Friday 27 March 2009

Brooke Hill Primary School OAKHAM

I finally made it!
After aborting my last visit due to illness I went to Brooke Hill Primary today and enjoyed one of my most pleasurable school visits to date. The students were fantastic. Well behaved and full of ideas. My thanks to all of you who attended and to the staff. I hope many of you will join me on my writing journeys over the coming years.
My thanks also to Buy the Book Oakham for organising this event.

Monday 16 March 2009

Feedback from Thomas Deacon Academy

Often, after doing talks and workshops at schools and other institutions, you are left wondering if the audience found the talk interesting and entertaining or whether you simply bored the pants off them. Earlier today I received feedback from the Thomas Deacon Academy in Peterborough regarding the reaction of their year 8 students to my recent visit.

My thanks to The Acadamy for providing this as it is extremely helpful (and in this case reassuring).

For those interested I have included the feedback here (good and bad bits)

Taff

Did you enjoy the Taff Lovesey visit?
13% No 87% Yes

What did you learn?
That you have to check the mistakes
I learnt about where authors get inspiration from.
I learnt that I could make a book.
Makes me want to read more books
I learned I could make a book and publish it for free: D
I learnt about how to publish books.
That you can be inspired by absolutely anything
I loved many different things, especially that I can write story and improved my confidence to do that.
I learned a lot how to write books and how to get inspiration from
That’s it really easy to write a book as long as you put your mind to it

What did you love?
I loved nothing
I didn’t really love anything.
I loved not a lot
Makes me want to read more books
I liked the books he wrote.
All of it!
The bit were he shown us how to get inspired with the smiley faces

What did you hate?
I hated nothing
And I didn’t hate anything either.
I didn’t hate it
I hated everything
EVERYTHING
mmmmm nothing!
The part where the author just went on talking for ages (no offence)
Nothing

Did you know we still have some of Taff’s books you can borrow from the MRC?
yep!
Yes
Yeah I already knew that but I don’t really want to read one.

Saturday 7 March 2009

Brooke Hill Primary School OAKHAM an apology

My apologies to all the staff and students at Brooke Hill.
I was looking forward to spending time with everyone on friday as part of World Book week, but unfortunately ill health meant that I could not travel over.
I'm looking forward to my visit still which we will re-organise for later this year.

Take care and see you soon.

Taff Lovesey

Visit to Thomas Deacon Academy Peterborough

My thanks to all the year 8 students and staff of Thomas Deacon Academy.
I attended a talk at the Academy on Wednesday as part of World Book week.
The students joined in the exercises and were a great bunch.
We used some simple 'smiley' images to create a story (on the fly) and the students showed themselves to be very inventive. Story of the day must go to group 1, I still want to know what happened to the pie!
I hope all enjoyed the day as much as I did and I hope to see you all again sometime in the future.

Taff

Wednesday 4 March 2009

British Fantasy Society - FantasyCon 2009

The date for the 2009 FantasyCon has now been released (see below). I'll hopefully be there but not 100% positive yet.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The British Fantasy Society is holding its annual convention, Fantasycon 2009, in Nottingham, UK, over the weekend 18-20 September. Fantasycon was first staged in the mid-1970s in Birmingham and has run more-or-less continuously since.

The 2009 convention is delighted to announce that the Guests of Honour are Jasper Fforde, Brian Clemens and Gail Z Martin. The Master of Ceremonies is Ian Watson. The convention’s highlights include guest interviews, panel discussion and the British Fantasy Awards Banquet.

Since Jasper Fforde’s first novel - The Eyre Affair - was published in 2001 he has consistently blurred genres, producing a wonderful series of reality-bending, funny, complex, literate and very silly books. His Tuesday Next series follows the adventures of the eponymous heroine and Literary Detective as she solves crimes against fiction in an alternative Republic of England. The Nursery Crime series, starring DCI Jack Spratt, have addressed both the murder of Humpty Dumpty (The Big Over Easy, 2005) and porridge-smuggling by bears (The Fourth Bear, 2006). A new series begins with his latest novel Shades of Grey.
Brian Clemens was born in Surrey in 1931. He is best known as the creative force behind The Avengers, for many of us epitomised by the image of Diana Rigg starring as Mrs Emma Peel. After service in the Army he worked in an advertising agency, during which he wrote a script which attracted the attention of the BBC. And from small beginnings... He later wrote the pilot episode of The Avengers, first shown in 1961. Besides writing for this, he scripted TV shows such as Adam Adamant Lives, The Persuaders, The Professionals and Thriller.

Gail Martin is the author of the Chronicles of the Necromancer series: The Summoner, The Blood King, Dark Haven and Dark Lady’s Chosen (coming in 2010). She discovered her passion for science fiction, fantasy and ghost stories in elementary school. The very first story she ever wrote — at age five — was about a vampire. Her favourite TV shows as a pre-schooler were Dark Shadows and Lost in Space. At age 14, she decided to become a writer, and launched a fanzine when she was in college.

Ian Watson was born in 1943 and graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, in 1963; he spent time working abroad before becoming a full-time writer in the 1970s. His work includes The Embedding, his first novel and which won the John W Campbell Memorial Award. His other books include: The Power, The Fire Worm, Whores of Babylon, Miracle Visitors, God's World and The Gardens of Delight.