It was fab to perform at the Literacy Hub’s Spoken Arts Parlour at Victorious Festival this year - I played at the tent last year too and was thrilled when they invited me back again! :)
My set was right after local illustrator Neal Layton so I got to watch his lovely drawing workshop before heading on stage. We had a few technical difficulties with phone leads at the start (I blame Mercury Retrograde), but luckily the tech team was there to help and get me ready to go!
There was a decent crowd in the tent which was amazing and I had the best time performing songs and readings from The Songs You’ve Never Heard for everyone.
I also performed my acoustic track Misunderstood for one of the first times live, which is a song I plan to feature in a future book! Oh yes, and of course, I had props… Maximoo featured cat ears and a kazoo (and a terrible kazoo solo, I’m so sorry, I should probably stick to the singing…!)
It was so nice to see all the kids dancing in the tent - I had a blast and absolutely loved the festival as well! Thanks so much for having me, hope we can do it again next year!
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!
