I don’t usually speak from a script at lit fests, but as I had just had Covid when the HULF Festival of Words* came around, I didn’t want to rely on my slightly fuzzy memory. Having written the script for my affectionate talk about the use of slang in school stories, I hung on to it, so that I could share it with you today here on my blog.
*HULF is the Hawkesbury Upton Literature Festival, which I founded in my home village in 2015, and which has been running public events in various venues about the parish ever since.
“Hello, Debbie, how are you? Busy with – whatever it is you do?”
This greeting from a neighbour the other day made me smile. It’s true that I do a lot of different things besides writing books, and even I have trouble keeping up with myself sometimes.
So I thought it might be a good idea to start sharing on my blog some of my various activities, just in case anyone else is wondering how I fill my days.
This week, I’m going to tell you about the Hawkesbury Upton Literature Festival, which I founded in 2015 as an affordable, accessible and fun bookish event for my village.
A quick post to share the article I’ve just written for the ALLi Author Advice Centre on the use of bad language in fiction
Already committed… (Thanks to fellow author Jacci Gooding for the photo)
Do you give a damn whether there is swearing in the stories you read?
Personally, I’m not keen on hearing the same bad language over and over again supposedly for the sake of realism, whether on television, in films or in books, and I don’t use it much either.
In fact, I’d always thought the language in my own fiction was pretty blameless. That is, until I started reading a new story, as yet unpublished, in the Quaker Meeting House as part of the Evesham Festival of Words last month. Eager to give a brand new, unpublished story, Drunk in Charge, an airing and get some feedback, I hadn’t really thought through the implications of the setting before I got there.
Today I’ve shared the experience over on the ALLi Authors Advice Centre blog, where every Monday is our “Opinion” day, on the basis that it’s good to start the week with a rousing debate. If you’d like to read my piece in full, you can hop over to the blog here.
One of my works-in-progress, which will include the short story “Drunk in Charge”
Or if you prefer to cut to the chase, you can read Drunk in Charge here. A more polished version will appear in my next collection of short stories, Repent at Leisure, to be published, er, at my leisure… Join my mailing list here if you’d like me to let you know when it’s available, and you’ll also get a free download of Quick Change to read while you’re waiting.
