From Leipzig With Love
Plus an upcoming event with me & David Lowbridge-Ellis from Licence to Queer!
Dear Reader,
I’m writing to you from Edinburgh, where my feet have briefly touched the ground between returning from Germany and heading off tomorrow, this time for a flurry of UK events in May and June. If you’re anywhere near Bristol, Bath, Exeter or Hay, I’d love to see you there! Check out my author website for dates and details. There’ll be more events to come in July and August, too, so watch this space.
I’ve received a few questions from folks abroad about whether any of the UK events will be streamed. It seems hit and miss, so I’ve conspired with David Lowbridge-Ellis of Licence to Queer to put on a virtual event NEXT WEEK on Thursday 18th May 8pm BST celebrating seventy years of literary James Bond.
David and I will discuss Casino Royale, Fleming’s writing, and our shared love of 007, followed by audience Q&A. The event will be recorded for the Licence to Queer podcast, and our conversation will feature in the inaugural 007GB Club magazine.
This is last minute, but if you can join us we’d love to raise a martini with you! (Or a coffee, depending on your time zone.)
If you’re a paying subscriber to girl with the golden pen, your ticket is included, and you can access a promo link below.
If you’re not a paying subscriber, you can purchase tickets on EventBrite for £9.
Or you can upgrade to be a paid subscriber for £7 a month – we’d love to have you at our regular Zoom Book Socials! Plus you’ll receive full newsletters and bonus content.
This last week-ish has been the best of whirlwinds. When Cross Cult, the longtime German James Bond publisher, invited me to Leipzig Book Fair for the launch of Doppelt oder Nichts, I didn’t think to research the event. I just booked the sleeper train for me and Nick and carried merrily on my way. It turned out that Leipzig Book Fair is the largest public-facing book event in Europe. It’s half literary festival, half Comic Con, and all joy. It was like living in a dream. Five halls packed to the rafters with publishers in civilian clothing mingling with people dressed as animals, superheroes, Stormtroopers, Star Fleet officers, Nintendo and Manga characters. You don’t question it, you just queue for the ladies bathroom with Wednesday, or share a cup of tea with Superman. People were lining up for hours to buy books. Teenagers screaming at the new release of a novel. Everyone was accepted, from Pikachu to Batman. All life should be like this.
Going to big events like this can be nerve-wracking. I hadn’t met the publishers. There were other authors in our booth, whom I also didn’t know. It’s a bit like the first day of school. Will I get lost? Will I make friends? Will I let slip that I’m a Kenny Rogers fan? (This made me very popular at high school, I can assure you.)
Amazingly, I didn’t get lost. My sense of direction is subjective at the best of times, but give me Harry Potter’s cupboard and a giant Dragon Slayer as landmarks and I’m good to go. And I did make friends. After four days, our booth felt like a theatre, home to the Cross Cult Players. We’d all created something exhilarating, improvisational, where anything could happen. You might sign a book for Spider-Man. You might suddenly address five hundred people in a vast hall. I feel so lucky to have got to know my fellow authors, Christopher Golden and Rio Youers. We first talked while interviewing each other in front of a camera, and immediately clicked. It felt like such wonderful and surreal serendipity. Kindred spirits, who otherwise would never meet, as Chris is in America and Rio in Canada. We’re already planning future hijinks.
As Double or Nothing comes out around the world, I’m the envoy for the book, getting to know the different publishing teams. It feels a bit like assembling the Avengers, and I’m grateful to everyone who cares for my characters and works so hard to produce such amazing events, publicity and, of course, the beautiful book itself. The Cross Cult team made what could have been daunting pure fun. It was exciting to see a big feature in CINEMA, the leading German film magazine, and to chat with journalists for national newspapers. I’m already looking forward to going back to Germany and being reunited with the team next year.
There’s also been fantastic coverage of Double or Nothing in the States, and I’m grateful to the William Morrow team for all their hard work, too. Incredibly, The Washington Post ran a full-page review, and it was so nice I actually read it!
It’s an exciting time, with doors opening, new possibilities expanding. Including in our new home, where walls are coming down and history is revealing itself in a palimpsest of wallpaper!
Today I’m planning to buy a desk, from which my future dispatches will be sent. In the meantime, I hope to see you next week!
From Kim, With Love x
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