May 12th Waterstone’s Abergavenny 11am – 3pm
May 27th Waterstone’s Cribbs Causeway 11am, – 3pm
June 2nd Waterstone’s Southampton 11am – 3pm
June 9th Waterstone’s Haywards Heath 11am – 2pm
August 18th Waterstone’s Wells 11am – 3pm
August 25th Waterstone’s Camberley 11am – 3pm
October 27th Waterstone’s Woking 11am – 3pm
November 3rd Waterstones Trowbridge 11am – 3pm
Filed under Book Signings, Books & Publishing
It’s been a really busy time recently, including a trip across the country to Suffolk to visit some schools and do another book-signing event.
Both legs of the car-ride were through torrential rain: the kind when you can hardly see the car right in front of you. In fact, as I drove around London, the weather reminded me of the beginning of Watchers.
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Skenfrith Castle
In my last post I talked about how I mix fact and fiction in the Tilly Greenway books and how much I love going to the various “sacred sites” and places of historic interest that pop up in our tale. There’s so much to see and learn in any country, but England, Wales and Ireland certainly have their share of wonderful places to visit.
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A warm welcome to the lovely Emma Newman who is guest posting a story here this week from her very innovative Spilt Worlds project. From Tuesday November 1st 2011 to Thursday November 1st 2012 a new story set in the Split Worlds is posted on a different blog/website every week, and leads up to the launch of ‘The Split Worlds: Between Two Thorns’ on November 1st 2012.
Emma is the author of 20 Years Later, a dystopian YA novel and describes The Split Worlds, her current work in progress, as an urban fantasy setting with gritty noir, fantastical magic, evil faeries and people just trying to drink their tea in peace!
The idea of a story slowly building its own new world by popping up on various websites all around the web-world struck us a pretty ingenious so we are delighted that a little part is bubbling up today on Katy Press. So without further ado…..Here’s Emma…
This is the twenty-third tale in a year and a day of weekly short stories set in The Split Worlds. If you would like me to read it to you instead, you can listen here. You can find links to all the other stories, and the new ones as they are released here.
She saw him from a café across the street as she finished her coffee. White faced, eyes squeezed shut, his arms were wrapped around a lamp post. He was dressed in loose dark trousers and a quilted wine-coloured jacket like one from the awful period dramas her mother watched. Ten people walked past him, eyes fixed ahead in true London style. “Heartless gits,” she sighed and grabbed her bag.
By the time she got across the road he was still clinging to the lamp post like it was a ship’s mast in a storm. The afternoon sun was warm, but not enough to make him sweat so much, and his breath came in short, rapid gasps. He looked about forty, with only a few grey hairs scattered amongst the dark brown.
“Hello,” she touched his arm gently. “Are you alright?”
One eye opened, the other still squeezed shut. It was a pleasant, unusual green and very bloodshot.
“No,” he whispered. “Everything’s changed.”
She looked around. “What do you mean?”
“All of those… things…” He looked at the road. “I just wanted to see the blue sky, that’s all, but it’s too much. Nothing makes sense.”
“My name’s Amber, what’s yours?”
“Archibald. Archie.” He took a couple of deep breaths and held out a hand. She offered hers, but instead of shaking it he pressed his lips to the back of her hand. She tried to ignore the dampness left by his upper lip. “How do you do?”
She discreetly wiped her hand on the back of her dress. “Archie, would you like me to help you?”
“Yes please,” he replied. “I feel quite unwell. I’m so frightfully embarrassed.”
“Okay. You need to let go of the lamp post.”
“Yes, of course.” He eventually unwrapped his arms, keeping his back to the road. “May I take your arm? I… I’m not…”
“That’s fine,” she smiled. “My Mum gets these attacks, I know how scary they can be. Have you found it hard to breathe?” He nodded. “I’ll take you to the hospital, it’s very close.”
“I’m not certain that’s a good idea, I’ll be missed soon and they’ll come looking for me.”
“Who?”
He swallowed with an audible gulp. “My family.” A discarded drinks can clattered along the road, pushed by the breeze. He gasped, horrified. “They’re already trying to find me! I just wanted some time in the meadow, but it’s not here anymore!”
“Meadow? This is London, you need to go about ten miles that way to get to a field. And it’s alright,” Amber slipped her arm around his and held it in the crook of her elbow. “That can’s just a bit of rubbish, it doesn’t mean anything.”
He looked at the pavement around them with frantic eyes, then calmed. “I do beg your pardon.” He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed it over his face, holding her arm tight. “You’re most kind. I’m terribly sorry to be a burden.”
He allowed himself to be guided. Amber thought of the last time her mother had a severe attack in the lingerie section of a huge department store. She couldn’t remember which one, only the fact that there were no windows and the layout made it impossible to see the exit easily. She’d had to steer her wheezing mother to the escalator, all the staff and other customers watching dumbly. The memory still made her teeth grind.
Archie clung to her arm very tightly, he twitched at every piece of litter that moved near them, but other than that he was easier to manoeuvre. They were at the hospital in less than five minutes, he said nothing as she guided him to the waiting area and left him to speak to the triage nurse.
“Ask him to fill in this form,” the nurse said once Amber had explained the circumstances.
She took it over to Archie who was gripping the sides of his chair. “It smells so strange here.”
“All hospitals do,” Amber said, sitting next to him. “We need to fill this form out, then they’ll check you over but there’s quite a wait. Do you want me to help you fill it in?”
When he didn’t answer she looked up from the form to see him staring at a pen rolling towards him. “I don’t want to go back,” he said, tears forming. “It’s so grey there. And empty. No green, no blue, nothing but mist. I can’t bear it any longer.”
A nurse picked up the pen and hurried on. “Archie,” Amber said, resting a hand on his shoulder. “It’s going to be okay. Really. It feels horrible now, but it’ll pass, I promise.”
“How do you know?”
“My Mum suffers from depression. She said when it’s at its worst, it’s like there aren’t any colours anymore. She said life turns into a black and white film that she watches and can’t take part in. And she gets panic attacks too. They pass. You’ll feel better soon.”
“I doubt it. I’m too tired and too old to care about anything anymore.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You’re… what, forty years old? You’re handsome. You’ve got strange taste in clothes, but that’s nothing to panic about.”
She hoped it would make him smile but he shook his head. “I’m over three hundred and fifty years old. And I’m very tired.”
Amber snorted, thinking he was trying to tell a joke but he looked serious. He wasn’t just depressed, he was a complete loon.
Another pen was rolling towards them, then she saw another and a pencil, a dusty ball of scrunched up paper and a lone earring, all heading for Archie. He saw them too and grasped her hands tight. “Thank you for your kindness. Promise me that on every sunny day you’ll go outside and enjoy the sky?”
“I promise,” she said, not meaning it, but wanting to soothe him.
“Archie!”
They both looked at the entrance to see a man dressed like he was about to go to a wedding heading straight towards them.
“Damnable seeker charms,” Archie muttered and let go of Amber’s hands. “I won’t forget you. And I won’t tell my family about you either. It’s for the best.”
Amber watched him leave then took the untouched form back to the desk. By the time she went outside Archie and the man who’d collected him had gone.
She looked up at the blue sky, watched a rabbit-shaped cloud morph into a dragon and then got her phone out, dialling the number from memory. “Hi Mum, it’s me. Just wondering how you are.”
—
Thanks for hosting Katy Press!
I hope you enjoyed the story. If you would like to find out more about the Split Worlds project, it’s all here: www.splitworlds.com – you can also sign up to get an extra story and get each new story delivered to your inbox every week. If you would like to host a story over the coming year, either let me know in the comments or contact me through the Split Worlds site. Em x
Filed under Books & Publishing
Afra Parsons – perfect for the role of Tilly Greenway!
When I write, I walk through each scene from the perspective of every character, like a movie-director walking around a set. I find this helps to get a picture of what they all experience. On top of that, I’ll often have in mind a real actor or actress as I build their history and create their dialogue.
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Our author Essi Tolling has been having fun these past few weeks visiting branches of Waterstones.
It’s a real pleasure to spend time in these lovely stores and we cannot compliment the staff at Waterstone’s highly enough. What a warm, welcoming and book loving team they are! It’s so refreshing to meet people who so obviously love what they do and who display such a knowledgeable and keen interest in all the books they stock.
Thank you also to the lovely Sarah Tippelt from Waterstone’s Dorking, who unfortunately we didn’t get a picture of on the day.
Here are a few more photos from our latest signings:
Essi Tolling (right) with Simon Monfredi, Waterstone's Cribbs Causeway
Essi Tolling (right) with Bethan England, Waterstone's Abergavenny
Essi Tolling (right) with Angela Timmins, Waterstone's Hereford
Filed under Books & Publishing, New Books
I’m just back from a week-end away, including a book-signing at the Cribbs Causeway Waterstone’s (that’s me having just got set up at the table). It was very busy, with lots of people stopping to chat and many to buy (always good!).
One of the things I love about the Tilly series is that, because it ranges so widely over different topics, folks of all ages and descriptions are interested in it.
Filed under Uncategorized
Essi Tolling will be visiting these branches of UK Waterstone’s bookshops.
Come and visit to chat, have books signed or maybe even catch a reading..
March 10th Waterstone’s Dorking 11am-3pm
March 18th Waterstone’s Cribbs Causeway 11am-3pm
March 23rd Waterstone’s Abergavenny 11am -3pm
March 24th Waterstone’s Hereford 11am-3pm
April 14th Waterstone’s Newport 11am-3pm
April 28th Waterstone’s Ipswich 11am-3pm
May 5th Waterstone’s Plymouth 11am – 3pm
May 12th Waterstone’s Abergavenny 11am – 3pm
June 2nd Waterstone’s Southampton 11am – 3pm
June 9th Waterstone’s Haywards Heath 11am – 3pm
August 18th Waterstone’s Wells 11am – 3pm
August 25th Waterstone’s Camberley 11am – 3pm
November 3rd Waterstones Trowbridge 11am – 3pm
We will update this list as and when additional dates are confirmed…
Filed under Books & Movies, Books & Publishing
If I were to choose an animal totem, it would be the wild, shy, magical creature that we know as the hare.
As a boy I used to see a lot of hares, especially in Spring, when they come out to “box”. There is something truly fey about them. Is it the fact that they seem to be able to disappear in the twinkling of an eye, or that they dance under the full moon?
Filed under Uncategorized
Is the physical book on the way out to be replaced solely by the ebook? I don’t think so but what I do think is that ebooks have changed the nature of physical book publishing for the better.
Customers can now search on their kindle, press buy and, hey presto, in just a few seconds the book they want to read is in their hands. So where does that leave the physical book? We say in a much better place. “What!” you exclaim. “How can you say that?”
Well, we can because we are not just a small press publisher, we also absolutely love books, and we aim to produce books that people want to hold and take home with them.
In our local town there is a rare book store that sells some books costing $1000 and more – and they sell! Why? Because they are beautiful and that makes them collectable.
The ebook market in our view is putting pressure on publishers to produce collectible books once again. To compete with an ebook you have to produce an item that someone wants to possess. One of our books, Watchers (Book One in the Tilly Greenway and the Secrets of the Ancient Keys series) was produced in paperback format with that in mind. The book has illustrations and the cover and spine were designed to really encourage readers to see it as special. And guess what, it works!
One regular bookshop sold as many in one weekend as they normally sell in an entire three month season of the current trending bestseller. They were amazed and said it had to be down to how customers were reacting to the look and feel of Watchers.
Once they see the book, physical bookshops have no problem at all with stocking and selling physical copies of Watchers. In fact the rare bookshop, which only deals with physical books, expressly requested copies of Watchers as the owner said and I quote:
“People love to touch, hold and own beautiful books. We sell old books that have got that whole look and feel spot on, but when we see a modern book with the same appeal then we stock it, as sadly many of the current books are just plain bland.”
So physical books still sell, but they have to look and feel good and in our eyes that is no bad thing. Maybe in the future all the commercial easy read and throwaway blockbusters will be on kindle, but there will always be a place for the book you want to keep and display on your shelf and from our experience that book has to look and feel good.
Watchers - front and back and spine
The physical book is on sale at amazon.com and amazon.co.uk
Take a look at the worldwidebookshop.com to see some of the beautiful collectable books they stock. Not quite the same as being in the shop and being able to pick them up and feel them though! An example below is of the beautiful Arthur Ransome complete set of Swallows and Amazons - with original illustrated endpapers and original illustrated dustjackets. To hold and thumb through these books is a precious experience.
Filed under Uncategorized
