Successful day at Reading University

The talk I gave last Saturday at Reading University for the Conference of Women Writers was great fun. It’s an annual event, and I was very honoured when Penny Hunter, who organises the day, invited me to be one of the speakers.

I was a little nervous, as the other speakers seemed to be very erudite and were talking about proper writers and poets like A.S. Byatt and Sylvia Plath. The Stonewylde Series may be a jolly good read and loved by many, but it doesn’t even try to pretend it’s literary in any way. However Penny assured me that the people coming would love it, and those attending my workshop would really enjoy hearing me speak. So I went ahead, albeit feeling slightly fraudulent!

And actually it was great! The group who’d chosen to come to my workshop had all read at least Magus of Stonewylde, and some had read more of the series. In my attempts to intellectualise the workshop and at least give it some literary plausability, I’d prepared an interesting talk based on the works of Joseph Campbell and Christopher Vogler, showing how the Stonewylde Series followed the pattern of “The Hero’s Journey”. I’d intended to talk about archetypes, and how the main characters in Stonewylde really fitted order phentermine 37.5 mg into these models (not something I’d realised when I’d written the books).

However, after a fun activity where we all drew maps of places familiar to us (to demonstrate how important location, place and setting is in a novel, and how we all have a well of anecdotes from which we can draw when necessary), I had to abandon my prepared talk. One member of the group diffidently asked if we could forget all that stuff and just talk about Stonewylde. Music to my ears!

We then spent the next three quarters of an hour just discussing the books, the characters, the setting and the difficulties of distribution. One of the gripes from the group was how hard it is to actually find copies of Stonewylde in bookshops, and particularly Waterstones. NB – if any Waterstones people are reading this please take note!! I then signed everyone’s copies of their books, and left in a flurry of good wishes.

It really was a very enjoyable occasion, and has set me up well for next week when I embark on the first of my talks to the WI! I hope the ladies there are as receptive as the Reading University crowd, who really made my day with their enthusiasm and enjoyment of Stonewylde.