{"id":2383,"date":"2014-03-10T08:45:56","date_gmt":"2014-03-10T08:45:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/?p=2383"},"modified":"2014-03-10T11:16:22","modified_gmt":"2014-03-10T11:16:22","slug":"liars-league-london-come-and-hear-my-story-performed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/?p=2383","title":{"rendered":"Liars’ League London — Come and Hear My Story Performed"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m thrilled and very excited that a short story of mine (called\u00a0Do You Dare Me To Cross The Line)\u00a0<\/em>has been selected as one of the\u00a0Liars’ League’s\u00a0<\/em>winning entries for their March reading event.<\/p>\n

It takes place on Tuesday this week (11th March) at 7.30pm at the Phoenix pub at 37, Cavendish Square, London, near Oxford Circus. There are five stories in the reading and, with a common theme of Truth or Dare,<\/em>\u00a0all promise to be extremely entertaining. Please do come along (it’s \u00a35 on the door), listen to some excellent readings and say hello to me. Full details are here on the\u00a0Liars’ League London\u00a0<\/em>website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For those who aren’t familiar with\u00a0Liars’ League,\u00a0<\/em>it’s a collaboration between authors and actors — a mutually beneficial arrangement which gives each the chance to showcase their skills by making use of the talent of the other. So professional actors bring their training and experience in performing, while the authors provide new and original writing.<\/p>\n

Liars’ League <\/em>is a prestigious and well-known fixture in the London literary circuit (and has associated events elsewhere in the world and the UK). (I was contacted before I’d had chance to email anyone with the news by Emily Pedder, who runs City University’s The Novel Studio course — whose predecessor course I took in 2009\/10. One of my fellow graduates described the Liars’ League <\/em>as ‘really famous’.) I found, via their website<\/a>, that Katy Darby, who’s organising this month’s event, spoke about the short story as a form on Radio 4’s\u00a0The World Tonight<\/em> at the end of last year — pretty authoritative I’d say.<\/p>\n

I first encountered the Liars’ League<\/em>\u00a0about a year ago when I attended the Writers and Artists’ Yearbook<\/em> short story competition awards at the Bloomsbury Institute, where the top three prizewinning entries were given readings by members of the League’s company of actors.<\/p>\n

Videos of all the performances and texts of the stories are published after each event on the\u00a0Liars’ League\u00a0<\/em>website and I’ll post a link from this blog as soon as Tuesday’s become available.<\/p>\n

While I\u2019m relieved it\u2019s not me standing up and reading out loud, I\u2019m still starting to feel nervous about how an audience will respond to the story: will it grab their attention; will they pick up on any hints or clues; will they laugh in the right places? (FYI, if you\u2019re planning on being in the audience there are bits that are deliberately meant to be funny!) They\u2019re the kind of questions about your reader\u2019s response that you wonder about as a fiction writer but you rarely have the opportunity to discover the answers first hand.<\/p>\n

By contrast, one of an actor\u2019s core skills is to thrive on live interaction with an audience and to exploit their experience in delivering the material. And having attended the rehearsal for Liars\u2019 League <\/i>in London last night I\u2019m sure my story\u2019s in excellent hands. It\u2019s being read by actor Alex Woodhall whose interpretation of the story and phrasing of the narrative and dialogue provided a captivating and enthralling perspective.<\/p>\n

I was also impressed and flattered by how Katy Darby and the rest of the Liars\u2019 League<\/i> editorial team perfectly grasped the underlying dynamics between the characters and suggested small but perceptive changes to improve the impact of the story. I\u2019ll say no more because the proof will be on the evening itself and in the subsequent video.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll blog later about the evening\u2019s experience but, despite the nervousness, I\u2019m looking forward to it hugely. I know a number of friends (some of whom have been mentioned on the blog) have said they\u2019ll try to get along and I\u2019d love anyone else to come along who might enjoy a great night of literary entertainment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m thrilled and very excited that a short story of mine (called\u00a0Do You Dare Me To Cross The Line)\u00a0has been selected as one of the\u00a0Liars’ League’s\u00a0winning entries for their March reading event. It takes place on Tuesday this week (11th March) at 7.30pm at the Phoenix pub at 37, Cavendish Square, London, near Oxford Circus. … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Liars’ League London — Come and Hear My Story Performed”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[1081,1080,1078,1076,1077,1079],"class_list":["post-2383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-publishing","tag-alex-woodhall","tag-city-university-novel-studio","tag-competition","tag-liars-league","tag-short-stories","tag-win"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2383"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2386,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2383\/revisions\/2386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}