web analytics

Moody versus Simmons – event report

Dave Coventry

Had an absolutely cracking time in the company of Mr Simmons this weekend just gone. Sunday was devoted to World War Z, and our video review (well, the half hour we recorded of the several hours we spent talking about it) will be online shortly. But the main purpose of the weekend was our ‘head to head’ event in Coventry.

As you know, Wayne and I have done a lot of events together over the years, and we wanted to try something different this time. We drove hundreds of miles last year travelling from event to event on our ‘Never Trust a Man with Hair’ tour, and often those long car journeys were more entertaining than the signings. We’d put the world to rights talking about writing, the publishing industry, films, music, and so on and so on. So we thought, rather than sit behind a table and sign books for people one at a time, why not have one of our ‘car conversations’ in public?

So that’s what we did. In front of a decent-sized and very receptive crowd, we read excerpts from our books and talked frankly and honestly about our careers, how we met and became this bizarre double act, our past and future works, how we both write, when we write, genre labels, and our views on publishing and the industry in general. It made a refreshing change (both for us and the audience, I think) from the usual author event format.

Dave and Wayne Coventry

Thanks to Rich Coad from Waterstones Coventry, Michael Wilson of This is Horror, and everyone who came along and supported the event (particularly Paul Feeney, who drove almost 200 miles from Lowestoft to be there, and who’s photographs I’ve pinched for this post). The only downside to the evening… being turned away from a pub in Coventry because the door staff ‘didn’t like the look of one of us’. The shame of it! And to make matters worse, they wouldn’t say which one of us it was they didn’t like…

The lack of post-event drinks apart, it really was an excellent evening. We’re more than happy to put on similar events if there’s sufficient interest in the future, so if you want us and you can arrange a venue and a crowd, please get in touch.