The week you've all been waiting for...

One of the most exciting aspects about pulling together a literary festival is watching the list of visiting authors and poets grow, that anticipation and then excitement (and relief...) when another name confirms their involvement.

And that's matched when we get to make those names public - which is what is going to be happening over the next week or so. We've already officially announced Sally Gardner, Philip Reeve and Sarah McIntyre, and from tomorrow, we will be revealing who is joining them for this year's festival, which runs September 24th-28th.

There are more fantastic names to add to that list, so keep your eyes peeled to the front page of the website and over at our Facebook and Twitter pages.

On the planning front, this coming Tuesday sees out main scheduling meeting - the schedule is the only thing on the agenda, and we drive ourselves insane with a big print out for each day, and a full rainbow of coloured post-it stickers. Much tea is brewed, and many biscuits devoured, during the course of the night. But at the end, the line up of events should be all done and dusted, barring the odd tweak here and there until the programme goes to print in early to mid-July.

First up though, it's the announcements that you've all been waiting for. First one tomorrow, Sunday...

Behind the scenes in the build-up to Litfest 2014

So it's May already, and no, we're not quite sure how that has happened.
Planning in earnest for this year's festival - September 24-28 - got underway in early January, and the last four months have disappeared quicker than a box of chocolates at a Litfest committee meeting.

In the early months there isn't an awful lot of juicy news to reveal; we're talking with authors, poets and storytellers, visiting potential venues, making general decisions re the daily plan for the festival and so forth.

We have unveiled a few cracking names on the line-up for this year's festival - Sally Gardner, Philip Reeve and Sarah McIntyre (pictured right!) - but we'll be announcing several more names in the next week or two.

Indeed, we've now reached that stage of the build-up where we are in a position to crank up the publicity machine and really start building the anticipation for this year's festival.

The website needs updating and that will happen over the next week or so, we'll be posting our regular snippets on Facebook and Twitter, and we'll be starting to fire out our newsletter again on a regular basis - you can sign up for that on the home page of the website.

For this year we want to add something else to the mix. Using this blog, we're going to give you a glimpse behind the scenes of what is involved in organising Litfest, with regular updates as to how things are progressing - the pitfalls, the challenges, the successes.

So buckle up and take that ride with us. September might seem like a long way away to some, but trust us, it's just around the corner. Particularly when you have book elves stealing days by crossing them off the calendar when you're fast asleep.