I'm absolutely delighted to be taking part in the Lowdham Book Festival at the end of this month. http://www.lowdhambookfestival.co.uk/ I'll be appearing at a school in the morning of 28th June and giving a public performance with book signings in the afternoon. I have also just been invited to take part in the Family Fun Day at the Manchester Children's Book Festival http://www.mcbf.org.uk/index.php on Saturday 30th June, with the possibility of a short run of school workshops around Manchester in the following week. Both these events are a great opportunity for me to promote my Beltheron books and I'm hoping it may lead to more school workshops later in the year. I'm stalling and struggling a bit with ideas for various writing projects at the moment so maybe this will motivate and give my imagination a kick-in-the-head start.
My connections with Manchester go back a long way. Way back in the early 80s (seems impossible that it was thirty years ago) I was a member of the Manchester Youth Theatre. I ended up going back every summer for three years during the summer holidays while I was studying for A levels and until I went off to drama college in London. The experiences I had at youth theatre with other like-minded young actors, artists and musicians were definitely the starting point for me beginning to think about the acting profession as a real possibility.
The learning curve at Mancheter Youth Theatre was more or less perpendicular, and the leap off the top into public performances in great spaces like the Library Theatre and the Royal Northern College of Music's main stage was thrilling and terrifying for me at 17 years old. Manchester was full of firsts: the first time on a professional stage (although we were unpaid of course) the first time living away from home, first proper girlfriend, first broken heart (in rapid succession) first acting award (still the ONLY acting award!), and the first time I really saw the chances and lanscapes that life had to offer opening out in my imagination in the way it only can when you are 17.
There's no wonder that I still hold fond memories of the place or why I'm so looking forward to being there for the Festival. When I visited Manchester again for the first time in ages last summer, I found that a lot of my old haunts had (understandably) changed beyond recognition or disappeared completely. The spirit of the place remained though, and I was glad to see that the beautiful circular buildings of the Library and its adjoining theatre, surrounded by pale grey stone pillars, were still there just as I remembered.
Before the book festival though, I'll be making yet another visit to Manchester. Springsteen is playing the Man City football stadium in a couple of weeks, and the plan is to get to the front rail, in front of the centre mike stand! I'll be singing along so much that it's a good job I have a full week for the voice to recover before the first appearance at Lowdham.
If you can get to either event do come and say hello, have a chat, or just sit and listen to a story. In the meantime, check out the book details on http://www.thebeltheronpathway.com/
Next Week: First Ideas to First Performances
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