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TWF launch
6 May 2005
Went to m’friends Stephen and Candy's nuptials last weekend, and then this week down to London to launch The Write Fantastic. A lesser man than I would draw some kind of parallel about moving from death to life, from a season of funerals to a season of new beginnings; happily, I am above such crudities. The world doesn't make a lot of parallels, and it is not the task of art to force - or even foist - such false quantities upon it. [NB - please don’t tell me that a false quantity is an error of pronunciation; I know this. So is the drawing of inappropriate parallels, and other cheap or lazy habits. Bad artists make pronouncements, and then distort the world to prove them true. This is error of the worst kind. Lord, aren’t I pompous tonight?]
Anyway, I have been doing dreary things - tax returns, working on the novel, like that - which is why you haven't heard from me in a while. This week, as I said, the world grew brighter. I swore I would not dance at Stephen & Candy's wedding, I was past such things, excused dancing, I said; and lo, I did dance. And did drink, or vice versa; perhaps it was the drink that danced, and just dragged my body around with it? And then I was spirited away to do other things, but let's not talk about that. I don’t remember much, anyway.
And so to London - or to Henley initially, to spend the night with Helen and Mark (who are also getting married, later in the year; there's a lot of it about) and thence to London in the morning. An hour in Regent's Park, then coffee with a former editor of mine (who shares my own opinion, that what I most need now is a pseudonym; I'd have had one years ago, if not for editors and agents being dead set against it), and so to the pub to meet up with TWF. An afternoon's plotting together, many things, and then the evening event. Seventy-five people came, give or take: old friends and new contacts, all of them welcome and a fine time had by all. It was meant to be a media launch, so a bit of a pity perhaps that no media turned up, but never mind. The name and intentions are firmly lodged now within the genre’s consciousness, which can’t be a bad thing. Wonderful, what buying people free drinks can do...
© Chaz Brenchley 2005
Reproduced here by permission of Chaz Brenchley, who asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this work.