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!

Portchester School Visit

On the launch day for The Songs You’ve Never Heard I visited Portchester School to give a presentation to a lovely class of Year 9 students. They were all partway through reading the book and one girl had even finished the whole story!

We had a great class discussion about themes in the book such as defining success and body image in the media. I also read part of Chapter 26 where Meg and Alana write ‘Domino Effect’ then played them the real life song! There were a lot of musicians in the group and it was great to chat about what gets us into a creative headspace.

Thank you so much to my friend Tom for having me and for promoting the book all over the school - being able to sign student copies and answer questions for the school newsletter was my first real “omg I’m an author!” moment - hope to come back again in the new term!

Priory School Visit

At the end of May, my good friend Chris Ricketts invited me to Priory School to give four presentations about The Songs You’ve Never Heard to his Music and English students. This is the first time I’ve been in an actual real life school in, oh let’s just say, 20 years or so… Needless to say I was VERY VERY NERVOUS!!

However, the students were so lovely and welcoming so I had nothing to worry about! I spoke to Year 8, Year 9, Year 10 and another Year 8 class, and even performed And What? and Firework Display live and acoustic to each class! This was the first time I had performed these songs in front of an audience and it was amazing to share them and get the student’s reactions. Some of them were even singing along with me by the final chorus!

As well as doing a book reading, I talked a lot about music and my songwriting background and got everyone to share their Top 3 Current Favourite songs with me. Priory School has IMPECCABLE taste! I had plenty of musical questions after each class from budding songwriters, and one student was very impressed I loved Orla Gartland as much as she did!

It has been such a confidence boost to start my journey with school visits and by the fourth presentation, I was definitely on a roll! Thanks so much for having me Chris and for being my guitarist for the morning. Hopefully the first of many successful book events to come! :)