Matthew Street Festival (31st August 2011)

Zoe has been managing the Derby Square stage at the Matthew Street Festival in Liverpool for four years, but this has been the first year we've been able to go. It's the world's largest free music festival, and sure enough the streets of Liverpool were heaving with people crowding around the various stages. In a very partisan way we stuck with the Derby Square stage to see a Merseybeat tribute and then a quite brilliant Beatles tribute - the Club Big Beatles from Brazil; a very authentic sound and the scouser crowd loved them. Zoz has about seventy people working to manage the stage and the crowds - it's a pretty awesome event. We'll definitely try to be back next year.

In book-related news, I've started work on Book Three - but only in a very experimental way. I'm resolved that B3 will be 'The To-Do-List', a hokey tale about three students who recover a to-do-list off a dying tourist, and who then set out to complete the actions for him. It is a much more comic tale than any I've tried before - largely because I conceived it originally as a rom-com screenplay. I worry that it may be insufficiently profound, but it should be fun to write, and (I hope) more commercial. I am also teasing another idea around - (I'm calling it Dispatches from the Multiverse) which interweaves five stories that all begin the same way but which develop in different ways. Let me know, would you, if anyone has done this before!

August Blog (24th August 2011)

Less than two weeks now before we go to Florida. Yayy! But I'm struggling to keep up with a huge workload as well as finding time for the hundreds of little jobs that always need to get done before a holiday. I've registered on the US Dept of Homeland Website and explained that I don't intend to bring down the government of the USA and I haven't been involved in any programmes of genocide. As I write this my passport is at the Saudi embassy in London waiting for a visa (I have to go to Riyadh when I get back from Orlando) - this makes me just a tad nervous. I hope to pick it up on Friday but the woman at the agency was hardly reassuring, saying, 'well it is Ramadan you know, so there can be delays.'

I've had some good early reaction to The Coincidence Authority. Sue liked it. Phwew. Actually she preferred it to Maximilian. Stan loved it (or at least he said he did which is what matters). Jon is reading it right now. I'm letting the manuscript rest for a few weeks. When I get back from Saudi I'll have another read right through. Stan wants me to sprinkle the story with real life coincidences - I rather like this idea and I've been collecting a few.

Onwards and upwards.

For more about my books check out my website https://johnironmonger.com

Catching Up (8th August 2011)

Everything seems crazy at the moment. Two weekends ago we were in London so that I could give my niece away at her wedding (Dimi you looked amazing - I was a very proud uncle). We got back last weekend from a family trip to Dublin. (Actually we went to see Prince in concert at Malahide Park. He was brilliant - of course - but I guess you need to be a Prince fan to believe me. We also had an evening in the Temple Bar doing some essential research into Guiness drinking, Irish Music, and boxty-based cuisine.) So I was knackered on Monday morning as I caught the 07:35 from Stafford to London to meet with my Saudi connection. Still. We have to earn a crust. Now I'm trying to juggle a host of commitments all focussing on September. We're all off to Florida (long story), I need to be at a business meeting in Riyadh (even longer story), and I don't know if I should be planning to be in Malta. Or not. These Maltesers are keeping me waiting on a decision. And I've just printed off Draft One of The Coincidence Authority for my nearest and dearest to read which is the most nerve-wracking thing a writer can ever do, and I'm expecting to be frantically busy this autumn with re-writes. Hey ho.

For more about my books check out my website https://johnironmonger.com

The Coincidence Authority (4th August 2011)

It's 7:45pm on Thursday 4th August and I should take a note of the date and the time because I have just finished work on the first draft of a manuscript that I should be calling 'Book Two'. Actually the title has been subject to so many changes of heart that I'm still not sure what it will be called when (if?) it ever sees the light of day. The current title is 'The Coincidence Authority'. I like that title. It sounds serious - and yet (I hope), enticing. The previous title was 'Azalea Explained', or, 'Explaining Azalea,' but these threw too much attention onto Azalea and not enough onto Thomas Post who is the real protagonist. For a while it was 'Azalea and the Coincidence Man,' but this was a bit Mills and Boonish. Anyway. Maybe they'll change it. I don't mind too much. Whatever the title, this is my first teaser trail for the book: Thomas Post is an expert on coincidences. He's an authority. People come to see him, to ask him if he can explain strange events that have befallen them, and he can always explain these things away. We poor humans, he would say, have a tendency to make patterns out of random shapes, or to construct meaning from the random behaviour of the universe. But one day Thomas gets a visit from Azalea Lewis, and his world will never be the same again. For Azalea's coincidences seem to go off the scale. The lives of Thomas and Azalea become entwined, their destinies entangled. And now, with Azalea apparently dead in a foreign land, Thomas must reassemble the pieces of her life in search for the patterns that drove it. And that means he must try to unravel the coincidences that so afflicted her. There. Will that do? Comments please ....

For more about my books check out my website https://johnironmonger.com