I’m giving my first EVER author reading next week. I’ll be doing excerpts from “Beauty Rising” and taking questions at the Dalat Library. However, can I admit that I don’t really know what I’m doing? I’ve never done a reading. Actually, now that I think about it, I’ve never even been to a reading.

Well, perhaps fortune shines down upon me because tonight, I’m going to get some help from Charles Dickens.

As you may know, Dickens was a master of doing readings of his own works – and he did hundreds of them all over the world.  An audience favorite quickly became “A Christmas Carol” which we all know and love.

Actor Phil Zachariah has studied and mastered the art of being Charles Dickens, and he is recreating Dickens’ intimate evenings with his 19th century audiences on his own 21st century tour around the world. He’s doing his show in Penang tonight, and I’m just about to go.  I’m hoping the master storyteller himself will be able to give me some pointers of what to do next week.

I’ll let you know what I think of the performance and if it will be helpful for me or not.

But now I have to go.