We had a fabulous evening at The Riverside on Tuesday. Rachel Parris was a wonderfully warm and engaging speaker on stage and generous in her conversations afterwards with teachers, book club members and improv groups who had joined us in the audience.
I think we all came away amazed at Rachel's talents and work ethic. She underplayed her various roles as musician, comedian, tv presenter, writer, podcaster and founder of improv group Austentatious - 'I don't do them all at the same time,' she said.
Having completed 'Introducing Mrs Collins', her first novel, in just four months, this feat was all the more astonishing when she explained the lengths she went to in researching aspects of the period of 'Pride and Prejudice' which had been left unsaid by Jane Austen. Who'd have thought 18th century military history could prove so entertaining?
Of course Rachel has 'lived' Jane Austen for the past 14 years through her improv group Austentatious and she tried to convince us that stepping on stage not knowing what you are going to do or say in front of a couple of hundred people for 90 minutes isn't anything to fear.
You can never go wrong, Rachel said, because there are no lines to forget, no stage directions to get wrong and you are working with people with whom you have built a strong bond and who all have a common goal to bring fun and laughter. She advised us all to give it a try if we ever had the opportunity.
Of course, we're all making it up as we go along to some extent, aren't we? Much as we like to plan and organise and anticipate, things don't always go ahead as they should. Over the past couple of weeks I've certainly valued the team of people who've helped me put this week's event together.
And I'm ready to do it again with the announcement of another exciting author event very soon!
Thank you for reading.
PS The new Elly Griffiths novel is out this week. Called 'The Killing Time' it is the second instalment following time-travelling detective Ali Dawson. I'll be speaking to Elly about this new series, as well as her much-loved Ruth Galloway books (of course), at an event in Lowestoft on Friday afternoon. Details here. Or read my review of 'The Killing Time' here.