Guests arrived early, such was their excitement for meeting Sharon Bolton tonight. And in fact the author struggled to make her way in through the gathering at the door. 'Am I late?' she asked.
As we were about to start, there was a smash, and a kerfuffle as one of our guests sitting in the front row had dropped a glass. It had fortunately been empty but there was a short delay as we cleared up the fragments.
"We've had our drama for the evening," I said as I introduced the author. "And we know 'whodunnit'," quipped the offender, slightly embarrassed.
"It's broken the ice," I laughed. "No, I broke the glass," he replied.
The evening continued with laughs and gasps in equal measure as the author talked to us about creating and publishing her compelling and sometimes horrifying plots.
She explained how she first came to write her thrillers when, working as a PR, she had to meet a client who needed to promote insurance. Neither of them wanted to talk about the matter in hand and in their ensuing conversation, the client revealed that he was taking time out to write a book. He felt a week was all it would take to write a book of romantic fiction. Sharon decided to do the same. But she wanted to write a book that she enjoyed reading - which was horror.
She believes that we get rid of our fears through reading or writing about horror, and she talked of how she encourages her young son in his enjoyment of the genre.
Presenting her new novel, 'Dead Woman Walking', tonight, Sharon answered questions from the audience and revealed that her titles for her books were rarely accepted by the publisher who had their own ideas. Yet an earlier book, 'Daisy Chain' was Sharon's idea, she said. "It's not sold as well as the others, though, so that's my lesson there!"
She was a hugely entertaining guest.
