Roving Reporter: Pamela Rushby
Publishers share their best-kept stories
Well, what to say about this session?
We were promised PUBLISHERS SHARE THEIR BEST-KEPT STORIES. We were assured by moderators Susanne Gervay and Frane Lessac it would be "Funny, inspiring and more".
It was certainly that, and more .....
It started promisingly with Zoe Walton's story of contacting John Flanagan, the author of the Ranger series, suggesting that a pack mule that had suddenly popped up in the middle of a tense situation, might need to be set up so that readers were aware of its presence. And of the A4 sheet of suggestions she received ("to be inserted at your leisure") setting up the pack mule so effectively that the reader tended to forget there was anyone else in the story. (Really, you had to be there ...)
And of the Erratum slip that Maryann Ballantyne treasured for years, pinned to the wall above her desk, that had been slipped into a printing of Year 10 geography books: ON PAGE 76 WHERE TEXT SAYS 'LABIA' IT SHOULD READ 'LAVA'.
And the book that Sue Whiting loved - and published - "Harry the Boy Who Couldn't Fart" which came complete with a Farting Machine that the whole staff was required to test, again and again and again ....
Things then went downhill as Susanne and Frane pitched four books to the publishers:
(Editor note: And I'm afraid we can't tell you anything about what happened next, except that.....)
The audience shrieked, howled, and rolled on the floor.
A Roving Reporter's life is not an easy one!