Portsmouth Book Event (Lord John Russell's)

On 16th July it was so nice to host a music event in promotion for The Songs You’ve Never Heard - we hired out the Lord John Russell in Southsea for the afternoon and the place was packed with friends, family and brand new readers which was absolutely brilliant!

The night was more focused on the music side of our novel and filled with fantastic live music performances. First up was Nellie Fraser who played a half hour set of acoustic cover songs. She had such a beautiful voice and I loved hearing unusual covers such as Hounds Of Love and Softly by Arlo Parks.

As ‘Songs’ is about teenage musicians it was fantastic to have a real life teen singer/songwriter as part of the evening. I am excited to see where Nellie goes next in her music career!

Next up was a selection of book songs as performed by myself and Megan Tuck. We sang a whole range of Meg and Alana songs from the book, including some Lost Girls duets.

It was amazing to hear Megan singing “Didn’t I” live for the first time and I also got to sing “Maximoo” for the first time ever which went down a storm. Apparently people really love cat puns in their lyrics which is something to note for all future songwriting sessions.

We ended the night with my friends from the Southsea-based band Hometown Show doing an incredible last-minute set complete with violin and harmonica. Unfortunately our original support had come down with Covid so I was so grateful for Hometown Show to step in, especially when they had already played two gigs that day! Sadly I didn’t get any photos because I was too busy book signing! We made lots of sales on the night which was a pleasant surprise for a music-based event. Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who bought a copy, every single sale is such a huge help and it’s all hugely appreciated!

My friend Emily got this picture of me laughing and happy on stage - a nice snap to end on! Looking forward to the next show already!