Author discovers the writers of tomorrow

You may be familiar with the author, A J West. He rose to overnight stardom with The Spirit Engineer, making the Sunday Times bestseller list and winning the prestigious Historical Writers Debut Crown Award.

He had quite the adventure when he came to our tiny island last week. You’d have thought that the former producer of the Arts Programme with Claudia Winkleman and the Jeremy Vine Show at BBC Radio 2 would be widely travelled and used to all manner of flights on quirky little aircraft.

Not so. He strapped himself into one of Aurigny’s Dorniers, which ply their trade between Southampton and Alderney, only to be told by the pilot that the handful of passengers shouldn’t be too alarmed if they had to make several attempts at landing after crossing the Channel.

Well he made it, safe and sound. I met him the next morning at our local school where he was due to lead workshops for pupils on writing tailored to their English Literature curriculum. As one of the five guest authors for our Literary Trust festival entitled Literally Gothic, he had leapt at the chance to share his writing passion with both younger and older pupils.

My job, I reassured him, was to take care of the ensuing publicity (yup, it’s one of my several jobs – most people on this island have at least three).

If you have anything to do with education, snap this guy up as he’s pure genius and he knows how to teach. His workshops enthralled Years 5 & 6 on how to be a storyteller, showing them how to create stories that capture the imagination and use the magic of words, then tell those stories with fun, confidence, and creativity. 

Then he took secondary pupils through smart plotting and engineering a twist. His workshop helped students prepare for exams by teaching them quick and simple ways to create a structure for a story and then impress examiners with a clever twist. This has proven popular with students preparing for exams with a practical requirement to write a short story under pressure. 

As I said, I was there as the publicity fellow. But sitting there waiting to organise the photoshoot I learned so much about crafting a story and not just from A J. The younger classes came up with Colin the Strictly Vegan Troll (play on words there as Colin also wants to go on Strictly Come Dancing) and the theft of the world’s most expensive pig (there’s a twist in the piggy’s tail!). During this session I found the solution to a scene in my current series that had been taxing me, and it isn’t about trolls or pigs. I doff my cap to these kids.

A J concurred. “I have been blown away by the creativity and capability of the students here,” he said afterwards. “They are more than just students, they are already good enough to be authors themselves and the Alderney literary scene is in good hands.”

The teachers were enthralled too. English teacher Miss Patricia Smith summed up: “It has been a privilege and a pleasure to have A J West visit us – what an inspiration he is.”

I hope they like the publicity this generated for the Island, its marvellous school and the forward-thinking Alderney Literary Trust.

Who is A J West?

A J West studied English Literature at University before embarking on a career as a broadcast journalist. He produced the Arts Programme with Claudia Winkleman and the Jeremy Vine Show at BBC Radio 2, before presenting television news in Northern Ireland.

While working in Belfast, he discovered the true story of William Jackson Crawford, a ‘spirit investigator’ and mysterious professor of engineering. His subsequent debut novel The Spirit Engineer was published by Duckworth Books in hardback in 2021 and paperback in 2022. His second novel about the secret molly houses of Georgian London will be published in June next year. Discover A J here.

He was in Alderney to speak at Literally Gothic, Alderney's one-day festival of Gothic Literature, on Saturday, October 14^th.

Update on my own writing

Regular readers will know I’m between publishers at the moment. The good news is that contracts have been signed with Sapere Books for four of my historical fiction novels plus a series of three under the working title The Britannia Conspiracy. I’ll be back with a blast next year if not before. Stay tuned in.