Lately, I’ve found myself spotted by published authors, or generally treated nicely by published authors. Needless to say, everyone should buy all their books. I only attract the best.<\/p>\n
Andrew Martin, author of The Necropolis Railway: A Novel of Murder, Mystery and Steam<\/em>. He chats to me while I’m loitering in Archway Video, and says he’s spotted me in The London Library.<\/p>\n Travis Elborough, author of The Bus We Loved: London’s Affair with the Routemaster.<\/em> He chats to me in The Boogaloo and says he’s spotted me in The British Library.<\/p>\n Dan Rhodes, author of Timoleon Vieta Come Home<\/em>. Now, he hasn’t spotted me in a library but he can’t avoid spotting me at his book event in the Boogaloo the other evening. Because I am rather drunk and am bothering him about how great the band Orange Juice are. Like many authors, he’s a voracious music lover; the solitary act of writing often coincides with the need for a well-considered soundtrack. I think a compilation of his favourite music was playing in the background to his book launch. And Orange Juice must have been on the track listing.<\/p>\n I can’t quite remember the details, because on this evening I am rather drunk. I have been to another launch party earlier the same night, the launch party for the Latitude festival, in a trendy club off Shaftesbury Avenue. There, I down a few free wines on an empty stomach before topping them up with a number of drinks at the Boogaloo.<\/p>\n I think I was in rather flirty mode of drunkenness. I hope I didn’t try to get off with Mr Rhodes. Or indeed Mr Ben Moor, the comic actor and performer of the brilliant stage show Coelacanth<\/em>. Mr Moor was at the Boogaloo, and also at the Latitude event. And I had seen him at Latitude festival itself in Suffolk last year: he was performing Coelacanth<\/em> in the Theatre Tent and it was rather fantastic. Full of clever wordplay with lines such as ‘like a white flag to a bull’. So I bothered him about that. I think I annoyed him by saying I hadn’t worn one of his badges.<\/p>\n I regret not being able to remember very much about this night of flirty alcohol, but I don’t regret feeling extremely happy. It was a very happy kind of drunkenness.<\/p>\n What I can say is that at one point Dan Rhodes gives me a free signed copy of his new novel, Gold<\/em>. It has rounded corners and isn’t too long. Mr Rhodes is a believer in keeping stories short and to the point: he has also published a collection of 101 stories each lasting 101 words.<\/p>\n On the flyleaf, he’s put a quote from an Orange Juice lyric – “To Dickon – I’ll Never Be Man Enough For You.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Lately, I’ve found myself spotted by published authors, or generally treated nicely by published authors. Needless to say, everyone should buy all their books. I only attract the best. Andrew Martin, author of The Necropolis Railway: A Novel of Murder, Mystery and Steam. He chats to me while I’m loitering in Archway Video, and says […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}