Counting down...

By early next week, we should have announced the dates for the first Manx Litfest in 2012. It's been a slow, drawn-out process making the decision. There have been so many factors to consider, some of which we'd anticipated, others that arose during the much banging-of-heads-on-desk that was done.

There were the various existing Isle of Man events to consider (ie avoid), the already-chock-full calendar of literary festivals around the British Isles to take into account, other major international festivals taking place further afield, school holidays... the list was long.

You'll hear about the dates in the media, read about it here, and see it on Facebook and Twitter (assuming you follow us. If you don't, then head over to those links and get on with it. We'll wait. Right, can we continue?)

We're pretty happy with the dates. Yes, that's tempting fate. But right now, fate wouldn't dare stick her nose in. It's been that kind of process, she's likely to get her nose broken. The weekend in question is, as far as we can tell, free of any kind of reasonably sized event in the Island. And while it will clash with a few festivals around the British Isles, that was always going to happen, and the time we've picked is one of the quietest on the festival circuit. So hopefully we're on to a winner.

Now we've fixed on the date, we can start approaching authors to gauge a) their availability and b) their interest. As and when we have names to announce, you can be sure we'll be doing so, complete with a little jig.

Much of the organising so far for Manx Litfest has been behind-the-scenes kind of stuff, laying the groundwork. But we can feel the pace starting to pick up, and that will certainly happen once the dates are announced and everyone has a goal to work towards.

Okay, I've said enough for now. Tune in tomorrow, when we'll be back with a few words about some of the pitfalls we're expecting to encounter...

Cheers
JohnQ