I spent yesterday evening in Bristol at two events. The first one was a signing at Foyles for Erin Morgenstern and her debut novel, The Night Circus, which has been garnering rave reviews around the world.

The event space in Foyles is really nice, and I’m starting to get to know the staff who are very enthusiastic about SF&F. There may be some developments on this front in the New Year.

Erin was very good. Her book has particularly been praised for the quality of its descriptions, and that very much came over in the reading. Also she’s a theater major, so she’s very confident on platform and reads well. I’m looking forward to reading the book. Erin will be at Toppings in Bath on Wednesday night if you missed the Bristol event.

Interestingly the book began life as a NaNoWriMo project, although what was produced in the writing frenzy is very different to the final book (the original didn’t include the now lead character). I took a punt and asked Erin if she had used Scrivener to write the book, and to my delight she began gushing about what a wonderful piece of software it is. This is, of course, a reminder that Keith Blount, the man who wrote Scrivener, will be a Guest of Honour at BristolCon in just over a week’s time. If you are a writer and have been thinking about buying the software, or are a keen user, you really should come along.

The other meeting was founding a local LGBT History group. I’ll be talking more about that later once the website has launched, but it is getting me some very useful contacts.