Yesterday I spent the evening in Bath at the official launch party for Moira Young’s second novel, Rebel Heart. I’m very impressed with Moira, both as a writer and as a professional, and I’m delighted to see her doing well.

Given that Moira writes YA, quite a few other YA authors were present. I got to see Veronique David-Martin again. I wish I could read her book, but it is in French and my limited language skills are not up to it. I also met Rachel Ward, whose books I clearly need to investigate. And I finally managed to find a copy of Janet Edwards’ Earth Girl, though Janet herself wasn’t there.

I also met some young people from the Bath University Creative Writing program, all of whom seem to want to write YA fantasy. I tried to persuade them to come over for BristolCon. Moira will definitely be there, and hopefully Veronique will be able to come too.

The Kids’ Lit Fest is coming up soon. There’s a post about it on the BristolCon blog. I’ll be there on October 5th to see Johan Harstad. Yes, I know Iain Banks is in Bristol that day. I will have seen him in Bath on the 4th, and Harstad is a potential Translation Awards candidate, so I need to go and see him. Anyone in Scandinavia know anything about him?