Dancing For Your Supper

I went to an extraordinary event tonight. I’ve been to many book launches in my time, but this one was unusual – it was the launch of three separate books (novellas really) by three different authors, but all published under the ‘Crime Express’ imprint which is part of Five Leaves Publications. I went with two friends of mine, one of whom has written a couple of crime novels and the other who mainly writes fiction for young adults. What was strange about this event was that the three writers in question each had a different motivation for writing their novellas. There was Stephen Booth who declared himself not a short story writer; Rod Duncan who only wrote his story because he wanted it to be a film script; and John Harvey who identified himself as a short story ‘tart’ and who – despite having published a string of highly acclaimed novels – simply loves writing short stories.

However, what was really unusual about this launch was the audience. There were few people there under the age of forty; few people who weren’t writers themselves; and few people who weren’t already devoted fans of at least one of the featured writers. It was almost like a fans’ convention; a bit like a group of groupies (is that the best collective noun, do you think?). This was no bad thing of course, but it did remind me somewhat of a rather cosy little club. The publisher who organized the event clearly knew his target audience – obviously he'd worked out that they were mainly non drinkers because unusually, he’d laid on more fruit juice than alcohol. Most odd. In fact, what alcohol there was on offer was mainly guzzled by the aforesaid crime writer, a benign but debauched lady poet, and me - reprobate me.

Afterwards we retired to a local hostelry where we sat under the awning in the garden so that we could smoke and chew the fat about whether Britain is really a secular society or whether actually, we’ve never been interested in religion at all. That’s another debate entirely and not one that will be solved here, that’s for sure.

I think I might start my life again. Maybe this time I’ll get it right.