Life at the Roast

The first Book Roast authors had no idea what they were letting themselves in for... The invitation kind of worked like this: send us an excerpt from your magnum opus and we'll invite people over to read it and have a chat. Oh, and there will be three ridiculous questions for them to answer, which may lead to them mocking both you and your book. Oh, yeah, and you have to hand over a free copy of your book. Yup, we're for real.

Amazingly, authors lined up! And so did readers. The Book Roast wasn't always about the content of a book, but about the chance for readers to interact with writers and for writers to promote their work. The lively comment trails demonstrate the success of interaction! Behind the scenes, our statisticians confirmed the success of promotion with huge numbers of silent readers who checked out every roast and comment trail - in most cases, numbers well into the hundreds.

We were open to almost anything and we got it- romance, thrillers, sci-fi, non-fiction, young adult, children's, fantasy, cosies, women's fiction, even erotica (although that one only after a lengthy behind the scenes debate among the Roast Masters!)

Our regular author appearances were interspersed with special events. Remember 'Reach out and Read' where we helped raise money for a charity that gave books to children? As part of that we asked a group of children what they would write about, if they were to write a book. Voted most popular answer was the one from Ashley, age 5, who succinctly answered: Me.

We featured an editor's week, an agent's week and a series of first chapters. New authors and established ones embraced our format and joined in the fun.

We took an extended holiday break, but Chris didn't leave us without entertainment. Remember this?

A couple of our most popular Book Roast characters were the rather naughty Miss Savannah, and the equally cheeky publishing intern, Antonio. Some sense and balance was provided by our New York publishing insider, Miss Spitfire, whose posts gave us a fascinating peek into the publishing process.

Of course, like every great show, we've had our bloopers...

Like the day the author didn't turn up. Turned out her publicist had booked her in and the message hadn't got through to the author. After that - no more publicists. We talked to the author or nobody!

How about the day the Roast Master didn't turn up? Um, that would be me. A couple of times. Living down under has its disadvantages, one of them being that I'm asleep at the usual Roast kick off time, another being that Blogger's scheduling clock doesn't synch with mine. So unless I remember to put up the roast the night before... Yes, Chris ended up rescuing my authors a few times.

And then there were the authors and agents who turned up after a lengthy swim in the whisky vat...no names...you know who you are. The funniest roastees ever!

I'd like to thank all our authors for their talent, courage and participation! The agents, editors and bloggers who supported us. And I'd like to thank Chris, for making the whole thing possible.

See you around the blogs!