Chris Brookmyre and some other guy

On Saturday evening I drove to Reading for the Reading Crime Writing Festival and Mark Billingham and Chris Brookmyre's talk.
I ending up sitting right at the back due to a very poor map and missed some of Marks jokes - he used to be a stand up comic, but I didn't miss any of Chris' taking, although the acoustics of the room and his strong Scottish accent didn't make listening easy.

It was a good session. They talked a bit about what they do and read a little from new books then answered questions about where they got their titles from and what they think of TV/film adaptations etc. What made this different from some of the other events that I've attended was that the people here were obviously readers not writers. The questions were about the guys on the stage not how can 'I' improve my writing. This was very refreshing, after all I came to see a favourite author so I want to hear from him.

Then to top it all off Chris signed my copy of The Sacred Art of Stealing, which is a fab book. What a nice man.

So all in all a good evening, even if getting there was hard work.