I was at Huddersfield Literature Festival’s Pechakutcha night at the Media Centre on the 14th March and enjoyed it immensely.

Pechakutcha is basically an intense powerpoint presentation where you talk about anything you want to whilst showing 20 (obviously relevent) slides and talking for a maximum of 20 seconds per image. Quite a challenge actually. The theme for the night was, being a literary festival, books. (Come on, keep up!)

I talked, breathlessly, about some of the background ideas in Inspector Bucket and the Beast. This image is of me talking about how easy it was in Mid-Victorian England for husbands and fathers to get wives and daughters committed to mental institutions – something one of the characters in my novel does to his daughter. The slide is actually of a wax work from Madame Tussauds from towards the end of the Victorian period. I’m the one on the right just in case you’re confused!

As you can, just about, see I attempted to dress up for the part, as Bucket – not a mad woman.

This is actually how I was dresssed. I don’t know who I think I’m trying to be here, but I look like I’m chewing a wasp.It was quite a well attended event (about 50 people) and I managed to sell some more books! The slide is of Inspector Bucket from Dickens’ Bleak House, an image you could find on a 1930’s cigarette card.

Despite my nerves, I must have gone down quite well because I was invited to deliver the same presentation for BettaKultcha (another version of Pechakutcha – mad isn’t it?) in Leeds on the 24th April. (I think it was my topper that the chap who invited me liked the best!)

There’ll be a link to the presentations on here as soon as Brent at the Media Centre in Huddersfield sends it to me.

More fun was had on Sunday, 17th March, at Two Valleys Radio where I was recording a radio drama adaptation of one of my other Bucket Stories, Inspector Bucket and the March Hare. (You can find that in What the Dickens? magazine, issue 3, online or on Kindle.)

My friends, David Jones and Vince and Lewis Duffy helped me out with the acting (for an exorbitant fee in pints of beer and red smarties) and we were steered through all the techy stuff by the wonderful Matt and Paddy from Two Valleys.

It should be aired some time on Wednesday, 27th March at around 3pm (I think)  but if you miss it you can catch up by clicking on their Listen Again facility.

Now I’m off to London to give a reading of Inspector Bucket Takes the Train at the MVMNT cafe in Greenwich. (That’s to be found  – the story not the cafe – in the Arachne Press Stations Anthology.

Finally, Bucket and the Beast itself is out in its Kindle incarnation from the 20th March. A snip at £2.49!

I think that’s enough self promotion (ed)