I attended the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books yesterday, on the campus of UCLA, and will return today. Last year there were 130,000 in attendance, and there appears to be even more this year. Their advertising claims it as the largest book festival in the country.
The free tickets to the sessions became available last Sunday and could be had at Ticketmasters through Thursday. When I visited my local outlet on Monday, many sessions were already sold out. So it is very popular.
It is a very worth while event for aspiring writers, though far more non-writers are in attendance. The two seminars of most value to me so far, were First Fiction, and Picture Books.
First Fiction was a moderated panel of three new authors who had their first efforts published. The most interesting thing to come out of this was that each of them violated what I've heard here, are cardinal rules of publishing.
The first author wrote in passive voice. The second, wrote a slow whimsical detailed tale, that was far more literary fiction than commercial. The third was also slow and detailed, but depicted life of a child growing up in Russia. Again, it seemed more literary than commercial.
They were published by a university press, a small press and Penguin, respectively.
Picture Books presented a great deal of information by long pulished authors of these books. Each had illustrated their own book, but said that it would not be likely that the book publishers would agree to that today, preferring illustrators of their own selection.
Less interesting, for me but somewhat informative, were the sessions on Editors Who Write, and Tavis Smiley interviewing Taylor Branch. Unfortunately Ray Bradbury was sick and had to cancel his session.
It was a wonderful day to be a writer and I enjoyed mingling and talking with many like myself, published and unpublished. I'm looking forward to the panels slated for today.
Well I'm off and into today's adventure.
The free tickets to the sessions became available last Sunday and could be had at Ticketmasters through Thursday. When I visited my local outlet on Monday, many sessions were already sold out. So it is very popular.
It is a very worth while event for aspiring writers, though far more non-writers are in attendance. The two seminars of most value to me so far, were First Fiction, and Picture Books.
First Fiction was a moderated panel of three new authors who had their first efforts published. The most interesting thing to come out of this was that each of them violated what I've heard here, are cardinal rules of publishing.
The first author wrote in passive voice. The second, wrote a slow whimsical detailed tale, that was far more literary fiction than commercial. The third was also slow and detailed, but depicted life of a child growing up in Russia. Again, it seemed more literary than commercial.
They were published by a university press, a small press and Penguin, respectively.
Picture Books presented a great deal of information by long pulished authors of these books. Each had illustrated their own book, but said that it would not be likely that the book publishers would agree to that today, preferring illustrators of their own selection.
Less interesting, for me but somewhat informative, were the sessions on Editors Who Write, and Tavis Smiley interviewing Taylor Branch. Unfortunately Ray Bradbury was sick and had to cancel his session.
It was a wonderful day to be a writer and I enjoyed mingling and talking with many like myself, published and unpublished. I'm looking forward to the panels slated for today.
Well I'm off and into today's adventure.
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