As a YALC superfan, I was very excited to be invited to YALC 2023 last weekend to help out on the Sweet Cherry stall and sign copies of The Songs You’ve Never Heard.
My husband Mat and best friend Paul came with me for the day and we had great fun chatting to people on the stall, meeting new readers and seeing all the amazing costumes from the Comic Con downstairs! I even got to meet Lumiere!!
It was so lovely to chat about mine and Ellie’s ‘booksical’ with people - I’m so excited for new readers to discover Meg, Alana, Matty and Caspar for the first time. I also got to catch up with my author friends Danielle, Nadia and Louise who I first met at The YA Book Prize, as well as Katie who was our panel interviewer in Edinburgh. It meant so much for so many people to come to the stall to say hello and to catch up with everyone!
It was also so awesome to see my author heroes wandering around the event such as Juno Dawson and Holly Bourne - I wish I’d had more time to go and see their panels, but I did get to go book shopping in the afternoon and pick up a great haul. Paul and I even got matching Pikachu Tattoos that have lasted 4 days already and show no sign of fading despite being “temporary” LOL…
I always have such a fab time at this event and I really hope I’ll get to go again next year, maybe with a brand new book to promote next time?! Watch this space… :)
(PS. Click HERE to see my reel from the day! :D)
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!
Last weekend, Ellie and I went to YALC at Olympia as part of the Sweet Cherry stall - this was my fourth YALC attendance but my very first as an author and it was so amazing to experience the weekend from the other side!
On the Friday, Ellie and I hosted a workshop on creating our music-themed book where we had group discussions about favourite songs, a Q&A discussion, live song performances and a song title writing competition. We had so many AMAZING song title suggestions including “VIP(squared)”, “Sacramento Moonlight”, “She’s Boring And In Love”, “Mega Pint Of Slay” and “Witchcraft On The Prairie”. I loved how creative everyone was and it was so much fun to meet fellow music lovers and writers!
It was so much fun being on the Sweet Cherry stall for the rest of the weekend - we met so many cool, interesting people (including some Insta friends!), signed lots of books and asked everyone passing by to add their current favourite song to our Ultimate YALC Playlist. People are LIFE AND DEATH about their song choices and I absolutely love it! My friend Katie was also around to help, we have YALC-ed together for the last few years so it was really nice to share the experience together on the stand!
On the Saturday I also got the opportunity to sing live in between author panels and throughout the day I got up and spontaneously performed around 5 songs from The Songs You’ve Never Heard. It was INCREDIBLY NERVEWRACKING, but I am so glad I did it because so many people commented how live music lifted the day! Thank you all for being so lovely and supportive! I hope you enjoyed hearing the songs (and I hope the authors weren’t too annoyed at me delayed their panels hahaha)…
By the Sunday we had SOLD OUT of Songs which was absolutely incredible and completely exceeded all our expectations! There was also only one copy left at the Waterstones stand (and can I just say that having our book ON DISPLAY AT WATERSTONES was pretty bloody cool). We so appreciate the support of every single person who bought a copy and we really hope you enjoy the story!
The other amazing thing about the weekend was getting to meet so many of my favourite authors! I saw Alice Oseman in the green room and nearly had a heart attack… I also met Beth Reekles, Simon James Green and Dean Atta backstage who were all absolutely lovely. At official signings I got to meet Juno Dawson and Holly Bourne who held my copy of the book up to me and told me “No one can take this away from you”. When I say I had A MOMENT, I am not even kidding…
I also got to briefly meet the literary queen that is Jacqueline Wilson and hear her panel talk which was just simply inspirational! I asked everyone I met if they would sign my copy of Songs and I now have a beautiful front page filled with all my favourite people. I shall treasure this until the day I die!
By Sunday I was absolutely exhausted but my heart was absolutely full! What an amazing weekend that I shall never forget for as long as I live. Here’s to doing it all over again next year! :D
