One never knows quite what to expect when one is asked to speak at a writing conference. Over the years I’ve attended huge US conferences where rumours abound of editors having submissions thrust under bathroom stalls. (This never happened to me - though I once had an aspiring author pitch a paranormal romance at me in a swimming pool in Dallas!)

The Fifth Annual Verulam ‘Get Writing’ conference at the University of Hertfordshire was an all together more civilised affair - albeit more rainy. It’s run with military precision by Jenny Barden and her team and every year has managed to attract a variety of interesting speakers. (This year’s guests included WHSmiths buyer Matt Bates, chick lit writer Sarah Duncan and TV presenter turned writer Sue Cook, as well as a host of agents and editors.) And it’s a mere half hour from Kings Cross even if I was never entirely sure where I was. (Near St Albans apparantly!)

The most challenging aspect of the day was the topic of the speech itself. My first thought when Jenny said ‘Beyond the Revolution’ - was ‘Which revolution?’. (Which may reflect a diet of too many historical novels perhaps!) My second thought - when I realised that she meant ‘beyond the digital revolution - was well, that’s going to be a short speech!

Luckily I was going to be part of a publishing panel and my fellow panelists - Marlene Johnson, Publisher for Hachette Children’s and Simon Taylor from Transworld - and I convened ahead of the conference to come up with a plan.

We decided to keep it brief, keep it positive and throw the discussion open to the audience as quickly as possible. (And who knows we might even learn something along the way!) So armed with some facts and figures from Ben and Luthfa* , we three editors met up an hour before the panel to compare notes. Simon and I discovered that we pretty much had the same figures (though 800% growth year on year in eBooks was a good enough figure to repeat.) and had both at least heard about the recently launched Asda £52 E-reader. (Though I had the Times article to hand that compared it as a cross between an MP3 Player and an Etch-A-Sketch.) We wisely cut a swathe through our prepared material and decided to make the panel session as interactive as possible.

A lively discussion ensued, chaired expertly by Marlene. We’d predicted much of the topics that came up - and some that didn’t. (Marlene had been volunteered by Simon and I to tackle any difficult agency model questions. No one asked, but Marlene didn’t let that stop her from answering anyway!)

Some of the more interesting moments of the session were realising just how many of our very digital savvy audience now had access to either dedicated ereaders or tablets like the ipad and were regularly buying ebooks. There also came the interesting suggestion from one of the delegates that Waterstones should also sell e-editions in store for those who like to browse real shelves before buying a digital edition of a book. And at one point I outed my hitherto secret habit of buying certain vampire fiction in ebook form so that no one knew I was reading it! What I also took away was just how passionate the conference delegates were for the written word, no matter in what form it was delivered to them.

My afternoon ended with a a quick round of what the conference likes to call ‘Super Pitches’ where writers get the chance to pitch their books in five minutes to an agent or editor. It felt like the editorial equivalent of speed dating. Though I was impressed with all the pitches - not least by the lady who managed to tell me the entire plot of her lush sounding epic novel (large cast of characters, two continents, spannning thirty odd years) without appearing to draw breath! Time will tell how my ‘dates’ turn out…

Gillian - Fiction Editorial Director

(*I’d like to thank Luthfa especially for the ‘no one knows anything’ gem which was going to be my fallback position should any difficult questions arise!)

You Are Next is a brilliantly creepy thriller and we have had a lot of fun getting people excited about the book. Here’s our journey to publication day…

To build excitement within the book trade we sent out a creepy box of dominoes with You Are Next scrawled on the back (thanks to my trusty Tippex pen). The dominoes relate to the serial killer in the book who leaves dominoes as numerical clues as to his next victim. Creepy…

Then we sent out these colour changing mugs, which are still the envy of Ebury staff if you happen to get to the kitchen first.

But it’s not all mugs and dominoes, we are also doing some serious marketing things like a tube advertising campaign.

And then to kick publication day off yesterday we had a team going round the London tube network reading excerpts from the book to unsuspecting tube travellers and handing out copies of the book. Oh and Ebury decided to leave the building for a bit of guerilla marketing ourselves…

Try a sample chapter here. It will have you on the edge of your seat.

Have you read it yet? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Clare - Senior Marketing Executive

Where do you feel most happy when you are cooking?

In my own kitchen with my family around me – I know where everything is!

What food do you love to cook for your family?

Slow roast lamb with all the trimmings, the family love it and it is easy to do.

What is your favourite recipe to cook when you have friends over for dinner?

Watercroft chicken, a recipe of mine from years ago, chicken breasts stuffed with mushroom farci with a lime cream sauce.

What is your larder must-have?

All the ingredients for baking cakes and scones and old fashioned gravy browning.

What is your favourite kitchen gadget or utensil?

My current favourite is a metal lemon squeezer from Divertimenti.

If you had one piece of advice for novice cooks at home, what would it be?

Choose recipes that you and your friends will enjoy and don’t choose a recipe with too many ingredients or one that is too complicated. Follow a good recipe and if you are cooking for friends try it out on the family first.

What’s your favourite treat or shortcut?

Buying all butter puff pastry, just as good as homemade.

Are there any foods you really dislike?

Oysters.

Do you still enjoy cooking at home or is cooking for a living more than enough?

Cooking to me is relaxation so I love doing it for work but also for family and friends.

What was the 1st recipe you taught your children and why?

Tiny cup cakes in sweet paper cases, their favourite part was the decoration and sharing them with their teachers and friends.

Mary Berry is the author of My Kitchen Table: 100 Cakes and Bakes. Read more Q&As with our cookery authors on the My Kitchen Table website.

O that abstract garden of being
Tells me to be brave, and clear,
In the fire of living,
And in the journey through the year.
So I will grow me like an oak tree
And make life’s honey like a bee.
Each day I will walk an interesting mile
And with the sun I’ll share a smile.
I will play again like a child,
And celebrate what’s wild.
I will swim in every sea or river,
And reflect the light of the sublime giver.
I will be at ease with opposition,
And will cultivate intuition.
I will walk the surprising streets,
And dance to life’s unexpected beats.
I will notice all the phases of the moon
And try not to act too late or too soon.
I will write something new every day
And look at paintings in an alternative way.
I’ll not dream the same way twice;
But I’ll not be shy to repeat what’s nice.
I’ll have the courage, when needed, to change;
And I won’t forget that life is strange.
And so I’ll learn to love the simple things
As well as the complexity that life brings.

Good or bad I’ll learn to treat the same
And I’ll not forget that it’s all a mysterious game.
I’ll not let that general fear of death run my life
And I’ll make magic even out of strife.
Into the higher realms I will enter
And make my corner the centre.
O that abstract garden, make me clear,
Make me brave, without fear.
I intend to love this rich new year.

By Ben Okri, author of the upcoming Time for New Dreams

(Copyright, Ben Okri, December 2010. All Rights Reserved.)

I am a published author.I am a published author…

Nope, doesn’t matter how many times I say it, how often I pinch myself to check I’m not dreaming, it still doesn’t feel at all real.

But as of today it is! And as my book, “The Secret Diary of A New Mum (Aged 43 ¼)” hits the shelves, I guess I’d better get used to it.

I’ve been asked by a number of people how it all came about…

The ancient Greek scholar Archimedes stepped into his bath, noticed that the water level rose, worked out the theory of water displacement – and invented the ‘Eureka moment’.

Perhaps in keeping with the modern age of social media, my own Eureka moment arrived in the form of a Facebook post.

“I love your comments,” wrote an old friend who I hadn’t seen for 20 years. “When are you publishing? ’Sex and the City’ is so yesterday. How about ‘The Secret Diary of Cari Rosen Aged 43 ¼’”?

Archimedes is said to have been so eager to share his conclusions with the masses that he leapt from his bathtub and ran round the streets of Syracuse naked. Fortunately for the good folk of north London my own response was a little more measured…

Nonetheless, I did get my book deal. And thus I got to write my book (on my sofa. In my pyjamas) And eighteen months later here we are…

There is no doubt that ‘older motherhood’ remains a controversial subject and it’s been fantastic to have an opportunity to tell it like it really is, wrinkles and all.

The journey that “Secret Diary” has taken me on so far has been an amazing one. Yes, I still have days when I log on to Amazon just to double check I haven’t made the whole thing up. And yes, as soon as I have finished writing this I will be rushing off to Waterstones and forcing my husband to take photos of me standing next to my real book in a real book shop. But that’s not to say it’s been glamour all the way.

Checking out venues for the launch I visited one book store where the owner looked me up and down before asking “Self published I presume?” Clearly there is still work to do on my image.

But oh the joy of being able to say ‘Ebury actually’ as I turned and left (although yes, I’m the first to admit that this would have worked much better had I been looking where I was going and therefore walked out of the door rather than into a large display of Dr Seuss…)

I am slowly adjusting to this new world of newspapers and photo shoots and interviews - but I know that whatever happens my gorgeous girl will keep me grounded.

As she said to a visitor the other day - “Look - this is mummy’s book. She wrote it about me… It’s very boring”

Cari Rosen, Author of The Secret Diary of Cari Rosen Aged 43 ¼

 Revolutions are not a new phenomena, of course, but what we are seeing today in Egypt and in other Middle Eastern countries is something quite different. There are no leaders inspiring these mass protests. They are spontaneous, self assembling movements – driven largely by social media such as Facebook, Twitter and the internet – and compounded by the revelations of Wikileaks, which confirmed the endemic corruption in those countries. In effect, these are leaderless, digital revolutions.

The defining feature of such revolutions is their capacity to generate momentum on a massive scale, disturbingly quickly. This momentum, or Big Mo, feeds on itself and becomes self perpetuating, until it develops so much power that it threatens the status quo. It can be highly contagious – spilling over borders from one country to the next. This porous and interconnected nature of social media makes it difficult to stop the momentum once it gains traction, as the Egyptian government discovered when it tried to shut down the local internet. Digital information flows like water, constantly seeking new channels and outlets.

It is hoped, of course, that these momentous developments in the Middle East will help usher in a new age of freedom to people whose aspirations have been long suppressed. But we should be wary of the possibility that the momentum may spiral out of control and lead to the collapse of social order – resulting in chaos. For Big Mo is a twin edged sword.

It’s not just social and political structures that are increasingly vulnerable to large scale momentum. A few years ago, we witnessed what happens when a complex system develops a powerful momentum, propelled by interconnected technologies, and a lack of transparency and accountability. I am talking here about the global financial crisis. Many people blame this crisis on the usual suspects of easy credit, a housing bubble, toxic derivatives and so on. But underlying all these factors was the momentum dynamic which accelerated and magnified the weaknesses of the financial system to the point of collapse.

A recent report in The Economist Magazine on 6 January, 2011, titled ‘The Big Mo’ said, ‘The momentum effect drives a juggernaut through one of the tenets of finance theory, the efficient-market hypothesis… Even the high priests of efficient-market theory have acknowledged (its effect). …It would help explain why bubbles are created and why professional investors ended up allocating capital to dotcom companies with no earnings and business plans written on the back of a cigarette packet. Momentum can carry whole economies off track.’

One reason that Big Mo can be so destructive, is that people often don’t realise they are being swept up in it until it is too late. By then the damage is already done. In today’s highly interconnected, computer-driven world, it can also have lethal consequences. In the realm of religion, for example, new digital technologies have enabled extremist ideologies to develop momentum very rapidly – recruiting new followers on a scale impossible a few years ago. It is this threat that looms large over the recent developments in Egypt and elsewhere.

Meanwhile, when news stories break, anywhere in the world, they are sensationalised and magnified to such an extent by the 7/24 news media that they soon develop their own self-perpetuating momentum, which in turn, influences and accelerates the outcome of the actual events taking place (as we are seeing in the Middle East). It’s no longer a matter of ‘The medium is the message’ but rather, ‘The momentum drives the message’.

If Sir Isaac Newton, the father of Momentum theory, were alive today, he would notice there is a lot of quantitas motus about. We have evolved into a momentum driven world. Yet, despite its increasing influence over our lives, we know very little about how momentum affects human behaviour on a large scale. It is a mystery. This is why I wrote The Big Mo – to shed some light on this phenomenon and, hopefully, prompt some deeper analysis into one of the most elusive and potent forces shaping our world in the 21st century. To see just how powerful this force is, look no further that what’s happening in Cairo today.

- by Mark Roeder, author of The Big Mo