Young Bond author Charlie Higson talks publishing at Book Festival

30-Aug-2005 • Young Bond

On the opening afternoon of this year's Book Festival, a small army of young sleuths gathered to hear Charlie Higson explore the world of the Young Bond - reports The Hearld.

If they'd hoped for revelations from the forthcoming second book, Blood Fever, even although it is not due in the shops until January, they likely went away disappointed. Though there were many well-thumbed copies of Silverfin on laps, Higson seemed curiously unprepared to join his young fans in the world he had created.

Instead, the man who co-authored some of the funniest moments of The Fast Show offered a dry treatise on the world of publishing. We heard how the lucky blighter hadn't even had to think up the idea of books about James Bond's schooldays but was approached by the Fleming Estate, keen to maximise whatever rights the author had not signed away for a pittance. As any mythmaking that Puffin's publicity department had created was dismantled, things slumped further as Higson revealed suggestions for the title of the first book that had been rejected because they "sounded like gay sexual practices". Parents' faces fell as they considered the questions that might follow.

Thanks to `JP` for the alert.