The Day Linda Newbery came to the Lincoln Book Festival
The first weekend of the festival was dedicated to children's writing. Linda (pictured left) was slotted in between Elmer and Mr Nosey as one of the workshops on ‘how to write'. She attracted a small but enthusiastic audience to hear her talk about crafting the crossover novel.
This turned out to be a contentious title especially when Linda revealed that her publisher, David Fickling (editor's note: David Fickling published The Curious Incident of the Dog at Midnight which is much vaunted as a crossover novel), dismisses ‘crossover' as a marketing ploy! Linda does a great deal of research for her work and talked about the inspiration for her latest novel, ‘Set in Stone' a Victorian mystery set against a background of the developing Arts and Craft movement.
She showed us photos of houses like Blackwell in The Lake District http://www.blackwell.org.uk and The Red House in Kent http://www.bexley.gov.uk/visiting/visitplaces . These are beautiful arts and crafts properties with soothing crafted interiors. These and the work of artists like Eric Gill formed the background for her latest work. The audience had the opportunity to ask loads of questions so that the talk became more of an absorbing discussion.
Linda was then ushered over to the Industry Panel amongst whom were Linda, Elizabeth Roy, a children's writing agent and Judith Spelman from ‘Writers News'. This was a forum for asking all those questions about writing you were afraid to ask and after an informative two hours(!) Linda was free to to on a quick tour of the cathedral and a cup of tea before she had to catch a train.
The SCBWI also had an information table, nobly manned by Sara Grant. This attracted a lot of interest for us and at the last meeting in Ottakars our numbers doubled!
A great day and I look forward to going back to the festival next year. Reported by Addy Farmer
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