Stranger than Fiction: Writing Historical & Exotic Novels

Day 3 concludes for me at the first ever Penzance Literary Festival:

As Patrick Gale sat down, everyone started to leave. I made a frantic dash to hear the next speaker at the Exchange Gallery. When I arrived, just in time, I was told that the talk was fully-booked, but my expression of disbelief melted the doorman and he offered to squeeze me in; he’d seen me earlier that day at the Morrab Library looking emotional as I gazed around the wonderful building of books. He obviously didn’t want to have to contend with a grown woman crying at the door.

Jane Johnson, aka Jude Fisher, aka Gabriel King, is Cornish but now divides her time between living in Mousehole, Cornwall and a village in the Anti-Atlas Mountains, Morocco, since meeting and marrying her own ‘Berber pirate’. In addition to her writing career, Jane still works, remotely, as the Fiction Publishing Director for Harper Collins. http://www.janejohnsonbooks.com/about-2-2/

She gave a captivating account of how her life and priorities had changed after being involved in a near-fatal climbing incident. I shall certainly be buying her books, having heard her speak I am curious now to hear her 'narrative voice’. Her novels are packed with exciting historical details, most of which come from her own research while living in Morocco, and through her husband and his family.

Jane had entitled her talk, ‘Stranger than Fiction: ...’ because she said that in her experiences alone, she was amazed at how the course of her life had indeed been ‘stranger than fiction’. The audience was made up mostly of women who all appeared to quietly swoon, me included, as she passed around photographs of her handsome husband, dressed in both normal clothes and desert dress, complete with camel; what more can I say ...

The book which particularly interests me, is The Tenth Gift because it is based on a true story from 1625 Cornwall, when Barbary pirates sailed into a quiet Cornish bay and stormed a church. They kidnapped sixty men, women and children and took them to northern Morocco where they were sold in the slave markets of the Souq el Ghezel – ‘stranger than fiction’.

Jane finished answering questions just after 5, exhausted but buzzing, me that is, I decided I’d had enough pampering for one day.

My final experience at the Festival was the day after, on Saturday at Trereife House, Newlyn (just outside Penzance), I enjoyed it very much and would love to tell you all about it tomorrow night.

I have to say that the Festival contained so much more than I'm sharing with you. I had to cherry-pick for me as I had limited time, but there were many workshops, poetry and prose, for adults and children. A 'Big Read': One-off reading group on Patricl Gale's Notes from an Exhibition. 'Writing in Cornish'. 'Write On' - short story competition for schools. Many different authors 'in conversation', and the list goes on; make a note in your diary, I'm sure it will be organised again for next year.

See you tomorrow, PP.