No Rest for the Wicked Book Launch at Arts4Every1, High Wycombe

Hi, folks! As many of you know, we held a launch party for No Rest for the Wicked over at the Arts4Every1 Centre in High Wycombe on Friday 19th June. And it was fricken awesome.

I wanted to write this blog to give you the lowdown on what went into executing the event, who was instrumental in making it happen, and what actually happened on that fateful, fateful evening.

I’ve been going to the open mic night at the Arts4Every1 Centre ever since my first ever stand-up poetry set, which I did at their open mic last November. It has a really supportive atmosphere, and so I ended up going there every month, and I made friends with a bunch of the regulars – yeah, you know who you are.

 

Dane Cobain – No Rest for the Wicked Cover

 

At around the same time, my debut novella, a supernatural thriller called No Rest for the Wicked, was accepted for publication by Booktrope. I was chatting to Carla, who’s one of the team at Arts4Every1, about running a launch party at the centre, and she had the bright idea of mentioning that there was another part of the premises. And then she showed me around.

As soon as I saw the place, I knew that we had to use it – it’s beautiful and also kind of haunting, especially with the right lighting, and it also fits perfectly with the novel. After all, a substantial part of it is set in Montgomery’s rectory.

I met up with Carla one weekend to hatch some plans, because you can’t plan properly at an open mic night when you’re three beers in and about to go on stage. Besides, we had to make sure that everyone else at Arts4Every1 was happy with it, and that the venue was available on the date that we needed, and a whole other bunch of stuff.

 

 

But by then, we were pretty much unstoppable – it was one of those things that just needed to happen, and so many people got involved. I can’t name all of them but we’re talking 20 odd people, if you include everyone who helped somehow. I felt like I’d created a monster.

I ended up being so busy trying to promote the book launch that I didn’t get much time to practice my set. In the week leading up to the event, we worked on the venue on Tuesday and Thursday, and that doesn’t count all of the planning time that went into it before then. I’ve never put on an event before, and so it was a learning curve for me – I definitely needed the help!

Fast forward to Friday morning, on the day of the event, when I was suffering badly from hayfever and trying to get some work done at the office. Luckily, work let me leave at 4 PM instead of at 5:30, and so I had time to trek home and to grab a shower before going to meet Matt at the train station and heading to the venue.

 

 

Even though it was already mostly set up, we still had a few last-minute things to get sorted, and so there was still plenty to do. Worse, I realised that I’d left a vital adapter at home, but luckily Carla’s mom, who was kind enough to (wo)man the book stand, was able to drive me home to pick it up.

We got everything ready just in time, and doors opened and people started coming inside, which was a huge relief – imagine if we’d opened the doors and no-one showed up! But loads of people did, and a lot of them were people I’d never met before, which was cool. I kind of want to give a shout-out to some folks, but yet again, there are so many people to mention that someone will inevitably feel left out if they don’t get a mention.

Amanda kicked things off with a quick speech about the Arts4Every1 Centre, talking about some of the stuff they offer and introducing me to the stage. I had the outline of a speech prepared, but I hadn’t really had time to practice it – luckily, I think it went pretty well, even though I had a lot of ground to cover and a lot of cool stuff to talk about, including the acts that followed. First up, following my speech, I did a reading – chapter one, A Fair Trial, from memory.

 

 

After I did my reading, I introduced Father Montgomery to the stage, and he came up to deliver a speech about the god particle, only to be disturbed by Niall, one of his parishioners. You can check that out in the video above, and you really should because it was awesome.

After that, we screened some films. There were three short videos about No Rest for the Wicked that I wanted to screen – the book trailer, Maddie Von Stark’s introduction and a clip of Angels appearing on World News. Following that, my colleague Matt introduced a couple of his films – first up was Rec 279, followed by I Heard It Too. You can check both of those out on Vimeo by following the links.

We had a pretty jam-packed schedule, and so I went up after that to perform some of my poems, a few of which are available on YouTube – Supernovae, Arriva #800/850 and Christmas Poem for a Saviour That Doesn’t Exist, to be precise. The poems are the easy bit, because I’ve been working on them for a while and they’re committed to memory.

 

 

Then we had my good friend Neil Denham performing some stand-up, which I unfortunately missed most of because I needed to wee, smoke and get another drink. Luckily, I caught it all on video, and so I’ve been able to watch it since. You can check that out here, if you’d like to.

Neil was followed by Unhealthy Biscuit Fascination, the musical duo of Ant and Ali Lightfoot, who performed a hybrid music and comedy set. I’ve known those two for a while, and both of them vlog on YouTube as MrHeavyhand and 0HeadlessChicken0, as well as together as Tasty Llama Yoghurt, so you should check them out!

And so it was that I rounded off the night with a set of my own songs – again, you can check some of them out on YouTube, including Yes She Does, Not the Same, All the Love and Lights.

 

 

And so, the evening ended. I had to come back the following day to pick up all of my stuff, and so I foolishly left my bag behind. Y’know, the bag with my house keys and iPad in it. Luckily, we managed to break back in to my house (nobody tell the police), and all’s good.

So there you have it – the launch party was a success! I have a bunch of new videos and photography coming your way soon, so be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for further updates, and to check out No Rest for the Wicked on Amazon. I’ll see you soon!

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