The Bath Kids Literature Festival is always a highlight in my annual bookish calendar, so when the Bath Festivals team contacted me to ask if I wanted to blog about one of this year\u2019s events I jumped at the chance. As longtime readers of this blog know, I\u2019m a huge Marcus Sedgwick fan so I was delighted to be gifted a couple of tickets to his event, which took place last night and was sponsored by Bath Spa University (Spartans, represent!). It seemed particularly fitting that I attended a Bath Spa-sponsored event, almost ten years to the day after I enrolled at that very university!<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been lucky enough to see Marcus Sedgwick speak a couple of times in the past and he was as interesting, eloquent and inspirational as always. I always come away from his events feeling rejuvenated about my own creative projects\u00a0\u2013 and last night was no exception.<\/p>\n
The event struck a great balance between talking about Sedgwick\u2019s upcoming release, Saint Death (due out on October 6th), his impressive body of work and even a few tips about the craft of writing. The main advice he gave to other writers in the audience? Don\u2019t feel as though you have to follow somebody else\u2019s rules. Every writer has a different writing process, a different method of plotting and a different way to get inspired. Find what suits you and run with it.<\/p>\n
John McLay, who was hosting the event (and co-organises the entire festival), touched on the broad range of styles, genres and structures that Sedgwick has experimented with over the years,\u00a0as well as his research process. It was fascinating to get a glimpse into the research process for Saint Death, as Sedgwick didn\u2019t have the opportunity to visit Juarez (the Mexican city where the book is set) until after he\u2019d finished writing the first draft. He spent time in the area (known \u00a0as one of the most dangerous places on the planet) and we were lucky enough to see some of the photos he took during his stay. Seeing the real life setting was a lovely touch and I know it will help me immerse myself in the dark, thrilling story even more.<\/p>\n
Sedgwick is famous for playing with structure and it\u2019s something I\u2019ve always loved about his work. Of course, The Ghosts of Heaven had to get a spotlight\u00a0here, and he mentioned visualising the novel as a tetrahedron, with each of the four sides playing a balanced, crucial role in\u00a0the story as a whole. If you haven\u2019t\u00a0come across\u00a0The Ghosts of Heaven before, the four parts of the novel can be read in any order, so it\u2019s an interesting play on structure as well as a fantastic story.<\/p>\n
I was delighted that my personal favourite of Sedgwick\u2019s novels, Midwinterblood, got a couple of shoutouts during the event. It\u2019s way up there in the list of my favourite books of all time, and I actually ordered another copy as soon as I got home to give to my mum, who came with me to the event but hasn\u2019t yet read Midwinterblood (soon to be rectified, I assure you).<\/p>\n