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Congratulations to Kaya (our West Coast Account Director) who recently returned from her Hawaiian honeymoon!

Wishing you all the best for the future…

Love from all at Albion

One of the big upsides for us with Albion West Coast is creating opportunities for the up-and-coming talent we already have at Albion. We have a generation of digital talent who are incredibly savvy, entrepreneurial, with lots of transferable skills, and a few of them are already working inside the new company. Tim… God bless you… it’s always a pleasure. It gives us a warm glow to be able to do this for people, and of course it’s great for them too (and having a beach a stone’s throw away helps!)

In addition to creating opportunities for existing Albionites, we now have opportunities for US natives who like how we work. If you have an entrepreneurial flair, are digitally savvy , have a passion for all things Silicon Valley,  Account Management or Planner experience, then I want to hear from you.

You can find me on Twitter @jasongoodman or drop us an email at hello (at) albionlondon (dot) com - with the subject ‘AWC Opportunities’

David Mitchell is one the most exciting British authors around. Nominated by Time magazine as one of the ‘100 most influential people in the world’ in 2007 his latest book, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, is finally available in paperback. To celebrate the fact Mitchell was present last night on the 6^th floor of Waterstones Piccadilly Circus to read both from the book and some new material.

He started reading a particularly poetic passage from towards the end of Thousand Autumns. Heavily descriptive it evokes the chaotic but vibrant life on the streets of 18^th century Nagasaki and all of the various forms of human life that populate it. At the end of the paragraph Mitchell apologised and said that after a year of reading from the same book he’d quite like to read us something different and that in fact he had first read that passage four years ago at Hay-on-Wye well before the book was finished. He wants to read us something new he’s working on and pulls out a few pages of typed manuscript with a child’s drawing on the back. He notes ‘this is what happens when you leave things on the kitchen table in reach of your five year old daughter’.

The piece he then read, set in London in 1976, described an 11 year old girls’ journey to her aunt and uncles’ house with her father. The father has been banned from gambling by the mother and the young girl tries her hardest to avoid walking past any betting shops. Stopping at one and leaving the young girl in the nearby laundry he bets and wins 45 pounds. They carry on but unfortunately just before they arrive the father spots another bookies and thinks that he should ‘invest’ his winnings. This does not turn out well and they never make it to their destination.  Mitchell was clearly not lying when he said this was something he was working on as midway through reading he asks if anyone has a pen so he might add in some extra punctuation. Then later he says, after describing the young girl as a ten year old ‘wasn’t she eleven a minute ago?’ and again he scribbles on the sheets. ‘Were five pound notes blue in the 70s?’ he asks a moment later.

The reading finishes, there’s applause and time for questions. Thankfully the audience ask mostly sensible questions and Mitchell is most humble, gracious and giving when answering them.

The first question asked how much research he had to do for Thousand Autumns. The short answer is a lot it seems. Initially there was research around the context. Thousand Autumns is set on an 18^th century Dutch trading post off Nagasaki so there was research into the nature of Dutch East Indies Company, the general naval-ness of the 18^th century. But then there were the specifics such as shaving. When was shaving invented? Would a lowly clerk in the Dutch East Indies Company be able to afford shaving foam? What kind of razor would he use? This is what you spend your time researching Mitchell explains.

The next question ‘Black Swan Green was a step away from your previous style of chopped-up narrative, was this a dress rehearsal for Thousand Autumns?’

The answer was, essentially, no not really. Mitchell then explained how he’d not wanted people to think of him as the chopped-up narrative guy and that the secret to literary longevity was a conscious effort to not repeat yourself.

‘I want to avoid becoming like REM, who essentially release ok music but it’s all the same, indistinguishable.’

And how does one achieve this? ‘Omnivoracity’ Mitchell says. Read and explore everything. Think about everything. Essentially do anything that avoids getting yourself in a rut and even if it means upsetting the publisher, never release a book that you feel isn’t a progression from your previous one.

‘Do you have a favorite character from Thousand Autumns and do you ever feel guilty with what you do to your characters?’

Mitchell’s favorite character appears to be Dr Marinus who he says is a kind of immortal figure which perhaps hints that he will be featuring in the follow up book (many of Mitchell’s characters pop up from book to book). And whether he feels guilty about what he does to them, it seems not. In fact ‘sacrifice the characters on the altar of the book’ are the exact words he uses saying that if it makes the story better then unfortunately they have to suffer.

‘How do you develop the characters and give them such a strong voice?

By writing a couple of pages biography for each character, written in their own voice. It establishes who they are but also establishes how they deal or view things like work, their relationship to money, how they view death, sex, god and most importantly language. How a character uses language is probably the most important facet of characterization – the vocabulary they have defines the character more than describing them. If a character uses a word that seems incongruous it just feels wrong. What we say and the way that we say it is how people define us. The way we speak and use language is as personal and unique as say our fingerprints.

And with that our audience with David Mitchell is at an end. Perhaps it was the intimate nature of the venue or the way in which the author meticulously answered questions to ensure that whoever asked something was satisfied with the answer but it really felt like we’d all received not only a glimpse of how Mitchell creates such vivid and exiting narratives but also some very useful tips to take away and apply ourselves. Tips that not only apply to people writing fiction but anyone involved in any kind of storytelling.

Friday night saw the launch party for NSEW taking place in a quiet cul-de-sac off the main strip in downtown Shoreditch. A hundred or so of London’s most culturally curious, cerebrally minded and generally not in Texas folk gathered to drink margaritas, beers and celebrate the diverse range of events taking place in the coming week .

The music flitted from math rock to disco to yacht rock and then back to disco while the conversations spanned the possibility of the emergence of black holes forming in Austin due to the extreme smugness of geeks with the iPad2, which was the better venue out of the RSA and Conway Hall and why was it still not possible to find decent ribs in London? Even Mike Butcher from Techcrunch / Tech Hub fame popped in for a few drinks and told us about the various other festivals he’s attending in the coming weeks from Tel Aviv to Beirut.

Despite the exitement the party was wrapped up by 11 and everyone hurried home to their beds to rest up before a gruelling 9 days of talks, screenings, gallery shows  and openings. Thanks to everyone that came and made it such a great start to the festival.

Here at Albion London HQ, we are delighted and very proud to announce the launch of our new office, Albion West Coast.
Check out the Campaign magazine exclusive for all of the details!