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Friday was a BIIIGGG day at the festival for us.

We started off at the dreaded 10.30am again - next year I swear I'll be resisting this getting up at sparrow's behaviour!

Anyway - A Touch of Class was first with Malcolm Knox, Deborah Robertson (Australian authors) and John Ajvide Lindqvist - where they talked about the influence of class in society and how it was portrayed in their books - very interesting comparisons between their three books.

Then Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know - with Leah Giarratano, David Hewson  - unfortunately Dorothy Porter couldn't make the session - this was particularly interesting as it discussed the mad versus the bad - the concept of evil and ranged around a lot of discussion in that area.  This is the second time I've seen David as a guest at the festival and he's just fascinating - very thoughtful and considered writer again.

Next up was Graeme Blundell chats to Shane Maloney (and Bunny).  Shane showed up - small furry white dog in toe, proceeded to stonewall the Malthouse Theatre people until the dog was allowed on stage and he and Graeme chatted  with considerable aplomb (and the occasional waving of a piece of paper to dissipate the shall we say "fumes" emanating from Bunny).  Great one on one session again - with the major piece of news (or non-news as I think everyone sort of knew) that there is one more Murray Whelan in the works and that will probably be it.  Shane did mention he was planning another 7 book series about a young wizard who goes off to a school.......

Then off to Feeding the Demons with Gabrielle Lord - another one on one chat this time with the well-versed Sue Turnbull, who really knows her stuff.  Gabrielle does extensive and very intensive research for all her books - including attending special courses, interviewing specialists in forensics and so on.  One of the interesting things about this discussion was that Gabrielle received a grant to write her first book - spent most of the 12 months writing a book which ultimately wasn't accepted - she spat the dummy - went home and wrote - in about 3 weeks (from memory) Fortress - her first and possibly one of the most successful of her books.  She was very interesting - uses a high amount of planning for her books and approaches the job of writing as exactly that - a job.

Final session for the day was Scotland the Brave - Alexander McCall-Smith and Quintin Jardine.  Both men write books set in Edinburgh - and what a different Edinburgh it is.  Both talked about the city as a setting for their writing as well as a setting for their books. 

Long, and lovely day.  Home and into the final stretch of the last weekend of the festival.

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Submitted by Karen on Wed, 05/09/2007 - 07:17 pm