If you can’t read the text I put on these pictures in the post, click on the pictures for a close up (:

Last weekend, (or, well, for the last two days :P) I was lucky enough to have a two-day holiday in Bath, because the Kids Lit Fest was starting! I was really excited to go to a couple of events, though a little disappointed because a lot, like Holly Smale’s event, were on weekdays and so I wouldn’t be able to get to them.

We (brother and I) were booked into two events, a Dave McKean talk (Dave is an artistic director, and amazing illustrator, famously of Gaiman titles!) and a horror writing workshop with Alexander Gordon Smith (who’s actually called Gordon, so I’m calling him that in this post), and we were planning on seeing Charlie Higson but his event sold out quickly, as he’s just released THE FALLEN!

Most of the weekend we spent exploring Bath, because it’s a really awesome place. There are some photos I took on here 🙂 On the Saturday, we went to the Holburne Museum, where our events were, and were really disappointed to be told that Dave McKean couldn’t get to the venue as there’d been an incident on the motorway and there was no way he could get around it. So, we had brought too many books down to get signed for nothing, but oh well! I’ll have to catch him at another event. (I am 100% SURE that the accident happened because we walked under a ladder earlier in the day but no one believes that. Hmph.)

On the Sunday, I did the horror writing workshop! I had heard about Gordon’s books in the past, but never read one, so I didn’t know too much about the author/books. However, it was a brilliant event, and definitely made up for the one I missed! After telling us a couple of stories, of inspirations for his books (One involved a very funny expedition to an abandoned house!), Gordon started us on worksheet-packs we’d been given. They were really great! The sheets were all about developing our biggest fears into stories- because if you use something that really terrifies you, you’ll definitely convey that terror into your writing! There were also the tasks of  What If- Where everyone had to put their fears into a question: What If a creepy doll you were given was possessed, and intent on destruction? was one of my wacky ones. We did some character profiling too, where we fleshed out some characters for our stories. Unfortunately, as we had all been doing so much discussing, we didn’t quite get to finish everything! However, the course was amazing. I took away a lot of writing and structuring tips from it, and even a short story idea that I started writing on the train home (:

After the workshop there was also a signing. My brother and I bought the first two copies of Gordon’s FURNACE series (Though I really wanted The FURY but it was sold out 😦 Oh well, I shall hunt it down.), and had them signed, which was awesome! Here’s me with Gordon, right:

HOW DID I FORGET?! I met Lucy from Queen of Contemporary! 😀 We met up in the Waterstones at Bath to swap books (I got two awesome ones, I’ll put my Bath book haul in this week’s haul, by the way), and she’s as awesome in real life as she is in bloggyworld. I think my parents had thought I’d be there for about five minutes, but… uh… we may have fangirled over every book individually in the YA section for forty minutes. But… details. It was awesome meeting her! I’ve tried to save this picture but silly PC won’t let me. I’ve tried to be techy and embed the tweet with the picture here… but it didn’t work. So I gave up.

All in all, the Bath Kids Lit fest was really great, even though I only got to go to one event; but it was so great! The weekend was really cool and I bought a lot of really pretty books, which I’ll post about on Saturday. If you’re looking for a lot more coverage on the festival, I know that Lucy is going to a lot of the events over the whole festival, and she’s interviewing authors too, so go check her site out!