Reading aloud on the canal

In case you don’t know about Novel London – Safeena Chaudry has created it as a platform for writers to be able to showcase new work. Authors are invited to read a chapter of their new work aloud to an audience and to camera. The reading is then available forever on YouTube. These events pop up at bookshops and locations all over London, on the first Friday of every month, most months. Look out for them.

Novel London is celebrating its second birthday. And Safeena invited me to read an extract from Rules for Thursday Lovers at one of its locations - the zoo. So, there I was, last Sunday afternoon, reading about Angie and Fiona’s adventures to the pleasure boats that drifted by, to the pigs snuffling behind some long grass, to the vultures in those great foreboding cages. Nobody minded much or even noticed. The people strolling past might not even have understood. They chatted in several of the languages that make London the great diverse city it is. Dogs chased other dogs and birds tweeted overhead in the bushes. Safeena and her assistant, Les filmed in silence. And my novel did that strange transition from an imaginary world into the real world in which it is located. The reading will soon be available on YouTube via Novel London.