On Monday (March 31) afternoon I went to a book talk at the University of Hong Kong, organised by the HKU library. The writer invited to speak at the talk was Jeffrey Archer. (Readers of this post interested in who this person is could, for a start, visit the Wikepaedia site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Archer. Archer’s offcial personal website is: http://www.jeffreyarcher.co.uk/index.htm)
I haven’t read anything written by Archer, but I know he’s a best-seller novelist. So it’s pretty much out of curiosity about what a best-seller novelist would say about writing and about his works that I went to the talk. Archer delivered an entertaining talk. In response to Archer’s well-scripted words and calculated gestures, the audience burst into laughters almost every half minute during the the one-and-a-half hour talk, whole-heartedly or out of courtesy.
Among a wide range of issues he touched upon, he spoke about his experience of getting his first novel, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, published. It had been turned down 17 (hope I remember right the figure) times before a publisher decided to publish it. He also told his audience how he organised his life when he wrote his recently published novel, A Prisoner of Birth. At some point of the book talk, when someone from the audience challenged Archer by saying that there were similarities in this book and the novel about revenge, The Count of Monte Cristo, Read the rest of this entry »
