Passionate Prose and Pavlova

October is New Zealand Book Month and on Thursday I got to do my thing at the Dunedin Public Library in an event called Passionate Prose and Pavlova. Naturally, there was pavlova and coffee served, and the guest speaker felt obliged to indulge in a slice or two, for good form's sake.

The Dunedin Public Library is good at shameless self-promotion, so their techie guy was there to record the event for posterity, or the approximation of it that is U-tube. They were only going to record 10 minutes or so, but seemed to think it was going well and decided to do the whole thing.

So for those of you dedicated enough to watch almost an hour's worth, the links are below.

Of course, I didn't go into it realising they were going to do this, so I sit here quietly hoping I didn't say anything either a) stupid, or b) embarrasing or c) defamatory and that I looked OK, didn't pick my nose or scratch anything personal. I haven't watched it as I suffer a bit from I-can't-stand-to-see-myself-itis. There was a little girl chattering away so I hope the sound is OK.

As this is a library event, I spent the initial part of the talk chatting about books that had turned the reading lights on for me as a child, and that influenced me later in life. Then I go on to talk about the importance of setting and place in fiction novels, with a background to why I chose to set my novels in firstly Mataura, and then Dunedin, and also some of the twilight zoneish life imitating art moments that have occurred because of it. I do a reading of the prologue to the fourth Sam Shephard novel, Bound, and then finish up with questions from the audience.

So here t'is divided up into 5 parts:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5