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)
Last week I travelled up to Leicester to be part of the annual Sweet Cherry Author Showcase at the Y Theatre. The show was open to various schools and booksellers and featured presentations from multiple authors talking about their specialist subjects - from Jane Austen to football to a virtual Yoga session!
I did two sessions to two different age groups of children, performing songs from The Songs You’ve Never Heard and answering interview questions about the book and my writing process. It was great to sing Scripts and Maximoo on the big stage and I even had a little robot waving along with me! Definitely the first time I’ve performed a robo-duet!
The audience seemed to really enjoy it and it was great to finally meet many of the Sweet Cherry team in person and celebrate the success of Songs together.
Fingers crossed to be back on a theatre stage again soon!
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!
On Thursday 23rd June, the beautiful Blue Bear Bookshop in Farnham hosted the official book launch for The Songs You’ve Never Heard. We were so happy to have our very first event in such a gorgeous shop filled with amazing ornaments and art pieces, and of course lots of gorgeous books!
We were so touched at how many people showed up for us on the night, from friends and family to brand new readers. Sadly, Megan Tuck who plays our character Alana couldn’t make the night due to Covid, but I performed “Scripts”, “Second First Impression” and “And What?” as Meg, and we had a performance of “My Shadow” from Matt Harrison as Caspar. In between the songs, Ellie read sections of the book and the blend of fiction and music completely brought our book and music vision to life!
After the performances we did a Q&A session where we were asked some AMAZING questions about writing, music and even what we would say to our 12 year old selves now. I actually felt quite emotional at how supportive and engaged everyone was and I had to shut my eyes during Scripts so I didn’t cry!
Next we signed books for everyone who came, as well as a big pile for promotional giveaways and for the book shop. We had a whole production chain which was so funny and a real “wow I’m an author” moment! We also got to chat to new people who had come along, many of which were super creative. We talked to another writer, a podcaster and a girl called Alisha from Lishaslabels who made us beautiful bookmarks with our song lyrics on them. So amazing!
The night was also our first time meeting our fabulous publishing team Sweet Cherry for the first time in person - they made the drive down from Leicester and it was so special to share the launch with them and to chat plans for the future. We also got to see our agent Gill for the first time in ages and she gave such a lovely speech to kick off the night!
It was the perfect launch for our book and hopefully the first of many exciting events to come! Thank you to Blue Bear for being wonderful hosts and to everyone who helped make the night such a success… We even started the first ever book shop dance party to Domino Effect! How cool is that?!
Looking forward to the next stop during The Summer Of The Songs You’ve Never Heard!
