Who dunnit - and who shouldn't have?

As I mentioned in Friday's post, I spent the weekend at the Malcolm Arnold Festival in Northampton. It was, shall we say, a bit of a curate's egg; some of the music was wonderful, some of it not so wonderful. Arnold had various troubles in his life that are reflected in his works and I think some of the pieces we heard might have been written when he was having a bad day. However, it probably says more about me than him that I find that solo brass performances sound as though the player is running through his rudiments, rather than trying to entertain the audience.

One of the talks we sat through was equally challenging. It should have been fascinating - the role of the CIA in controlling the music scene - but it was just baffling. I'm not an idiot (quiet at the back!), but I found it rather demoralising to keep being told 'Of course, you all know that...' when I didn't!

I went to another less than satisfying talk last night, this time on the topic of Agatha Christie. There is an excellent exhibition in our town museum about this writer, and the woman behind the collection was at the art gallery to give us a talk. Trouble was that while she was undoubtedly a fan and clearly has a lot of memorabilia, a public speaker she was not. Now, as regular readers will know, I'm no public speaker either - but then I don't pretend to be.

I've edited enough books by subject experts to be able to say that knowing all there is to know about something doesn't mean you can write about it or, it seems, speak about it. Am I being harsh? Perhaps. I'm sorry: I have a cold.

I'm feeling inspired!

On Saturday morning, I met with a group of local authors at the premises of 3P Publishing, where our host author and publisher Andy Gibney treated us to another of his sessions on 'Inside the mind of the author'. This time he focused on Roald Dahl and Agatha Christie: fascinating stuff. He also gave us ideas for using social media for marketing and promotion. 'Linking' seems to be the keyword.

There was plenty of time for networking, too. The other people there had either already published their books through 3P or are about to. I came home with a copy of A Brush With Death ('Who is trying kill artist Harry Chase and why?') by Malcolm Parnell, who was there.  I'm looking forward to reading this and promised to review it for him.

On the topic of reviews, has any of you ever been paid to write them? We had a chat about the ethics of this on Saturday. (Malcolm isn't paying me, of course!)

I came home feeling inspired and have set to and done lots of work on a fiction project I've had lurking in a folder for some time. The first draft is complete and I have passed it on to my son so he can cast his expert eye over it. He's one person I know will give me an honest review, whether or not he likes what I've written.

I've had a non-fiction book with a publisher for a while, pending a decision, so I gave them a nudge and they've asked to see some copy, which I hope is a good sign.

I've also entered two writing competitions - and it's only Tuesday!