The Edinburgh International Book Festival finishes today. I left the Spiegeltent for the last time, feeling totally inspired and curiously bereft - StoryShop 2016 is over and I'm hanging up (somewhere very visible) my official author lanyard.
Anyone who read last month's post will know that I was chosen by Edinburgh City of Literature as one of the 17 'emerging writers' to write and then read their short story over the duration of the festival (and if you want to read more about Story Shop in general, you can do so in a feature I wrote for Lothian Life: #storyshop - yes, I am milking it - indulge me!) Of course, it was an honour, but it's also been tremendous fun, and a fantastic way to meet other new authors - as well as mingling with famous ones in the hallowed portals of the author's yurt!
Whilst I'm left with a real sense of achievement, I'm also slightly nervous that this is a public throwing down of the gauntlet - okay, so I'm an author, am I? Now I need to go away and prove it and see where I've emerged to by this time next year. Well, there are worse challenges.
Every one of my Story Shop colleagues (and the organisers) are worthy of a special mention, and you can find their biographies and their stories on the excellent Edinburgh City of Literature website. In addition, our performances are all preserved for posterity on YouTube... maybe even the first 15 minutes of something big??? I'm here Anne Hamilton - The Merry Dancers
So, enough of this shameless self-promotion. In other news, this blog has (obviously!) moved. Thanks to the wonderful and endlessly patient Simon Logan of ARCAS, its new home is here, integral to my WriteRight editing pages. And I'll write more about that next month - when I've found out whether this post has worked; I'm still on that learning curve...
Anne x
