Edinburgh International Book Festival!

My favorite part of Fringe is now in full gear - the Edinburgh International Book Festival (@edbookfest)! Charlotte Square turns into the main hub of activity, but this year, it's expanding down George Street as well, which everybody loves! Performance halls like the "Moulin Rouge" pop-up everywhere.It's lasts from August 12th through the 28th and all the big names come in from all over the world for it. It's always crowded - especially the ice-cream tent. This year, a friend turned me on to the fact, that as a blogger, I could get a press pass - which I did! That said, I have to admit it doesn't look like my pass will get me in to see much. Oh well. It's always fun to wear a laniard at festivals. :)
     In the mean time, other wonderfulness has come to pass... Award-winning author Vivian French invited me to join her onstage to do the same thing we did down at the Borders Festival to celebrate her newest book.It was published by Barrington Stoke (they specialize in books for dyslexic readers - groovy!), so the head of PR, Kirstin Lamb hosted us. She and I had met before at various literary events around town, and even in Bologna, Italy at the Book Fair! (The world of children's books is always a delightfully small one.) Here we are, Viv, Me and Kirstin in the "authors' yurt" before the gig.We were escorted to the Baille Gifford tent, where we had a lovely crowd of about 50-60 kids and adults that had some good friends in the mix too! (Hi Derek, Jean, and Catherine!)And we were off!Vivian was an actress before she became an author, so she is wonderful on stage. She talked about how funny English words are and about talking and writing stories, and then she got prompts from the audience - which I drew! (Pardon my back being to the audience, but this is how this works - Viv talks, I draw like crazy!) Per the audience prompts, this was the hockey-playing, rainbow-loving unicorn piece.This was the dog, pig, hamster and snake reading - in the rain.And this was the fairy and porcupine in space image (with the unicorn on a rainbow ring). Yeah, it was pretty nuts! Somehow, I kept up with all the fun ideas. And happily, I brought my pastels this time, so I was able to add color to the images. We gave them out to audience participants at the end.
     I just LOVE doing that with Vivian. We bounce off of each other so well and had an absolute blast!
     There's more Book Festival fun coming soon - so check back!