us about himself and "Books to Die For" and once again it was peppered with humour that kept the room laughing.

Both authors then sat and discussed, between themselves but to the room, various mystery writers and their works, again keeping the mood light hearted. Most of the authors discussed were featured in the collection and, sadly, many were new to me, but with stories spanning from 1841 to 2008 perhaps that isn't too surprising.

With works by both authors available for purchase - or take your own collection in - a book signing followed.

Another great event by Waterstones giving fans and casual readers a chance to meet and ask questions of successful writers.